Young Innovators Fair
Want to do our water filtration activity in your classroom and/or have a child who might be interested in doing this for their next science fair project? We’ve added a Make-Your-Own Water Filter Info Kit online. The kit is free, full of fascinating info, and can be downloaded here.
In addition to our clean water projects around the globe, OHorizons also strives to work with communities in the US to raise awareness around the water crisis, particularly by engaging youth on this important issue.
Our message is simple: Access to safe drinking water is a human right. As global citizens, we must work diligently to ensure this right for the nearly 1 billion people who don’t have this basic necessity.
To kick off the New Year, we participated in the Young Innovators Fair. This event, located in the greater Philadelphia area and attended by approximately 20,000 people, brought together over 100 exhibitors to immerse young people in engaging, educational STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) activities.
We set up a Make-Your-Own Water Filter station to give the young innovators a hands-on experience with simple sand filtration. Our station included pre-cut water bottles and bins filled with activated charcoal, large and small gravel, and sand to use as filtration materials. Once the kids created their filter they had the opportunity to test them and analyze how well their filter succeeded in removing various contaminants. We had multiple “unsafe” water sources for them to choose from, including water mixed with coffee grounds, vegetable oil, and food coloring. Over the two day fair, +350 kids built their own water filters at our station! Here are some pictures of the young experimenters in action.
Young Innovators fill their water filters with filtration materials.
Over the weekend, more than 350 kids took the opportunity to make their own water filter!
This is a great hands-on learning activity. Science teachers, Boy & Girl Scouts Leaders, Makers, etc. below this image is a link to our Make-Your-Own Water Filter Lesson Plan.
In case you’d like to run this activity in your classroom or you have a child who might be interested in doing this for their next science fair project, we’ve added a Make-Your-Own Water Filter Info Kit online. The kit is free, full of fascinating info, and can be downloaded here. All of the information is licensed as creative commons, non-commercial, with attribution. We encourage you to use the pictures and information for your class project, presentation, or science fair expo, just please credit ohorizons.org as the original source of the media.
We also educated Young Innovators Fair attendees on the Wood Mold that our organization has engineered for the production of concrete BioSand Filters and explained how BioSand Filters use commonly available and affordable materials, in combination with naturally occurring biological processes, to help improve people’s lives.
Each OHorizons Wood Mold can produce 50 concrete filters. Each filter goes into a family's home and can last for +25 years. Because of this, we say that each Wood Mold can give Clean Water to 250 people for life! The Wood Mold Construction Manual is open-source and free to download here.
We presented in the Conservationist Corner section of the fair so we were in good company. Shout out to our neighbors Sharkservation and The Partnership for the Delaware Estuary. We had a fantastic experience, loved the family atmosphere, and look forward to coming back to Young Innovators Fair for years to come!
Thank you for reading and for your support, we truly appreciate it. If your school, organization, or group would like OHorizons to participate in an upcoming event, please email us at info@ohorizons.org.