A group of students at Los Alamitos High School has reached across the world to bring fresh water to a parched village in South Sudan. The Interact Club, a student community service club that works in partnership with Rotary International, raised $8,500 to pay for drilling of a well in Abany, located near the northern border of the central African nation.
A group of students at Los Alamitos High School has reached across the world to bring fresh water to a parched village in South Sudan. The Interact Club, a student community service club that works in partnership with Rotary International, raised $8,500 to pay for drilling of a well in Abany, located near the northern border of the central African nation.
The group worked with Water for South Sudan, a non-profit organization set up to help solve the chronic shortage of drinkable water in the region. Many communities only have access to water from marshes, ditches, or hand-dug wells—supplies often contaminated with disease-causing parasites and bacteria.
To honor the Interact students’ contribution, Water for South Sudan inscribed the concrete wellhead with the club’s name at its dedication in February. The well was the 322nd well drilled by the nonprofit since it began operating in 2005.
Interact Club President CeCe Stage, a senior, said she has been involved in the well project since she was a freshman because it “emphasized the worldly aspect to Interact, how we not only try to help the community here in Los Al but places all throughout the world.”
The club’s main fundraiser is the annual student-faculty talent show that supplements smaller fundraising events during the campus Week of Hope and in area restaurants.
Stage said the club, which has about 20 active members, received updates from South Sudan about progress on the well construction.
“It’s a huge sense of accomplishment, and its something that I will look back on and think that we made such an impact on people’s lives,” Stage said.
Senior Taylor Schissel said the group watched a live-stream video of people in Abany using the well for the first time.
“It was really inspiring to think that something we did here at Los Al could affect so many people across the world. The effort we put it in created something extraordinary,” Schissel said.
Lynn Malooly, executive director of Water for South Sudan in the U.S., wrote the Los Alamitos students to thank them and said their efforts not only brought clean water but also “a new future for the people of Abany.”
More information about Water for South Sudan can be found at waterforsouthsudan.org.