As experts ponder world water crisis, teenagers show creativity

Ms. Tobin's section also runs education programs at schools in more than 70 countries, and helped kick-start Dhaka's hygiene education program. Such youth-led projects are often launched and funded by UNICEF and other groups, such as the US-based nonprofit Water Education for Teachers and the humanitarian agency Oxfam. They hope that getting kids involved at the grass-roots level now will pay off in the long term.

"When you get young people involved at an early enough age, you're putting in place a mind-set that will be there 20 years from now," says Tobin. "The experiences these children are having now won't be forgotten."

Suresh's toilet-financing project in Nepal, started with advice from UNICEF, is already producing results: Two-thirds of homes in his village of Pumbi Bhumbi now have toilets, he says. "Bit by bit, we're managing to bring change," he affirms.

Ethiopian Ojulu Okelli hopes to get running water and latrines in his school, but few places pose a bigger challenge for water activists than his town of Gambella on the border with southern Sudan. It's an area mired in absolute poverty that is just now recovering from years of ethnic conflict. Okelli only gets access to clean water when his mother and sister return from their five-kilometer walk from the nearest well.

Ojulu and his friends spotted a chance to improve their underdog surroundings by getting involved in their school's environmental club. "We started cleaning up the grounds on Saturdays, picking up the litter and all that," he says, adding that he hopes that community leaders will notice the cleanups and bring tap water and latrines to the school.

"The girls need this especially," adds Okelli, who is aware that menstruation means an inconvenient and humiliating trip to a lone bush - sometimes causing girls to drop out of school when they hit puberty.

In other parts of Africa, schoolkids spin on brightly colored merry-go-rounds that pump water from nearby wells when spun. About 600 UNICEF-financed "play pumps" are now in place in South Africa.

Meanwhile, in his southeastern village in Laos, spiky-haired Happy Sisomphone directs a radio segment on sanitation, hygiene, and water-borne diseases.

"In school we're reminded that it's important to wash your hands after playing with dirt," says Happy, trained by UNICEF as a volunteer radio producer. "But we never learn why. So I interview people about the reasons we should be careful."

Claire Hajaj, a UNICEF spokeswoman, considers youths "incomparably useful" to community projects. "They take their messages to their schools, their families and friends," she says. "They create a domino effect. And if adults see kids leading these initiatives then they think, oh, I can do this, too."

Already, a good deal of the talk at the forum has centered on local, homegrown solutions. At the same time, UN studies highlighted that bringing such solutions requires tighter cooperation between governments and private companies, with less of an eye on profits.

But despite the good intentions, some of the youths run into walls. When Happy started up his radio show, some villagers rejected the idea of a young voice over the radio waves lecturing about the ills generated by bad water. "Big messages from little people don't always work," he says. "But little by little people tend to come around."

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