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Wash in it, paddle on it, drink a toast to it.
Friday is your chance to celebrate water, says an Ontario-based group working to roll out a worldwide hour-long honouring of the wet stuff.
The aim is to preserve and conserve pristine water sources, said Stan Gibson, founder of the not-for-profit Ecologos Institute and one of the movers behind “water hour” on June 11.
“The centrepiece of water hour is celebration,” said Gibson, who hopes participants will use the opportunity to “remember the miracle that water really is.”
Unlike the Earth Hour energy conservation movement every March, water hour has no corporate sponsors or big-name endorsements.
But the event seems to be gaining some steam, with participants committed from Canada, several U.S. states, the Philippines, Jordan and India.
Gibson, based in Mississauga, said the organizing group of volunteers in February had a choice: either do a full, traditional awareness campaign that would take 18 months, or launch a social-media campaign now.
They chose the latter, with waterhour.org and an Internet platform that includes Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube accounts and pages.
They’ve challenged people to upload photos and share ideas of how water inspires them.
Gibson said he will have some friends over to his home and they’ll drink a toast to clean water. (More than one billion people in the world have no access to clean drinking water.)
Others have pledged to: walk on a beach; install a rain barrel for garden irrigation; donate to a well water project in Africa; and drink municipal tap water instead of drinking bottled water.
One group has pledged a ‘tweet-a-thon’ for the Gulf Coast, where a massive oil spill now ranks as the world’s largest.
Gibson, who spent part of his boyhood in London, said water is inspirational — most people have memories of watching the sun set at a beach, feeding ducks in a river or jumping in a puddle.
“For over 30 years, we’ve tried the same formula to try to motivate ecological change. . . a disaster scenario, and a touch of guilt and a list of ‘don’ts,’” Gibson said.
It’s time instead to try a strategy that celebrates instead of preaches, he said.
“Somewhere in all of us, we do love water, if for no other reason than that we’re 70% water ourselves,” Gibson said.
Linda Smith, co-ordinator of the Children’s Water Festval for the London area, said it’s “a great idea” to bring water to the attention of as many people as possible.
The three-day water festival last May drew 2,700 kids, who learned there’s more to water than just knowing it comes out of the tap and goes down the drain.