WATER
SOLUTIONARIES
“NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE, WATER IS LIFE”
— Jexa Edinberg, WATER SOLUTIONARY (EVANSTON, USA)
THE VISION
~ A world where teen leaders can collaborate to ensure clean water for healthy people and a vibrant planet.
Water Solutionaries (WS) fills a critical opportunity gap for teens (13-17) by fostering a container in which youth can learn, connect and lead with each other as water problem solvers, based on their interests and concerns. The result is a global community of transformative interactions that engage and channel energy into positive, youth-generated water solutions.
CONTEXT
PROBLEM: Youth feel frustration, grief, and isolation in the face of a daily reality of mounting challenges from climate change, pollution, socio-environmental injustice, and geopolitical instability. All intertwined with real implications on their well being. And impacting the basic element of life on Earth… water. Such daunting threats overwhelm a young person’s response capacity.
SOLUTION: Teens need a globally accessible, solutions-based framework to harness technology and ongoing peer support to solve water problems wherever they are. Through WS, youth join together and share their experiences, ideas, abilities, and perspectives. With this base, they make substantial positive change and exercise their agency to change the world. WS believes that solutions are an opportunity to challenge and transform frustration and anger into positive actions and channel what feels out of control, into projects that have influence and purpose.
OBJECTIVE
The Water Solutionaries Model is rooted in solutionist attitude.
A credo that emphasizes solutions thinking as an opportunity to challenge and transform frustration and anger into positive energy. Through this solution-centric framework teens are able to:
Connect to peers through small groups and one-on-one
Learn and share knowledge
Change their own behaviors
Investigate and address local and global issues
Understand intersections and how to leverage change
Build networks across freshwater geographies
Solve locally relevant problems
Grow leadership as changemakers
Amplify positive ideas and solutions
PILOT
The pilot phase is intended as a model for other entities to start and grow similar and connected initiatives, thereby reaching a broader audience with transformative content and structure.
Through regular correspondence between regions in the Great Lakes of both North America and Africa, youth are able to make connections while learning about the differing and similar traditions, values, challenges, realities, languages and viewpoints amongst themselves all within the framework of discussion surrounding important ecological and cultural aspects concerning Earth’s most precious resource. These connections can create channels for youths to open doors, blaze trails, develop their voices, and take seats and stances at the table.
WHERE HOPE LIVES
Inspired from the actions taken by the Pilot cohort, this short 10-minute film was co-created by filmmaker Ben Keller and teens across the Great Lakes of Africa and North America.
Highlighting youth perspectives, connectivity and a new, international group of teenage global-changemakers called Water Solutionaries!
ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES
Water Solutionaries hopes to help…
Develop an effective and scalable pilot project that is both widespread and deep-seated.
Set up a framework to foster meaningful connections and an ethic of stewardship and action centered around freshwater.
Amplify the capacity of youth water leaders through local/global connections via training, knowledge-sharing, leadership development, and community action.
Provide in-depth, peer connections on digital platforms for these key stakeholders to gain knowledge and begin and/or further their engagement in game-changing freshwater projects.
Create channels for youths to open doors, blaze trails, develop their voice, and take a seat and stance at the decision-making table. Maybe they will even opt to rebuild the table.