4500.

that is how many children will die today,
because they don't have access to clean water.

that is a hard number to comprehend,
as all numbers are, really.

if you live here,
in muscatine, iowa...
you know that we have (i think) 9 elementary schools
and 2 middle schools.

if you take every student from all 11 of those schools,
you come up with close to 4000.

what would happen to our community,
if every single child
in elementary and middle school died?

today.

and tomorrow the same thing will happen in another community.

and the next day.

and the next.

every child, here in muscatine, enrolled in school,
between the ages of five and fourteen.

dead.

today.

this is eating away at me... and we can change it.