At the grade 7 assembly, a group of students presented their current class novel, A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park, which follows the story of two main characters, Salva and Nya. Salva, the main character, is a refugee struggling to survive the Second Sudanese civial war. Nya, another character from A Long Walk to Water, is a girl from South Sudan who walks over eight hours daily to get water for her family from a pond. In the past weeks throughout the study of the novel, the grade 7 class decorated water jugs and presented them today to grades 3-7. The water jugs have been a symbol of strength and privilege, as the grade 7 students have come to understand how lucky they are to have clean water readily available to them. The grade 7 students presented their upcoming project, a fundraising project for Salva Dut’s Water for South Sudan company. Metropolitan School is now part of the Iron Giraffe Challenge, and our fundraising goal is to collect $3000 by the end of the year to fix a broken well in a village in South Sudan. This will help children in South Sudan not only have access to clean water, but the time to go to school. Grade 7 did a fantastic job at presenting their project to the rest of the school today, and made Metropolitan School aware of the difficulties people face in South Sudan.