Karaoke videos deliver clean water tips

WaterTech

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Kean Svay, Cambodia — One nonprofit organization is using karaoke videos to teach Cambodian villagers about the benefits of drinking safe water and to test wells for arsenic levels, according to a January 27 NPR “Morning Edition” report.

Wells and rivers in Cambodia carry risks from such contaminants as bacteria, parasites, pesticides and arsenic.

NPR’s Jon Hamilton, a correspondent on the science desk, interviewed Mickey Sampson, Ph.D., country director of nonprofit organization Resource Development International (RDI). One of the organization’s projects makes ceramic water filters that remove most bacteria and parasites from water; another teaches Cambodians about the benefits of drinking safe water and how to protect themselves from unsafe water.

Sampson told NPR that RDI was facing two challenges: Many Cambodians cannot read and many poor villagers accept waterborne diseases as part of life. After hearing his children’s babysitter singing — in English — a familiar song from the children’s television program “Barney,” he said he found that “education through media, through song was the way that we needed to go. That was the piece of the puzzle that was missing, not technology.”

According to NPR, in Cambodia, new songs usually arrive in the form of karaoke videos.

Sampson and the RDI team created a series of karaoke videos that are accompanied by familiar tunes with educational lyrics. According to the RDI Web site, “While Americans might find an educational song to be ‘cheesy’ or less than desirable, RDI has found that audiences are eager to sing our educational songs because of the very high quality in which they are written, played, and vocalized.”

To access the NPR report, click here.