Hydrate and Educate: Clean Water for LA Schools

K-12 STEAM education

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Our organization understands that water scarcity and water quality access disproportionately affect BIPOC communities in LA County. In fact, many lower-income schools don’t have a single working water fountain. School districts shut down broken or contaminated drinking water fountains because they are too expensive to fix after plumbing, masonry, and asbestos mitigation costs. Hydration is essential for learning, and a lack of clean drinking water impacts students' health and education outcomes.

This grant will support our initiative to further STEAM learning and empower local Los Angeles youth regarding their water quality. We will accomplish this by donating an innovative water treatment device developed at UCLA: The Waterspot, our mobile water filtration system. We will donate the Waterspot to a South Central Los Angeles school and have a class of students participate in building and assembling the device to teach them vocational skills and STEAM curriculum. Our innovative approach lies in creating a STEAM curriculum directly tied to the Waterspot. This curriculum will educate students on water treatment principles used within the device that produces the water they drink daily.
Students will engage in hands-on learning experiences to develop vocational skills applicable to water treatment, plumbing, electrical, and water testing. This practical application will make the curriculum relevant and engaging, showing students the direct impact of clean water on their health and community. By contextualizing their learning around the device, we aim to spark their interest in STEAM fields and inspire them to pursue water treatment and environmental science careers. This project provides clean drinking water and empowers students with the STEAM education, knowledge, and vocational skills to address water quality issues in their community.

Our project will spark students' interest in STEAM by introducing them to water treatment and related career paths. By providing clean water, students will experience better hydration, which improves cognitive function, concentration, and memory, leading to better academic performance. This initiative will foster a better learning environment for students, set them up for academic success, and create informed individuals who can advocate for and contribute to sustainable water solutions in Los Angeles County. By providing donated water treatment systems, we will help Los Angeles schools remain compliant with state and federal mandates for providing clean, accessible water in schools.

This project extends our existing initiative, where we have provided water treatment devices to over 15 communities nationwide; through this program, we have saved over 2M plastic bottles and distributed 278,761 gallons of clean water. We aim to expand these solutions to schools through our Waterspot program, which was developed as a platform for vocational training and education, with an eventual goal of establishing a workforce training program in Los Angeles where opportunity youths can fabricate Waterspots for their schools to learn vocational skills in basic plumbing, electrical work, and water testing. To evaluate the success of the grant, we will measure the number of students participating in the curriculum and track their engagement through classroom assessments. We will also gather feedback from school administrators and the local community to gauge our program's integration and track interest in expanding the project to additional schools based on its success