Education for a Sustainable Future

Yesterday, March 16th, 2009 was the opening ceremony for the 5th World Water Forum. The ceremony was translated into nine different languages, English, Turkish, French, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Spanish and ASL. The ceremony began with Oktay Tabasaran, Secretary General of the 5th World Water Forum, welcoming the participant and emphasizing the forums main topic, Water issues. He also said that the forum will also be a place to discuss human development, rick management, local water management and economic development and the MDG objectives. Loic Fauchon, the president of the World Water Council (WWC) talked about stressing the importance of access to water. But that in order to ensure water access he called for rigorous and harmonious water sharing. He also talked about the need for effective water management, and the need to consider the principle of virtual water. Kadir Topbas, Mayor of Istanbul, noted that the ideals  of Istanbul are peace and tolerance and welcomed all the participants to the city. In his speech he talked about how cities are the major consumers of water resources and local authorities need to protect natural resources and plan for the need of water for future generations. Veyesel Eroglu, Minister of Environmental and forestry of Turkey emphasized that water issues affect peace and that a fair division of water was needed. Jose Luis Luege Tamargo, Director General of the Mexico national Water Commission, on the behalf of President Felipe Calderon of Mexico, talked about water management, climate change and infrastructure projects that started at the 4th World Water Forum, which was in Mexico City. UN Undersecretary-General Sha Zukang, on behalf of the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, recommended that four strategic plans for the forum: emphasizing linkages between water and climate change, learning from disaster risk reduction to increase adaptive capacity, improving human and institutional capacity, and recognizing the importance of cooperative transboundary water management. Abbas El Fassi, prime Minister of Morocco, speech noted that the World Water Forum follows the 2008 High-Level Conference on World Food Security and precedes the 2009 UN negotiations on a post-2012 climate regime and is taking place during a international financial crisis. Naruhito Kotaishi, Crown Prince of Japan, noted the importance for the need of collaboration to solve water issues and for the achievement of the the MDGs. Lastly Abdullah Gul, President of the Republic of Turkey, emphasized that water is not only a technical problem but also requires political attention. Also he said that international community must notice the limited nature of water and that changes in policies are neccassry to address water scarcity. Then he called on the cummunity to bridge divides for water, which is the conferences theme.

At the 5th World Water Forum there were 197 countries represented. Many people from all around the world filled the seats of the opening ceremoney and 50 students from the 3rd Childrens World Water conference got to attend the opening ceremony, including Maia and Forest. The rest of the students from the Childrens Forum watched the ceremony on a screen live from another room. After all the speeches were made, all the children from the Childrens World Water forum went up on the opening ceremonys stage to represent the forum and all the children who were taking part from around the world in this forum.

-Maia

So far our group of six travelers, students Kevin, Forest, Becky, Sara and Maia and teacher, Rebecca, have been in Istanbul, Turkey for three days at the Childrens World Water Forum. At the forum we have made many new friends from the 19 other countries represented. The countries represented at the Childrens World Water forum are the USA, Mexico, Lebanon, Turkey, Vietnam, Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka, Ghana, Algeria, Iran, Japan, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Nepal, Togo, Tajikistan and Palestine.

Also if you would like more information about the, 5th World Water Forum Istanbul 2009, you can visit the website, www.worldwaterforum5.org

Here are some pictures from the trip:

Waiting at Sea-Tac aiport for our first flight to Frankfort, Germany.

Our team of students at our stand telling people about our water projects.

A gorup of students playing an ice breaker game to get to know each other.

A forum group hard at work.

At the forum.

More pictures to come soon!

-Maia

Today was our second day at the Children’s World Water Forum.  First we went into an auditorium and listened to representatives from the different countries give a short introductory presentation about their water projects.  Forest, gave our introductory presentation about monitoring water quality at, Green Lake, and sharing our data with partner schools.

After we had heard the introductory presentations, we all went to look at the stands.  Each team had a stand explaining what water projects they were doing.  One stand was from Lebanon.  One Lebanon point that stood out was that every third student us infected with hepatitis or some water-borne disease.  The Lebanon team wants the need for clean drinking water to be expanded to all Lebanese, as well as, indigigenous water purificaton system to 15 houses on experimental basis.

On March 13, 2009 I was selected to be  interviewed on a Turkish kids news show with other people from the Children’s World Water Forum.  It was fun because I had never been on t.v., but nerve-racking.  First, they took us into a waiting room and asked us to explain our project in detail, for half an hour.  Then we went into the studio and were on the air.  The reporter asked us to explain our projects shortly.  I was really nervous so I only said  about 2 sentences which were something along the lines of “We test a lake near our school for bad bacteria.”  Then it was over.  I would do it again if I could because it was really fun.

Sara

Today, the first day of the Childrens World Water Forum, there were three 10-minute presentations on the importance of water.

The first presentation was given by Momoko Arakawa from Japan.  She started her presentation with telling us about a couple of  common Japanese phrases.  The first phrases were the like water phrases.  “Spend money like water,” was an example.  The term like water means wasteful and to use too much.  This is to show that in Japan they think of water being eternal.  The second phrase was, “flush it with water”. This term means to forget something bad.  These terms are no longer going to be used if water is not such a rich resource in Japan

The second presentation on the importance of water was presented by Juan Jose Noh Ventura representing Mexico.  This presentation was interactive and focused on the water cycle.  He says, “put on your magic hats and imagine”.  This is the beginning of his discussion about the water cycle.  We went through the cycle of water as little raindrops.  He also spoke about how animals in the desert can survive with so little water.  Later towards the end of the presentation he talked about how the animals in the desert have learned to save water.

The final presentation was by a boy from Turkey.  He focused more on the subject of how we depend on water.  He gave facts about our bodies’ dependence on water and showed a short video clip on water.  A couple of facts that he shared were:  Our bodies can live only a week without water, and  our bodies are 65% water.

This is a short summary of the three presentations.

We arrived safely in Istanbul at about 5:00pm (Istanbul time).

We will blogging more  after our first day at the Children’s World Water Forum.

At this time tomorrow, we will be at the airport getting ready to embark on our voyage to Turkey.  Our group includes 8th Graders Kevin, Becky, Sara and me, Forest.  We also have Maia, a ninth grade alum who goes to Roosevelt High School here in Seattle.  Our Integrated Human Sciences teacher Rebecca Timson will be facilitating the team on the way to Turkey and during the conference, and our second group facilitator is Hana Getsinger.  She will be bringing us back to the US, as Rebecca has further work in Europe.

Our primary purpose on this trip is to attend the Children’s World Water Forum in Istanbul. This conference is held every three years and deals with water issues around the world through the eyes of youth.

We are going to the Children’s World Water Forum tomorrow in Istanbul, Turkey.  Each of us individually applied, and then once all 5 of us had been selected, our team had to be selected by the Forum Secretariat.  We were chosen because we do water quality monitoring for the King County Small Lakes Program.  We also received a few grants from the Global Studies Foundation; Turkish Cultural Foundation; UNESCO; and the World Water Forum, which is the conference itself.

I only have to wait until Wednesday now before I can get on that airplane headed for Frankfurt airport and then finally Turkey! The packing isn’t that hard for me, (I am a natural at packing!) but going shopping for things was. We went to Value Village and found some really good deals! Over all it’s fun, and I get to leave for Turkey in just a few days!