January 2016…Healthy NewsWorks student journalists are working with KidsGive, a scholarship program sponsored by Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., on a healthy water project to help students in the West African nation of Sierra Leone.
A team of Healthy News Works reporters will collaborate with KidsGive members to produce two promotional videos that will be shown at Conforti Primary School in Calaba Town, Freetown, where KidsGive is building a new well and water system. Clean water is in desperately short supply in much of Sierra Leone, and Conforti School’s well is too shallow, poorly located, and often runs dry.
The videos will focus on health facts about water hygiene and handwashing and will allow Healthy NewsWorks student journalists to engage in “peer-to-peer” public health education with students their own age in Sierra Leone, according to KidsGive Founder Claudena Skran, a professor at Lawrence. The Healthy NewsWorks students are also expected to have some face-to-face discussions about health with their counterparts in Sierra Leone through videoconferencing.
“We are very excited to be working with KidsGive on this Sierra Leone water project,” said Marian Uhlman, director of Healthy NewsWorks. “It’s a great opportunity for our students to broaden their understanding of the world and to see how the health communication skills they’re learning can make a real difference in improving lives.”
Dr. Skran will also be speaking about children’s perspectives on the Ebola epidemic during a Healthy NewsWorks special event on February 9 at the Free Library of Philadelphia.
