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Thousands of children in India watched “1H2O” in celebration of World Water Day
Photo by: Digambar Bharao Tule
Screening of 1H2O in a primary school in a village called Binpoor in Nasik, Maharashtra, where a group of children saw the film and responded enthusiastically afterwards.
We work with children all over India, so when we received a package with a DVD copy of “1H2O” from Miami, we wondered how we could show these kids the documentary and use the screening as an opportunity to find out what they thought about water issues.
1H2O, a film with no commentary, no words and no dialogue, explores the ever-changing relationship between people and water, especially at a time when we face a looming water crisis of proportions that we have never seen before. The documentary highlights a world where water is exquisitely abundant in some places and dangerously lacking in others. It shows how water inspires innovation and hope in different parts of the world.
We knew we could not walk away from the challenge and wanted to show it in as many places as possible, but we had no funds earmarked for this project. The question, then, became, how to make this happen, and still to make it big. We began asking ourselves, how many cities and villages, schools and communities, and children could we reach?
We started writing to all our colleagues in Pratham and ASER telling them about the film and our mission to screen it to as many children as possible in India. Soon this turned into a large-scale project involving many people in many states across the country. The prospect of showing something new and interesting to the children our friends and colleagues work with every day was one reason the responses to our request were so overwhelming.
In a short time, with everyone’s help and collaboration, thousands of children in India were having the opportunity to watch the documentary “1H2O,” screened concurrently in a total of 19 states and 150 different locations as part of this year’s World Water Day celebrations coordinated by the Knight Center for International Media at the at the School of Communication, University of Miami. The documentary was screened in a variety of terrains. Many of the places had been either drought prone or were urban areas where water is not easy to come by and clean drinking water is even more rare.
-An old country proverb-
“In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival,
water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference”
-Rachel Carson-
The screenings were a success, but now our second task was to see whether these children were able to understand what the movie was trying to say. To see if these young children had comprehended the documentary, we asked them, “Did you like the movie? Why?”, “What did you learn from the movie?” and “What was your favorite part in the movie?”
Also, in almost every location, a few children were asked additional questions that could help us look at their families’ relationship to water: “How many people live in your household?”, “Where does your drinking water come from?, “How far do you have to go to get drinking water?”, “Who makes sure there is drinking water in the house and who goes to get it?”, “How is drinking water stored in your house?, and “Does anyone do anything to make sure the water is clean?”
The answers indicated that the children might not have been able to fully comprehend the more theoretical questions like whether water is a natural human right or a commodity, but from their responses, we could see that they understood how water should be kept clean and used judiciously, how important water is to different people around the world and even how water can be collected from clouds.
In fact, these children understand the real value of water more than anyone else could. Their answers were startling. We learned that many who watched “1H2O” walk every day to collect water for their household. Some walk down the street while others walk much further. Some need to fight for water, a scarce commodity in so many places. Many children said that nothing is done in their home to make water purer and cleaner, so they could safely drink it. Many do not even have a lid for the vessel in which they store drinking water. In some slums in urban India, there is no water in the taps, and water tankers entering their community lead to fights as people struggle to get a little water to drink and cook.
These facts are a grim sign that these issues will keep haunting us in the future if we don’t find real solutions. We would like to hope that, though a drop in the ocean compared to what needs to be done to make people more aware of the alarming water situation in the world, our effort in India on World Water Day 2009 has made a ripple somewhere in the hearts and minds of children.
Posted on May 1, 2009
