The temperature is 40 degrees in the shade when the
children from the evening schools hold their Global Vote
in the desert. One of the voters is the Minister for Water
in the Children’s Parliament, 14-year-old Mathara Devi.
“Two months ago, there was a tiny rainfall. Since then
not a drop has fallen,” she says.
Here in Rajasthan, one
of the biggest problems
for us children is
the lack of rainfall. Our
whole lives are affected by it.
Without rain you can easily
fall ill, because it’s hard to
keep clean and fi nd drinking
water. And if it doesn’t rain,
our families’ crops don’t grow
and neither we nor our livestock
get enough to eat.
People are forced to sell their
animals, and many have to travel a long way from our
poor villages to work on the
land lords’ artifi cially irrigated
fi elds. My whole family
was forced to do that last year,
and it was terrible. I had no
friends and I couldn’t go to
school since I was so far from
home. But because I go to one
of the Barefoot College
evening schools, it was no
problem for me to start again
when I got back. If I had been
at a normal school, they
would never have accepted
that. But the worst thing was
when my father was beaten by
the land lord and some of his
men. I’m afraid of them, and
I never want to go there
again.
“At Barefoot College, we
know how hard things are
during periods of drought,
and we try to work together
and help each other. For
example, the small amount of
rain that falls on the roofs of
the evening schools is drained
into water tanks and can then
be used as drinking water,
instead of just evaporating in
the heat. In villages where we
have evening schools, it is getting
more and more common
for people to make use of as
much rain water as possible.
As the Minister for Water in
the Children’s Parliament, I
visit schools every week and
check that all the children
have enough clean water. If
there is a shortage of water in
the wells and the rainwater
tanks, I report it to the
Children’s Parliament.
Together with Barefoot
College, we then buy clean
drinking water so that every
student in the villages gets
the water he or she needs. But
that’s expensive, so we students
at the evening schools
are always careful not to use
too much.”
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