Water for All has moved to the new Oxfam Education website.

You are now being redirected to Water for All on the new site.

Don’t forget to take a look at the huge range of free teaching resources on our new website!

If you are not redirected automatically please use one of the links above.

Water solutions: Case studies

Following on from the case studies on water problems, discover what people have done to overcome water shortage.

> Click here to start the online slide show for your pupils

Learning objectives

Through community-led initiatives, people find ingenious and sustainable ways of improving their water supplies.
The restoration of water supplies has implications for quality of life in general and educational opportunities in particular.

What to do:

• Off screen, emphasise that although water shortage is a problem in the world, people working together can make a difference.
• Outline the group activities which the children will do following on from the case studies.
  Here, as in Lesson 3, the children will need to report back.
• Explain that the groups' reports should follow on from their previous responses to the case studies, but they may want to select an alternative medium and, in any case, be more upbeat. A verbal summary using the displayed images would be useful initially, but other media may be more powerful (such as interviews, drama, posters, diaries, storytelling).
• Ask the children to follow the online slide show for Water solutions: Case studies on screen. As with Lesson 3, they can take one case study per group and report back.
  Ask, What is the one factor each case has in common? (Community meetings for discussion, awareness-raising and active collaboration.)
  Ask, How important is this factor in bringing about positive change?
• Have the children devise and deliver their reports and responses.
  The responses to the case studies can now include an optimistic 'can do!' element to communicate to audiences.

Next steps

We recommend that you follow this activity with Lesson 6: Act locally which suggests ideas for positive action stemming from the case studies.

Further development

• Revisit the class framework used for tracking consequences in Lesson 1. Ask the children, What are some of the causes leading to a return of the water supply? What are the happy consequences of its return?
• Include rights education by analysing which rights people are reclaiming through the restoration of water? (see 'Reclaiming rights').
  Are they only obvious rights to do with water and the environment or do other rights come into play?
  Can the rights being reclaimed be classified (for example, survival; development; participation or having enough to live on; improving the community together; having a say, listening and being listened to)?
• What soundtrack would fit a given case study? Can children compose music from the initial cause, through deprivation to meeting for change, taking action and the water returning? Visual art could equally reflect this pattern.
• Develop empathy through language. What is the 'talking head' character saying now about what happened and what it means? Has the tone changed? Are there still things to be changed?

> Click here to start the online slide show for your pupils