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Search Menu Home Today's Events Photo Galleries Video Weather Archive Autos Classifieds Jobs Limelight Deals Real Estate About Sign Up for Alerts Full Site Reset Password Login More Images Show Caption Hide Caption Orin Johnson, left, and Jude Williams construct Water Pasteurization Indicators (WAPIs) to help make drinking water safe without having to boil the water. The WAPI will be shipped to Nepal to aid in recovery efforts from the recent devastating earthquake there. Daily Tidings / Jamie Lusch --> Close Orin Johnson, left, and Jude Williams construct Water Pasteurization Indicators (WAPIs) to help make drinking water safe without having to boil the water. The WAPI will be shipped to Nepal to aid in recovery efforts from the recent devastating earthquake there. Daily Tidings / Jamie Lusch ASHLAND Ashland Middle School student spearheads Nepal relief effort By By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings May 12, 2015 - 2:00 AM When eighth-grader Lauren Hollingsworth heard about the massive earthquake that struck Nepal three weeks ago, she turned on the news and was floored by what she saw. “There was this one woman standing by her destroyed house, in despair,” Hollingsworth said. “And there was this one kid drinking water and the water was murky brown. And I can just imagine how terrible that must feel.” Hollingsworth, 14, says she’s always been interested in helping people in need but also was realistic about it, and accepted that there wasn’t much she could do about the flattened buildings. But she could do something about the state of the drinking water — raise money to purchase relatively inexpensive water pasteurization indicators, or WAPIs. About the size of a lipstick tube, a WAPI is a polycarbonate cylinder that contains a small glob of wax, which melts and sinks to the bottom of the tube when water or milk is heated enough to be pasteurized (149 degrees Fahrenheit). The low-tech, reusable thermometer eliminates the need to boil water to ensure that it’s safe to drink, which saves energy costs. For about $120, Hollingsworth learned, she could purchase in bulk 85 WAPI kits which could then be constructed and shipped out to Nepal. To raise the money, she organized a "penny war" in her hall at the middle school. Every penny was worth a point and other coins were worth more. The competition element caught on faster than Hollingsworth anticipated, and a large donation in the late going helped, too. “I was astonished because on the final day this one girl came in and she brought $100 in pennies and I was like, ‘OK then, I have clearly gone over the goal,’” she said. “We had these big tubs of money and a check in there, and I couldn’t believe how many WAPIs we could buy.” Hollingsworth said the final tally came to $556 dollars, which AMS science teacher Daniel Otte then used to buy 200 WAPI kits from a Rotary Club in Monterey Bay, Calif. The kits were shipped to AMS last week, and social studies teacher Bob Julian Jr. arranged, through a family member with connections in Nepal, for the WAPIs — once they're completed, that is — to be shipped there and distributed to those in need. All that was left, then, was for the WAPIs to be constructed, and for that the middle school turned to the students for help. Several social studies and science classes were hard at work last week building the WAPIs. Set up like an assembly line, with groups of teenagers assigned different steps in the eight-step process, they slowly pieced together the parts during class before testing each completed WAPI in a pot of water. Before construction began, Julian watched a YouTube tutorial that showed how to put the WAPIs together then used what he had learned to train several students. “It’s not really complicated,” he said. Julian was hard at work drilling holes into the ends of the WAPIs during a 45-minute class Wednesday morning which yielded a couple dozen finished products. His students were handling the other steps, including cutting wires that would be used to hang the WAPIs, and inserting the wax. Will Beaudoin, a seventh-grader, was responsible for one of the more monotonous steps, using a mini blow-drier to melt the ends of each WAPI in order to create an airtight seal. “It’s pretty easy, and it doesn’t take that long,” Beaudoin said. “You have to kind of know how to do it, but once you get it it’s really easy to do.” Like Hollingsworth, Beaudoin has seen footage of the devastation — the 7.8-magnitude earthquake has led to more than 7,700 deaths as of Thursday, according to reports, a number that continues to rise — and is happy to lend a helping hand. “I think it’s pretty cool because we’re directly helping people in Nepal who are in need of these,” Beaudoin said. “I’ve seen stuff on CNN student news — it’s pretty awful. But I think it’s cool that we can make these.” “Anyone can do it,” added seventh-grader Allison Dinapoli, “because it’s easy and doesn’t cost that much.” Hollingsworth, along with the rest of Beau Lehnerz’s social studies class, also help construct WAPIs and said that her class was able to build about 50 on Thursday. It took some tinkering to figure out the correct amount of wax to use in each tube, but they figured it out and Hollingsworth is confident that the shipment will go out as planned early this week. Hollingsworth said she and a few of her friends are also considering working for the Thirst Project, which seeks to reduce water-related deaths by building wells and improving sanitation practices. It may not be the hobby of choice for a typical eighth-grader, but Hollingsworth’s fine with that. “I mean, this kind of set everything off,” she said of the WAPI project, “because it showed that even though I’m young I can actually make a difference, and maybe down the road I’ll go on to bigger projects.” Joe Zavala can be reached at 541-821-0829 or [email protected] . Popular Today 'Fill'er up' will mean with beer, not gas School sending help to Nepal Rising from the ashes Police train to avoid LGBTQ bias Good film making is all about the storytelling Reader Reaction © Copyright Local Media Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Local Media Group Publications | Full Site