The Water for Life program from PREL (Pacific Resources for Education and Learning) is just wrapping up its one week long meeting here in Palau from September 5 – 9, 2016. This is the second regional meeting after the inception of the Micronesia region Water for Life program. The first regional meeting was in Chuuk in 2013. Participants of the meeting are core team members from Yap & Chuuk states of the Federated States of Micronesia, as well as core team members from Palau and the Marshalls. Including the core team members are environmentalists, educators and other representatives that work with relations to water issues. The objective for Water for Life is to raise awareness among youth with water resource and water catchment within communities.[restrict]
During the early part of the week, each core team had an opportunity to report about programs from their islands since 2013. Programs ranged from community involvement for water quality, school outreach, potable water upgrade project, MadiDrops tablets for water pathogen treatment, formal education outreach for science and agriculture teachers on developing and implementing units on science of water among other. Each group from their respective islands worked together to document project outcomes and guided the development of future programs for the next 5 years. Among the many activities and demonstrations relating to water, a teacher’s workshop was conducted on September 8, 2016, to teach teachers of Palau.
The Palau core team consists of Destin Penland, Senior Program Specialist, PREL Palau Office, Debbie Nagata, Health & Science Specialist, Ministry of Education, Lynna Thomas, Compliance Officer, Environmental Quality Protection Board, Yalap P. Yalap, Education Programs Coordinator, and Johnny Kintaro, Public Information Officer, Palau Public Utilities Corporation.
This Water for Life program helps build community resiliency and water security needs and challenging issues with climate change relations. The Water for Life is supported by the National Science Foundation. The project leader is Dr. Ethan Allen from Island Research & Education Initiative, PREL.
During the Teachers’ Workshop with Dr. Ethan Daniel, PREL and Ms. Faith Sword, Chief, Division of Curriculum & Instructional Materials Development. [/restrict