CASTLE ROCK, Colo. – In Castle View High School's futurology class, the idea is to find a passion and create a project to solve a problem relating to it.
One group knew what they wanted to do after teacher Ben Wolfe came and gave a presentation to the class.
"He runs Colorado 2 Ghana, and we had him come and do a presentation about how a foreign exchange student doesn’t have clean water back home in Ghana. So immediately me and a couple other people and jumped right onto the project," junior Caroline O'Connor said.
Wolfe's non-profit takes students to Ghana to do other projects, and he was hopeful that a group would seize the idea.
"The kids have done all of this," Wolfe said. "I just introduced the problem and they’ve taken It to the extreme where we’re literally going to be giving the village clean water because of all the efforts through futurology and students there."
The group did research, connected with the NGO WaterforLife, raised money and bought supplies for Dramani Aoyuba to take to his village.
"30 post-filtration nanotech tubes connect to bucket to filter out debris," O'Connor said. "50 life straws that last a year. This is a short-term solution, only going to last like 6-7 years."
And Dramani had no idea this was happening.
"We’re going to surprise him," junior Alex Roller said. "He’s never met us. We’ve never met him."
At the Senior Awards Gala the day before his graduation, the group surprised Dramani with what they did.
"We’d like to present you and your home community with a way to obtain clean water through filtration systems that you will be able to travel home with in this suitcase," O'Connor told the crowd.
"I’m so overwhelmed. I can’t express how I’m feeling. Wasn’t expecting that," Aoyuba said.
They changed his world. And safe to say, their world changed with it.
People can still donate to the student group to raise money for clean water in Ghana on their Instagram account @H2Ghana.
