Water Works

In a small village in Thailand lives a girl named Wanjai. She and her family make their home on the Khao Laem Reservoir. Wanjai and her friends play in the water. Her family bathes, cooks, and cleans with it. They use the water to drink and to brush their teeth.

"They're river people. That's their life," Ken Surritte told TFK. He is the founder of the nonprofit group Water Is Life. Trouble is, the water is polluted. Drinking from it or bathing in it can make people sick.

Surritte wanted to help. Since Water Is Life started, in 2009, the group has donated more than 75,000 water-filter straws to people in 40 countries. The straws make polluted water safe to drink.

But would Wanjai and her friends understand why it is so important to use the straws? After all, pollution is not always easy to see. Surritte knew this firsthand. While hiking, he had many times used filters to sip from streams. "The water [looks] absolutely pristine," he said, recalling places he drank from. "And yet, there's danger in it."

A New Reality

Surritte and his team wanted to make learning about water-filter straws fun for kids. They decided to make a virtual-reality (VR) game. They called it Hidden Dangers. The game is set in Wanjai's village, in Thailand. Animated monsters rise out of the water. The monsters stand for pollutants: bacteria, chemicals, metal, and trash. Players defeat the monsters by blasting clean water at them with a virtual water-filtration straw.

Nate Robinson worked with Water Is Life to create Hidden Dangers. Last fall, he visited Thailand. He tested the game at Wanjai's school. "The kids were all lining up," Robinson said. "They wanted to play."

Road Show

This month, Water Is Life will bring the Hidden Dangers VR experience to Flint, Michigan. In 2014, the city's water was found to have high levels of lead. It is a metal. It can make water unsafe to drink or bathe in.

"I knew of this huge problem in our backyard," says Michigan resident Andrew Kaufman. He raised money to give away water-filter straws in Flint.

Surritte will join Kaufman in Flint to share Hidden Dangers and pass out straws. "Our goal is to get straw filters into the hands of as many kids as we can," Surritte says.