News article written by a student from Donahies Community School

We had carried out our challenge task for Secret Water and we were really suprised at how much Secret Water is in everyday items. Even though we don’t actually see it, almost every item around us contains secret water. Secret water is the water that has gone into making an item. Think about a piece of paper.It’s not wet, so we might think that it doesn’t contain water at all. However if we think about how it was made, we might notice that the trees it’s made from had to be grown using water, and that the machinery also needed water to create the paper we see now. Ths is the same for all products we use.

The YSI students in our school had been working on creating awareness of homelessness, We agreed that it was unfair that we have so much and we just throw away items and some have nothing at all. We decided to upcycle items that could then be sold to raise money for homeless. We wanted to show people how easy it is to upcycle-reuse (discarded objects or material) in such a way as to create a product of higher quality or value than the original. We used plastic bottles from our recycling collection and other recyclables like glass bottles to create vases,storage containers etc. We also got donations form shops of goods that would otherwise be thrown away. We held a day where we had various students at different stations doing upcycling and others assembling donated items that homeless people could use. e.g sanitary items and also made sandwiches from bread donated to us.We videoed our efforts and donated the items to a homeless charity- ICCHH. The video got 23,000+ views so we really have spread the message ...'DON'T THROW AWAY,TRY GIVE IT AWAY'  

Check out the video here:

https://youtu.be/3x3X5F8jF78