Little Kids, Big Things: How One Grade Two Class Started a Water Movement

"That's not fair."

That was the response Jillian Jackman heard, year after year, from her grade two students at Fort McMurray Christian Schools. It started with a single classroom visit — a presentation from the Legacy Water Foundation on the global water crisis — and it never really stopped.

"That really sparked a passion in me to help my students understand that not all children around the world have access to clean, drinkable water," Jillian says. "I wanted to give my students a way to turn that feeling into action."

That's where ACTS' Walk4Water comes in, a school-based program that partners with teachers to bring the water crisis into their classrooms, then gives students a hands-on way to respond. Students walk and carry water in their own community, experiencing in a small way what millions of children around the world do every day, while raising funds that go directly toward building clean water systems in Uganda.

For Jillian, it was a natural fit for the curriculum she was already building around compassion and action. She wove the Walk4Water into every part of the classroom, from language arts through posters and announcements, to social studies lessons on needs and resources, science lessons on gravity-fed water systems, and math activities measuring their walking distances and interpreting pie charts on global water access.

Books like The Water Princess and The Water Protectors became class favourites.

What started as a lesson became a movement the kids built themselves. A grade six class joined in with a garage sale. One boy launched his own recycling drive; a girl sold handmade Christmas ornaments; another went door to door shovelling driveways, all to raise money for water.

For one memorable week, the whole school took on the "Walk for Water Challenge" — nothing to drink but water, no exceptions, which Jillian admits made her a little nervous about her own coffee habit.

All of it built toward the main event: the Walk4Water itself. Students arrive in matching T-shirts and gather at "the tap," fill buckets, and walk laps around the school with volunteers alongside them, encouraging each other on. Afterward, instead of pouring the water out, they use it to water the plants and trees around the school. Nothing about the day is staged for effect, but it draws attention anyway.

"People would stop and ask what we were doing," Jillian says. "And suddenly my students had a real opportunity to explain the water crisis and tell people about Acts for Water."

That connection to Acts for Water has grown alongside the walk itself, with students connecting directly with the work in Uganda through video calls and footage of children turning on taps for the first time, seeing the real people and communities their efforts were helping to support."That was incredible for my students," Jillian says, "because suddenly the work they were doing wasn't just something we were talking about in our classroom. It became real."

This past year marked the program’s biggest leap yet, with a visible fundraising goal tracked on Facebook, students reaching out personally to grandparents and friends, and a shift to ACTS’ online giving platform. A simple QR code and live fundraising tally replaced the old system of counting coins by hand. ACTS staff also began personally calling donors to say thank you, which led to one of the year’s best stories.

One student, Lily, had raised a significant amount and had been studying Indigenous water advocate Autumn Peltier in class. When an ACTS’ staff member called to thank her, Lily was convinced it was Autumn Peltier herself, calling to say she'd done a good job. She ran to tell her teacher. Jillian didn't correct her.

"I kind of just let that one go," she laughs.

It's the kind of moment that captures what Jillian is really building — not just fundraising totals, but kids who understand they can do something. "My heart's desire for my students is that they leave my classroom knowing that little kids can do big things," she says. "You don't have to do all that we did. Start with a book. Start with a video. Let the kids ask questions. You can start with something very small and build it into something amazing."

Every year, watching her students learn about the water crisis still catches Jillian off guard. "It's still not fair that kids around the world don't have access to clean water," she says. "But together, we can make a difference."

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Ready to bring Walk4Water to your own classroom, school, or group?

Acts will help you get started — from planning your event to setting up an online fundraising page. Reach out tracey@acts.com to begin.