This fall, a classroom at the Island Village School Montessori Charter School in Venice, Florida has been participating in the Global Virtual Classroom, an on-line project that seeks to develop cross-cultural communication and collaborative skills by pairing schools around the world in research challenges. Island Village Montessori has been matched with a school in Arizona and another one in India in this cooperative contest.

Their topic: water resources around the world.

Students in the Island Village classroom will focus their research on conditions in the Azawak. To share data gathered by her students with the other classrooms, teacher Mary Beth Sullivan set up a blog. The blog, also serves to raise awareness about the lack of water resources in the Azawak by linking to the Montessori Amman Imman blog and the Amman Imman website. You can view the GVC Island Village Water Blog by clicking here.

Ultimately, the “classroom” team of three schools will create a web page that will display the results of their research. The web page will be entered in a contest.

Mary Beth had a dual purpose in suggesting that their study focus on worldwide water resources. Besides the relevance of water as a global topic, she wanted to attract more attention towards Amman Imman.

Says Mary Beth, “Everytime we work on a lesson, I show the Amman Imman pages to the student so they are reminded of our purpose in studying water.”

The final product website will link to Amman Imman as well as to the Montessori blog.

(Several years ago, Island Village participated in the website challenge contest and won third place for their level in a study of human needs.)

The latest version of May the Water Flow (for the people of the Azawak) has been published on YouTube. This musical and photographic slide show is a tribute to the people of the Azawak of West Africa whose courage, determination, and love of life, despite their daily struggle to find water, has inspired students around the world, ages 3 and up, to become change-makers.

The song, written by Andrew Kutt, director of the Oneness-Family School, salutes the efforts of students who have partnered with Amman Imman, the only humanitarian organization working to bring water to this abandoned region where people are daily dying of thirst. Inspired by the work of Ariane Kirtley, founder and director of Amman Imman, students are organizing fund raising events and making presentations to let the world know about the desperate situation the people of the Azawak face on a daily basis.

In his dedication of the song, Andrew articulated the student response to Ariane's example of taking action toward a situation that begged a response. He said, "Ariane is living proof that a single person, who is true to her highest self and holds fast to her deepest aspiration, can indeed change the world."

In July, 2007, the first Amman Imman borehole became fully operational. People in Tangarwashane, one small village in the vast Azawak valley, no longer have to travel 35 miles a day in search of water. Many more boreholes are needed to serve the needs of the 500,000 people in the Azawak.

Photographs in the video are courtesy of Ariane Kirtley, Denis Gontero, Montessori schools around the world who are building a Well of Love,and the Internet.

May the Water Flow (for the people of the Azawak)
words and music by Andrew Kutt

I've been walking for miles and miles
Along this dusty road beneath a blazing sky
Searching for sustenance
So our children will not die.

I've been waiting for years and years
in this desert for some kind of hope
Praying to the Gods above
That our people can have a fertile home.

May the water flow all over our land
May the children smile again
May the Gods above answer all our prayers
And may the world begin to care
There is so much we have to teach
But love is just outside our reach
There is so much we want to learn
But first this chapter has to turn.

Now children from a distant land
Have helped us dig beneath the sand
Water can now flow to us
And to our animals from the Well of Love.

With new friendships and new strength
Our women can work alongside our men
Start anew to use our tools
Build new roads, home and schools.

May the water flow all over our land
May the children smile again
May the Gods above answer all our prayers
And may the world begin to care
There is so much we have to teach
But love is just outside our reach
There is so much we want to learn
But first this chapter has to turn.

I had a dream that children of all races
Were dancing in the rain
And the deserts of the world
Were filled with flowers and with grain.

And I know that the wisdom of all the ancient ones will guide our way
Brothers and sisters hand in hand
to build a greener day.

May the water flow all over our land
May the children smile again
May the Gods above answer all our prayers
And may the world begin to care
There is so much we have to teach
But love is just outside our reach
There is so much we want to learn
But first this chapter has to turn.

We've been hearing how the Amman Imman project has provided students with an opportunity to manifest Montessori values of stewardship of the earth, kindness, and global citizenry. Students around the world have actualized their learning by creating Powerpoint presentations, organizing fund raisers, and presenting the project in their community to raise awareness. Creativity and meaningful participation intertwine as students share their knowledge and make a difference in the world.

The Dayspring Academy, a Montessori middle school in Catawba, South Carolina, assigned research on Amman Imman as a summer homework assignment in preparation for their year-long International Outreach Project. Students investigated conditions in the Azawak region, learned about the water crisis and tied their learning back to the needs of the local community by reflecting on how a lack of water would affect their own lives.

At the beginning of the school year, each student presented a creative representation of their research to their peers.

Kiersten Byrd, owner and administrator of the school, tells me that after the December holidays the students will begin raising awareness about Amman Imman and the Azawak based on their summer research and projects.

The Dayspring Academy
Summer Homework

1. Read the article attached, “Amman Imman: Water is Life”

2. Research and answer the following questions related to the article:
a. Who are the Azawak?
b. Where do the Azawak live?
c. Why do we, as human beings, need water?
d. What are the consequences for a lack of water in a community?

3. Design a program that will:
a. Educate our community (Rock Hill, Fort Mill, and surrounding areas) of the plight of the Azawak.
b. Raise money to help create water for the Azawak people.

4. Create a project you will present to your peers the first week of school. Options for your presentation include, but are not limited to: poster, presentation board, power point, original art design, original musical score and song. Use your imagination. We will decide together the best generated idea for community awareness and fundraising for the Azawak.

This will be our International Outreach Project for the year.

In a December 1 posting (Student Ideas Fill Water Bottles With Money), we introduced the Harbor Montessori School in Gig Harbor, Washington whose Upper Elementary and Middle School students are joining with Montessori students around the world to build a Well of Love in the Azawak. The students are taking their leadership role seriously by going out into their school community and making presentations. They are also organizing projects to raise funds that will culminate at their Earth Day celebration in April.

An article in the Harbor Montessori school news, posted November 30, details the student's efforts. The following excerpt provides a thoughtful reflection on how student involvement with Amman Imman synchronizes with the basic tenets of a Montessori education:

The Amman Imman Project is the perfect Montessori project, as it incorporates all four pillars of our curriculum—Passion for Excellence (academic rigor), Global Understanding, Universal Values and a Culture of Service. Amman Imman has inspired our children to pursue research and create Powerpoint presentations. It has provided our children with a “real-life” global perspective of their world. Amman Imman has generated kindness (one of the Universal Values), and it has helped students’ self-confidence grow as it demonstrates how they truly can make a difference through community service even if they are “only a child”. Our children are better global citizens because of this project, as it has been a great way to teach our children about Earth's resources, how we need to be aware of our environment and take care of it, and how we can help others in need.

Read the rest of this article on the school's website at this link: http://www.harbormontessori.org/index.php?script_id=328

Please visit www.wellsoflove.info for the most current information and resources.

We are excited to announce that an updated Amman Imman slide show, available for purposes of presenting the Amman Imman project, can be downloaded at Scribd.com. (scroll down to the bottom of this post to view the slides). The file, in Powerpoint, is just over 17 mb and downloading times may vary depending on the speed of your internet connection.

Along with the slide show, a script for making the presentation has been provided within the Powerpoint document. The slide show with the script contains a detailed narrative about the project with the most up-to-date information and pictures that will aid you in understanding the water scarcity problem in the Azawak, the dire circumstances facing the people and Amman Imman's project to construct closed well boreholes. The story told in the script has many details and is designed to provide in-depth information that will help the presenter understand the context of the project.

It will be important to tailor the script for your audience. For example, the script can be edited and shortened for student presentations. Also, you may want to add a slide about your own community's participation.

To download this document as a Powerpoint presentation complete with the presentation script, please go this link: Presentation-for-Amman-Imman-11-2007 at Scribd.com. Once you are there, select the Powerpoint icon, the first choice next to "Download" in the text box on the left. You will then be able to save the document to your harddrive.

If you have any questions or problems with the download, please feel free to email me at debbie@ammanimman.org.

We appreciate feedback, so please send us your comments, questions and suggestions!



Important note: if you want the presentation script, please download this presentation as a powerpoint document by going to scribd.com, rather than as a PDF file from here. If you download it as a PDF, you will NOT get the script.

(Video excerpts are from October 26, 2007, Amman Imman presentation with Ariane Kirtley in Chevy Chase, Maryland.)

The story of the people of the Azawak is more than statistics of people dying; rather it is the story of real people who are dying of thirst. Individual human beings. Through Ariane, their faces, traditions and struggles have become familiar to us.

"Your empathy for the people of the Azawak has been contagious." Andrew Kutt, director of Oneness-Family School, expresses his appreciation to Ariane Kirtley at an event that brought together several schools from the Washington DC area in support of Amman Imman. "Through your empathy, we have opened our hearts. Not only to the people of the Azawak, but to each other," he tells her.

Their story has become our story.

It is in this spirit that we gather together to celebrate the success of Amman Imman's first borehole and the combined efforts of Montessori schools around the world who are helping. We listen to Ariane Kirtley tell us more stories. We tune in to the desperation of this situation, and to the compassion that has initiated the potential for bringing change. We have witnessed hope. We feel compelled to act.

Kathy Minardi, head of Aidan Montessori School announces the intention to form a coalition of schools that will work together to raise funds to build one or two wells in the Azawak. "This is within the realm of possibility," Kathy says.

(To read more about this event go to this post: A Rain of Compassion.)

The Salmonberry School, located on beautiful Orcas Island in Washington State, has a strong multi-cultural focus and a dedication to help students become socially and environmentally responsible citizens. A quote on the school's website reads:

"We do more than prepare students for the world, that is: we help them bring about the world that ought to be."

The school's focus on cooperative community learning as a gateway to building "confidence, compassion and responsibility" fits in nicely with the collaborative leadership initiatives that have characterized student involvement with Amman Imman over the last year.

Paul Freedman, the school's founder and director, became aware of the potential connection between his school's mission and the Amman Imman project when he heard about the situation the Azawak at a presentation at Goddard College back in January, 2007. Paul has been wanting to involve his students in an Amman Imman initiative ever since.

Paul writes:

I am FINALLY getting around to participating with my primary class in an Amman Imman project beginning in late November! We are in the middle of an integrated thematic unit on water, and the project will be our culmination. Our intermediate class is also looking at water and plans to participate in an Amman Imman project later in the year.

I've been finding all kinds of great curriculum on line. I thought you might like to see a few of my favorite pages:

International water crisis
http://www.water.org/waterpartners.aspx?pgID=920

Peace Corp water work in Africa http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/educators/enrichment/africa/index.html

Water usage facts and fun elementary level game http://www.water.org/FileUploads/ODfetchapail.pdf

Links to Science- based water lessons
http://www.proteacher.com/110056.shtml

In a newsletter to parents of students in his primary class, Paul outlines his plan for using the valuable lessons learned about water scarcity in the Azawak to enhance his student's appreciation of water. The student's will raise their awareness of their own water usage by dropping coins in water bottles strategically placed by water sources around the school.

Additionally, the school plans to use the project to augment their curriculum as the student's learn about African geography and Saharan cultures.

The school seeks to inform their parent community about the project by linking to the Amman Imman website, this blog and the various Youtube videos available for people to learn about the conditions in the Azawak and Amman Imman's work to provide water by constructing permanent water boreholes.

You can read the entirety of Paul's November 26 newsletter article about how his school plans to implement the Amman Imman project at this link: Salmonberry Primary Newsletter, Nov. 26.

Paul plans to keep us informed of his school's progress as they learn about the Azawak region.

People gather around the displays at the Amman Imman presentation.

A drought parched the east coast this fall, leaving the rivers low, the lawns brown and the leaves lackluster through most of the fall season. Then during the third week of October, the rain began to fall. On one of those very rainy nights, approximately 50 people gathered in Chevy Chase, Maryland to hear Ariane Kirtley talk about a region in West Africa called the Azawak where drought brings more than inconvenience and dead lawns.

In the Azawak Valley, unceasing drought consumes the region for at least nine months of the year. Children die due to the intrepid lack of water. People spend all their time and energy searching for water simply to survive. After walking 35 miles in a day, the water they find and bring home is minimal as well as muddy and contaminated.

The drenching rains of that evening, an inconvenience for driving and a nuisance for
those without an umbrella, presented a stark contrast to the challenges that the lack of water brings on a daily basis to the people living in the Azawak. The program's focus for that evening was to raise awareness to the situation in the Azawak, one of the poorest regions in the world, which has been almost completely cut off from any aid.

Until now.

Water holes in a dry marsh
In 2005, Ariane Kirtley went to this region as a researcher and returned with a mission to help these people who suffered not just from the lack of clean water, but from no access to water at all. During interviews in the Azawak, she consistently heard, "We need access to water in order to save our children from dying. Please help us." In, 2006, under the auspices of the American non-profit The Friendship Caravan, she formed Amman Imman, which seeks to bring water to this region as the first and foremost requested need of the people living there.


In July, 2007, Amman Imman's first well borehole began to dispense pure and unlimited water to 25,000 people and their animals in the Azawak.

The evening's event celebrated the initiative of worldwide Montessori schools who one year ago had formed Montessori Wells of Love to support the work of Ariane Kirtley's program. Children and adults from several Washington D.C. area schools including Aidan Montessori, Henson Valley Montessori, Barrie School, Howard Gardner School, and Oneness-Family School attended. Displays (see pictures below) illustrating examples of student leadership, collaboration between schools, and fundraising activities that have occurred since this partnership with Amman Imman began lined the room, as well as Ariane's beautiful photographs from the Azawak.

Luis Torrealva on bass, Andrew Kutt on guitar

As people arrived they were treated to the instrumental guitar music of Andrew Kutt, director of Oneness-Family School, who had introduced Ariane to the Montessori community at the Montessori Peace Academy conference last November in Clearwater Beach, Florida. Oneness-Family school parent and singer-songwriter Laura Baron sang about building a dream, a theme deeply suggestive of the spirit of Amman Imman's work in the Azawak.

Ariane listens to students making presentations
Contributions from students who had been helping Amman Imman over the last year brought to life the message of Amman Imman and the partnership that has been nurtured with schools over the last year. Two students shared an original poem about water. Another student shared a poem about hope. A highlight of the evening was a surprise presentation of a check for $1300 by two students who hosted a bake sale table at the International Monetary Fund.

Aidan Montessori head of school Kathy Minardi and Oneness-Family School director Andrew Kutt each shared moving accolades about their personal connection with the mission of Amman Imman and their school's commitment to help.






To introduce the presentation, Ariane explained that she was going to tell three stories.

• The first story would be about the 500,000 people of the Azawak who are dying of thirst.

• The second would be the story of Program Amman Imman founded to bring water to the people of the Azawak with the hope of saving many lives.

• The third story would be the story of the many individuals, schools, institutions, and organizations who have joined Amman Imman in saving the lives of the children in the Azawak.

Ariane spoke about the Heroes of Compassion, the students around the world for whom the story of Amman Imman has become their story.

After the presentation, people circulated around the displays, talking, sharing and writing down their ideas on the white boards beside each table.

Outside, the rain had eased a bit. People got back in their cars and returned to their homes, where besides the inconvenience of rain, life is fairly easy with water never further away than the turn of a faucet. The story of the people of the Azawak searching for water every day gave them a new perspective on their own lives, drenching them in the rain of compassion and the possibility that with their help, water can flow to the people of the Azawak and Program Amman Imman can save lives.

Three presentations boards illustrating examples of student involvement in the areas of Student Leadership, Fundraising and Collaboration.
a special thank you to
Sharon Caldwell, Montessori head of school visiting from South Africa,
who helped put together these presentation boards.

Recently we received a message from Jaime Mossman, administrative assistant at The Harbor Montessori School in Gig Harbor, Washington State. The school heard about the Amman Imman project after reading an article in Montessori Life magazine, Water Brings Hope To Children. Jaime tells us that students at Harbor Montessori are enthusiastically organizing fund raising projects:

We're just kicking off our fund raising. Our Upper Elementary and Middle School students are preparing their presentation materials this week. Next week they'll be presenting the program and their fundraisers to our Primary and Lower Elementary students.

They'll start off with filling water bottles at home with change every time they drink water, wash their hands, flush the toilet, etc. They'll bring the full bottles to school and empty them in our "Well" that will be centrally located. We'll empty the well on Earth Day 2008.

The students will also be selling pizza and drinks at our Family Nights and making crafts to sell throughout the school year. Our students have so many ideas!

We're going to find a way to incorporate a fund raising item at our annual auction in March and we will be playing a presentation on the project. We will also be posting a powerpoint presentation about Amman Imman on our school website that will include some of the information we found on your website and slides of our kids participating.

The kids are really excited about raising money for this project!

Congratulations, Harbor Montessori students, for putting your ideas into action!