Each year, World Vision hosts its Global 6K for Water, where families, neighbors, friends, and churches come together to walk a 6K — the average distance women and children in developing nations walk to get water. So we wanted to help you prepare for the May 18 event and provide ways to talk about the global water crisis with your children. Here are 13 activities to help you prepare your body, mind, and heart for the Global 6K for Water.
- Create a route: If you’ve signed up for the Global 6K, map out a route in your neighborhood to walk each day for training and for the 6K itself. It’s okay if you can’t walk the whole distance at first — work up to it. Also, it may get boring walking the same route, but make that part of the discussion. Children like Grace and others have walked the same route multiple times a day for water.
- Watch a poem: Kenyan schoolgirls recite a poem they wrote about the blessings of clean water.
- Count your access: How many places inside and outside your home can you get clean water? Don’t forget ones like faucets near the washing machine.
- Read a children’s book: Have story time as a family, and curl up to read The Water Princess by Susan Verde together.
- Do a water walk: Fill an empty plastic container — a milk jug, a jerrycan, anything you may have — with water and walk your 6K route. How does it feel, and how difficult is it?
- Watch a water-drilling crew work: For the little ones who love seeing big construction machinery, follow a crew in Malawi as they work to empower a community with clean water.
- Pray for clean water: Use our online guide for prayer points on how you can pray for children and families to get clean water.
- Pull out a map: Find your home on a map and identify the closest natural water source, whether it’s a creek, river, pond, lake, or sea. Highlight the route you would walk to get there and calculate how long that distance is. Discuss how it would feel to walk there to get your water each day. (And if you’re feeling adventurous, take the walk with your family and collect some of the water in a plastic container to see how dirty it is.)
- Watch videos: Virtually travel around the world to meet children impacted by World Vision’s work. Learn about how water affects their lives.
- Make a list: What are all the ways you use clean water throughout the day? Think beyond drinking. Track the ways each family member uses water throughout the day on a piece of paper.
- Create a visual: Fill a jar with water, and add dirt to it. Place it in a prominent spot in your home, so you’re reminded of the global water crisis and that children and families who have to drink dirty water every day. It can also jog your memory to pray. Talk about how the dirty water makes each of you feel.
- Pray for communities preparing for water: Did you know there are several steps families in a community have to take before World Vision can drill for water? Learn what they are and pray for people making these preparations.
- Make two dinners: Using our recipe, make a rice casserole dinner tonight — one with clean water and another with dirty water. Discuss how it makes you feel and why.
