"Water Is Life"
Our guest presenter at the January 17, 2017 meeting was Jennifer Halsey, the instrumental and symphonic band director at Hampton Bays High School. She introduced the club to her work on behalf of Water is Life, an international not-for-profit dedicated to bringing clean drinking water to communities around the world.
In 2016, Jenn organized an "act local, think global" project with the objective of bringing awareness about water quality to her students at Hampton Bays High School. Working together as a school community, the school conducted a year-long recycling program, raising money for the effort to bring water filtration straws to a community in Ghana.
On Earth Day, in the spirit of acting locally, Jenn and the entire Hampton Bays High School faculty and student body, descended on Tiana Beach in Hampton Bays to clean the beach and plant 10,000 sprigs of dune grass to help support the dunes and protect our local water quality. The effort raised nearly $2,000 and provided 190 filtration straws to adults and children in Ghana. Jenn intends to return to Ghana this summer to expand her impact and the Rotary Club of Hampton Bays looks to support her efforts in doing so.
For the past several years the Rotary Club of Hampton Bays has committed to at least one water quality project annually, alternating between acting globally and locally. In that time, the Club has built a well and regenerated a water well in the South Sudan with "Water for South Sudan", supported the Shinnecock Bay Restoration Project's efforts to reseed Shinnecock Bay with clams to generate healthy waters and the shellfish population, and worked with the Southampton Rotary Club to install 20 lifesaving stations on both sides of the Shinnecock Canal.
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