Honors student leads fundraising effort for clean drinking water in DPS

Mark your calendars for an egg-cellent opportunity to support a student sponsored fundraiser on Saturday, April 20.

The Wayne State Rising Black Medical Leaders encourages the Wayne State community to join them Easter weekend to take part in a scavenger hunt around campus in efforts to raise funds to provide clean, filtered drinking water stations for Detroit Public School students during the DPS water shutdown.

Hydration water fountain with explanation describing location of water spout, bottle filler and filtration area.
Hydration station

"It's something that the peer mentors originally started out with," said Senior Biological Science Honors student Jasmine Coles. "Our program coordinator told us to find some sort of service event that you are passionate about and get started with it, and one of us brought up the idea of a water fundraiser."

The group discussed many different areas struggling with water insecurities, but ultimately settled on DPS since it was in the campus's backyard. Coles noted that a lot of the students went and graduated from DPS schools.

"We decided that would be the best use of our time and efforts," she added.

The scavenger hunt will start out on Gullen Mall at 10 a.m. and participants will get to choose from two different paths to take around campus. Teams will collect different colored eggs at each stop along their chosen path, with a clue inside each egg leading them to their next destination.

Registration for the event can be found at https://runsignup.com/race/mi/detroit/wateryouwalkingfor, with a registration fee of $15. Included in the registration fee will be a light breakfast and a colored basket for collecting eggs.

Gift certificates will be available for the winning team and for anyone who competes.

There will be options to register in a team of four or as an individual, who will then get placed into a group.

"It's important to look outside of just your initial community. Honors is a big group of students that have passions, ideas, goals, but it's really more beneficial for us as students when were able to look outside that and see other people's struggles, pains and hurts," Coles said. "I think that is really important when we are looking at the Detroit Public School System because if we aren't the ones to help them, Wayne State, who is literally right in their backyard, then who would do it?"

If you cannot attend the event, but would like to donate to the fundraiser, Coles set up an option on the event registration page.

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