2 MFHS Students 'Well' Beyond Their Years

Editor's note: This article was provided by the Menomonee Falls School District.

It’s as simple as taking shorter showers and really enjoying that refreshing glass of water, but most people — children and adults alike — don’t grasp the impact.

Two Menomonee Falls High School students understand, and they’re doing something about it.

Seniors Hannah Mast and Kelly Adlington have started an endeavor to build a well in Africa and to raise awareness of water conservation, an effort they recognize may likely outlast their high school careers but not their passions.

For Mast, it’s a two-year attempt that is finally gaining traction. As a sophomore, she saw a film in biology about Africa lacking clean drinking water. Inspired, Mast tried a few times to garner enough support to build a well in Africa, but couldn’t quite find the right opportunity.

“I just really wanted to help those people because they were helpless,” she said.

Then came this year, when Mast and her former biology teacher, Dana Kopatich, approached the Amnesty Club. Adlington, who cofounded the club as a freshman and remains one of its leaders, has been to Africa once herself on a humanitarian mission. Fittingly, the club was looking to do a project just like this.

“I got excited about it right away,” Adlington said. “It’s exactly the kind of thing we wanted to do.”

The Water Project

Mast and Adlington got connected with The Water Project, a nonprofit organization that builds wells in Africa, and the effort began.

Mast and the Amnesty Club created a video that randomly asks students about their water use, features club members providing tips on water conservation and information from The Water Project’s work in Africa. Some students said they take 20-minute showers; Adlington spends half that time and she has long hair. Most have no concept how much water they use in doing laundry, dishes, watering plants, in food and in coffee, and just drinking it.

The average use, Adlington learned, is 80 to 100 gallons per person per day, all while 1 billion people in the world don’t have clean water to drink.

“They don’t realize they can do something about it,” she said. “I think that complacency is what really makes me mad.”

She has seen the lack of clean water’s effect firsthand while in Tanzania last year. The instant Adlington got off the plane she was using bottled water, even to brush her teeth. Locals would walk up to five miles per day just to drink from a dirty stream, and it was all they had.

The impact is immeasurable yet obvious. Children get sick from dirty water and don’t go to school. Their parents stay home to care for them — some even die — and don’t go to work. It’s a vicious cycle.

Mast and Adlington are working to help break it, one well at a time.

That selflessness and worldly perspective comes as no shock to English teacher and Amnesty Club advisor Beth Larson. She describes both as deep thinkers with even deeper compassion for humanitarian issues.

“Hannah and Kelly embody what is great about their generation: the awareness of humanity, the education to make bold statements and ask questions, and the confidence to travel across the world,” she said.

Trying to raise thousands

Wells through The Water Project cost between $7,000 and $35,000. Mast donated $150 from a family garage sale and received a $500 donation from her grandparents. Adlington raised $63 from an exhibit at last Friday’s Culture Fair.

Mast and Amensty Club members are working tables this week during lunch to raise awareness and funds this week, designated as World Water Week. March 22 is World Water Day.

Adlington and Mast are aware they may not reach their goal of $7,000 by the time they graduate, both with high honors, but they’re happy to pass on the legacy.

“I’m so grateful Hannah came to us. It’s a way for kids at school to constantly think about water,” Adlington said.

“I think it would be really cool if we had a water week every year,” said Mast.

Larson said this kind of compassion from teenagers should reach well beyond the school.

“Both of these young women, along with the members of service organizations like ours, should be great inspirations to other students, but especially to adults,” she said. “With all of the stories in the media about what this generation is not doing or achieving, here is an example of what they are doing right ...  about what great opportunities are created in schools, and how parents get it right in raising great kids.”