St. Barnabas students help to provide clean water

Straws being sold after Mass on the sidewalk outside St. Barnabas Church in Northfield  this weekend are helping save lives in some of the world's poorest countries by providing water purifiers.

In the past three years, the students have raised $4,400 to provide safe drinking water for more than 1,500 people in Rwanda and Bangladesh. This week, they sold the Life Saver crazy straws to their classmates before school. They will continue selling the straws this weekend after each Mass at the church.

The water purifier is a tube about 10 inches long and an inch in diameter, with a cord that allows it to be worn around the neck. It contains filters that can capture or kill more than 99 percent of waterborne bacteria and parasites. It works like an oversized drinking straw that sucks clean water from a tainted pool, like a mud puddle.

The Swiss-based company that invented the straw, Vestergaard Frandsen, says it can save about 6,000 lives each day, if made available in countries where dirty water causes disease and death. LifeStraws help prevent diseases like dysentery, typhoid, cholera and salmonella.

''What we're doing doesn't take a huge amount of effort. But it's making a huge difference in the lives of other people,'' said Marina Bostelman, 12. ''When you help others, you strengthen your own faith because you live out 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' ''

The effort by students is detailed in a story in today's Beacon Journal by religion writer Colette M. Jenkins.