HAMDEN — Anyone can make a difference, and two high school students are proving how it’s possible by using social media to raise money for the global outreach initiative Fresh Water Focus.
In less than two weeks, Hamden High School seniors Justin Feldshon and Lily Sendroff raised more than $2,200 with their social media challenge, #PopTheDrop, to support the youth-led organization Fresh Water Focus, which helps provide clean water to villages in India that lack access to safe drinking water.
“That’s the power of social media,” Feldshon said.
Rockib Uddin, a Hamden High School graduate, and Joe Coss, a senior at Nortre Dame High School, founded the organization at the start of the 2015 school year. They were members of Interact and over two years they were able to raise $3,000, which is enough money to “adopt a village” and give water filters to one village community.
When Uddin graduated, Sendroff and Feldshon, who had helped Uddin and Coss raise money for the project, wanted to take over marketing Fresh Water Focus and see how big they could make it.
“To see what they’ve done in only the past month is insane.
There is a schmutzdecke, also called a biolayer, of microorganisms that remove bacteria. Through that process the filter takes out odor, taste, color, viruses, bacteria and iron that would be in the water that the people are consuming.