Children reach across boundaries, in new CWS curriculum on water

Willow Latham with Jersey City Reservoir No. 3, behind her.

Photo: S. Latham

June 11, 2007

“When I was a child in elementary school I often felt powerless to change the world,” said Willow Latham of Jersey City, NJ, a sophomore at Hudson High Tech.

The importance of water, which Latham learned at a wilderness camp, and her efforts to save an abandoned Jersey City reservoir that nature reclaimed, is told in Build a Better World: Water, a new Church World Service curriculum for children at Sunday schools, vacation Bible schools, camps and other settings.

The curriculum is the fourth in a series telling stories about children whose lives have been improved through the work of CWS. Its focus is water.

“Willow’s story was especially useful in engaging children with the issue of water,” said CWS Associate for Development Resources Tom Hampson. “She’s very articulate.”

Although a stranger to CWS before being interviewed for the curriculum, Latham said a look at the CWS website showed her the organization and its work was “a global model for what each of us should strive to do in our local communities.” She was impressed that CWS worked overseas to provide people with drinking water while educating people who do have access to water about how they can help those who don’t.

“Especially in the U.S. we take water for granted, not realizing what a precious commodity it is for much of the world,” she said. In a Mexican village she visited last summer, she said water was precious and used carefully, since it had to be brought from far away.

Water, the latest in the Builld a Better World children's curriculum.

The new curriculum also tells the stories of Hajar from Indonesia, Dong Ngoc Son of Vietnam, both five, and 14-year-old Anne Mosiri from Kenya. Each of the stories lifts up the different ways CWS is involved in responding to needs around the world.

The domestic focus included in three of the four editions suggests that advocacy is one way to respond. In response to a Cambodian child’s story in the series’ first edition, children wrote letters to their representatives in Congress. Some got letters back: the responding representative’s mother was a member of a congregation using the curriculum.

“The idea is to present the whole work of CWS,” said Hampson, who coordinates the development of the curricula. The series supplements existing children’s programming in congregations, suggesting hands-on ways to support the work of CWS. Take home materials help children involve their parents in the questions and issues discussed. The curricula are available online, and linked to Build a Village, an interactive approach to alternative giving.

Hampson says the series has been used imaginatively, both by congregations already involved with CWS and those looking to bring the world to their church’s experience.

In one congregation, two experienced woodcarvers carved four-foot giraffes representing Imani, the mascot-guide of the series, for each child using the curriculum.

“The underlying assumption reflected in the way the curriculum is put together,” says Hampson, “is that children can be leaders in their own congregations. It invites them to take the lead to bring the world into their congregations’ lives.”

Latham’s leadership paid off. Faced with demonstrations, rallies and petitions to preserve Reservoir No. 3 in Jersey City, the mayor and other officials declared the site a city center oasis earlier this year. It’s a place nature restored, filling with rainwater and surrounding with trees. Fish found their way in. Butterflies flit among the wildflowers and birds add their color and song to the reservoir’s new life. It’s one of the few places in Jersey City where people can kayak and swim.

“Now I realize that children have enormous influence in our world,” said Latham. “Children who use that influence can make a huge difference in our world.”