Right to Water: At School and At Home

Allie is a Youth Council member from Nova Scotia/PEI.

Shortly after arriving in Pikangikum, a small First Nations community in northwestern Ontario, we (a small delegation from PWRDF) went to see their new school. It had just opened a few months earlier, after several years of students going to school in makeshift portables, and we were excited to see it and to see a mural project that some students were working on.

The school is nothing short of incredible – beautiful, colourful art on just about every wall, along with inspirational words in both English and Ojibway (almost the entire community speaks their traditional language fluently), and a bright open feeling throughout the building.

I had a chance to talk to a few students about their new school, and they spoke about how much they love it, especially that they all get to be in one building together.

The mural project is part of a joint initiative of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and the Pikangikum First Nation, intended to help at-risk youth and reduce youth crime rates. An artist drew the outlines on the classroom wall, but the students were free to mix their own colours and decide how to use them.

After spending some time learning about that program and seeing the mural in progress, we shared a meal with the students, teachers and members of the OPP. As we were about to head back to our hotel, I filled up my water bottle at a filling station. I normally get really excited when I see those water bottle filling stations, but here the access to clean water was even more exciting than usual.

Youth Council has been focussed on the National Youth Project: Right to Water for the last few years, and raising funds to outfit homes in Pikangikum with water and waste water services is a big part of that work. Knowing that many students’ homes don’t have running water makes the fact that they could fill up a water bottle at their school a much bigger deal. Water is sacred, holy, and necessary for life, and this new school is more than equipped to help students access it. 

For the rest of our time in Pikangikum, I kept thinking back to that filling station: when we discovered the water in our hotel had a strong chlorine taste – too strong to drink; when we met with the Band Council to discuss the specifics of how PWRDF’s implementing partner, Habitat for Humanity Manitoba, will work in Pikangikum; when we visited some of the homes that will have water and waste water systems installed; and when we saw people venturing out into the snow to get water from community holding tanks. The filling station reminded me of the ease with which I access water every day at home, and of the importance of this project in helping more people in Pikangikum have that same right.