VVWD Awards Winners In Art/Essay Contests

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

Nearly 20 young award recipients, along with their family members, filled the Virgin Valley Water District board room on Thursday, Oct. 20. This crowd of local school children were there to be presented with awards in the district’s ‘Imagine a Day Without Water’ essay and art contests.

This is the first year that VVWD has participated in the ‘Imagine A Day WIthout Water’ initiative. It is national day of action put on by the Value of Water campaign meant to make water issues more accessible and bring awareness to the importance of water resources.

In the lead-up to the Oct. 20 event, VVWD Conservation Coordinator Natalie Anderson visited all of the Virgin Valley schools giving presentations to children focused on water conservation.
“I gave information about why the district was participating in ‘Imagine a Day Without Water’ program and gave conservation ideas,” Anderson said in an interview last week. “We tried to get the kids to imagine what a day without water in our community would actually look like.”

In the presentation, Anderson also encouraged the school children to enter their writing or artwork into the VVWD contests. There were different contests for the various age groups. The youngest kids in Kindergarten through grade 2, could enter a coloring contest. Grades 3-5 were invited to draw a picture which could be entered. Middle school and high school students could enter either original artwork or an essay about the importance of water.

The contests drew more than 350 entries from all the local schools. Anderson said that she was overjoyed with that number.

She related that she had recently attended a national water smart convention where representatives from the populous areas of northern Georgia had told about their practice of holding annual art and essay contests for local school children. She decided to try the same thing here.
“They were asked how many entrants that they would get usually each year,” Anderson said. “They said on a good year it was around 100-150. The kids in our little town crushed that! It was awesome!”

The entries were judged by VVWD Board members as well as Mesquite City Council members. Winners in each age group and content category were determined. Then the awards were presented.

“It was a very successful initiative,” Anderson said. “The kids got some ideas about conservation and I hope that they will remember those things so that it makes a difference.”