Small District Grant has Big Impact
This spring, the Rotary Club of Columbus/ Fall River, WI recently completed Project WASH ( Water, Air, Sanitation & Hygiene) where they provided sustainability education related to a grade three class and to two Interact Clubs in their community.
The Rotary Club partnered with the international sustainability education group, Children's Environmental Literacy Foundation (CELF) to provide the curriculum materials for the students.
In addition to in-class education, the project involved students going on field trips to a water treatment plant, water facility, solid waste recovery facility, and the river in a local park.
The students from the two Interact clubs involved in the project, having learned more about the water quality in developing countries, raised money to provide water-purification systems for schools in Kenya.
Small District Grant has Big Impact 
For under $1,000, the Rotary Club of Columbus / Fall River implemented a local project to educate students from three schools on Water, Air, Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH). The project had many components that had an impact locally and internationally.
The first component was a field trip for 24 third-grade students to the City of Columbus water treatment facility. The students learned about monitoring systems, how water is tested for quality and how they treat solid and liquid wastes. The students also saw where the treated water is discharged into the river.
The second field trip for the same group of students was to the Columbus Water facility. The students got to see how water is treated before it is made available to households.
The third field trip for the third-grade students was to a local park to learn about water-quality testing. The students put on waders and performed hands-on tests of water temperature, PH, transparency and dissolved oxygen. The students also got to observe aquatic life in the water system. On a separate trip, Interact Students visited a local park and performed depth measurements and transparency tests.
The last field trip involved the 24 third-grade students and 17 Interact members from two different high schools. The students visited the Columbia County Solid Waster Recovery Facility. The students got to see how waste was separated and baled for sale. They received an education on the amount of waste that is produced and how long it takes for some products to break-down in a landfill situation.
The Interact members from the Fall River High School and the Columbus High School after visiting the Solid Waste Recycling facility decided to collect plastic bottles for recycling. They used the money from recycling the plastic to make donations to the Children's Environmental Literacy Foundation, which purchased water-purification systems for schools in western Kenya.