Good dear readers, I am a Venezuelan teacher and several years ago I had the privilege of being part of a work team at the Las Catanas Bolivarian School as sowers of water. This school is located in a rural community with low economic resources, where its main source of income comes from fishing and agriculture. This humble community does not have sewage drainage, however it is surrounded by large sources and flows of pure spring water that are brought to homes through various containers and transported either on foot or by some domestic animals such as mares and horses..
I confess that when I heard the name of this school program for the first time, I immediately asked myself: How can water be sown? It didn't seem possible. After several expeditions carried out by the community together with my group of sixth grade students, we understood the essence of the program, and thus we became sowers and protectors of water in the Las Catanas community.
To become a water seeder, the first thing you must know are the water sources of your community, so on our first day in the field as water seeders, my group of students and I left the school and took a tour of the community in where we identify the seven main water sources and water flows that supply the community, knowing a little more about the pools (El Manco, La Alcantarilla, the spring of Antonia Campos, El pozo Subero, Laguna de Cesar Albornet) and the main river Coicual where families are concentrated to carry out their housework. Thus, we observed the poor state of these rivers, the plastic waste and remains of human and animal excrement that are thrown into them daily and that announced the serious contamination of the water and soil.
The second step is to identify what types of trees exist in your community or town, lean on some village teachers who are those people or grandparents who know your community culturally and develop planting and cultivation activities, identify which of these trees are protectors of the water and they can conserve the underground reserves some of them can be (bamboo, Chinese banana, cedar, coffee, cocoa, pumalaca, apamate among many others). In our second outing, my students and I, with the help of various representatives and residents, went to the forests and hills near our rivers, where we found a great variety of these trees. However, we were also able to appreciate the burning and felling of many of them that were sacrificed to carry out conucos and plantings on lands that are close to the rivers.
In view of the need to plant water-generating and conserving trees near our rivers, my students and I made beds and nurseries with many of these trees and we decided to clean up and plant the “El Manco” spring well, for which we made a third expedition.
Our third outing was during the dry season and at that moment we were able to appreciate the real problems caused by global warming and climate change. The well water flow had been reduced, the water hole of our spring was almost disappeared and at that moment and already observing the other problems encountered previously, my students fully understood that water being a non-renewable natural resource it was extinguishing. So the third step is to create environmental education in our youth and children.
Planting water goes beyond planting trees that help conserve the flow and water sources of our rivers, sowing water is leaving our comfort zone and touring our communities to verify the conditions of our seas and rivers, planting water is creating awareness ecology in our youth and children so that they understand that we cannot continue to be part of the problem but part of the solution to this global problem.
Can you imagine that every student in every school around the world would sow water? Now imagine that those students took that knowledge home and shared it with their families, now imagine that each person connected with mother earth and respected each source of water. Do you know what would happen? because there would simply be no pollution of our seas and rivers and we would conserve water, trees, air and soil.
“When I observe the first water spring sprouting from the earth, I associate it with life itself. The earth is our mother, each source of water is like the mother's womb, each drop of water is the mother's milk that we consume daily to feed ourselves. Let us respect mother earth that offers us all its riches "
