In Haiti, due to recent natural disasters, clean water is hard to come by. If one didn’t know any better, they could easily mistake their drinking water for chocolate milk. Now imagine this: by some kind of miraculous intervention, their water is now clean. In Albert Lea, Minn. there are some students working to change this by collecting donations that go toward water filters for people in Haiti. E.J. Thomas, eighth grader at Southwest Middle School, and Quinn Petersen, a seventh grader who also attends school at Southwest, got the idea when their youth pastor, Steve Piper, went on a mission trip to Haiti. He brought back a slide show of his experiences to present to his youth group at First Presbyterian Church. “When Steve showed us pictures the water looked like chocolate milk,” Thomas said. “It wasn’t good. That’s when we realized something had to be done.” Getting his friends together they decided to start a donation fund where the money collected will go toward water filters. These Bio Sand water filters are $40 each and can remove 98.8 percent of all pathogens. They can also last for 10-20 years. Most importantly, though, is the fact that they aren’t electrical. You can just pour dirty water in and get clean water out. Considering the current condition of Haiti, a manual filter seemed a no-brainier. “It is poverty at a level I’ve never experienced,” Piper said. “And I’ve traveled all over. I’ve seen poverty before. The destruction from the earthquake has just devastated the population. People are displaced – they’re living in tents. The country didn’t have a whole lot to begin to start with; they lacked a basic infrastructure like us. Sanitation is virtually nonexistent. Their water is whatever they can find.” The kids have already raised more than $300 by going door to door to collect donations, but the inspiration to give doesn’t stop there. Many members at the church they attend have already made independent donations. “People, unrelated, are catching the same vision,” Piper said.”I had no idea this would get so big – it has become an official fundraiser that the church is sponsoring.” Even in its early stages, the outcome of this fundraiser is looking promising. “My goal that I have not told anybody yet is to raise enough money to provide clean water for five hundred families,” Piper confided. Crunching the numbers, that’s about $9,000 needed to reach that goal. At the rate they’re going however, there is no doubt it is possible. “It requires people stepping up to make a difference,” Piper said. “That’s exactly what they did.”