Melissa Ellis CEO/ Founder of Life Beyond Water Unique Approach To STEM Program Educating Youth About The Value of Water
written by Chilton Stewart
Melissa Ellis is the founder and CEO of Life Beyond Water. She created Life Beyond Water to help people, actually to go beyond just helping people but to actually involve the village and have a massive impact on people's lives.
“Life Beyond Water Global Outreach is a 501c3, its non-profit mission is to provide relief aid support and education to areas that lack clean water, while developing the next generation of water leaders for sustainability. So what does that really mean? That means that where there’s people that suffer from a lack of clean water we want to be able to help. So whether that’s in African digging wells, whether that’s taking bottled water to Jackson Mississippi in a crisis. Whether that’s attending to the Griffin tornados and helping people with food and necessities. All of those types of things and then Education is huge. We have our after school STEM program right now that’s running. We are super excited the kids are engaged.”
Spend two minutes with Melissa and her passion and love for helping people becomes obvious. She believes deeply in both serving and bringing her community together to create the highest impact of good for all those around her.
“No man is an Island. You can’t do it alone. What I found was the more this thing started to grow and get its own legs it was literally I was going to kill it if I didn’t get people involved. If I can do it myself it ain't big enough. I need a community, I need a village that can come alongside and that looks a lot of different ways. I have partners that cut checks, just cut checks, they don’t want to do nothing but cut checks they don’t have time for nothing else. I have people that come along and say “Hey I want to get involved, I want to travel with you, I want to go across the way, I want to show up at the disaster relief site. I have those types of people.” I have people that help me professionally. Everybody needs taxes done, accounting done. We need media and things like that. You have to connect with your village and have it be a part of it.”
Her desire to involve the community inspired her to team up with a local church to create a STEM program for elementary school children. “So the STEM program is for third through fifth graders and it is at the Tabernacle of Praise Christian Academy. Shout out to Pastor McBride and Principal Wright. They have been phenomenal. They have been such a blessing to us.
So we have a STEM program that’s science, technology, engineering and math. Because they are third though with graders. What we saw was, it has been said and noted that prisons are built by fourth grade reading levels So they build prisons and they know what the population is going to be of prisons by the below level reading levels for fourth graders. And I thought if they can do that we can take those same fourth graders and turn them into the innovators of tomorrow, the people that we would look to to create something or invent something that is going to change our lives and they should be black and brown. You know how often we are on the losing end of what’s going on in the world but it’s important that we need to get them out there.” She continues. “The goal is to be citywide, statewide, nationwide. It’s a big program to scale it. So we started where we did to be small and get it tight. But we have volunteers that come in and assist with the projects. Mostly every lesson has a hands-on project.”
As the concepts and ideas grow so do the demands of the program itself. But as of now measured growth is the approach she is taking. “Everything is always from the focus of sustainability. Sustainability asks one question “can I do this forever?” She continues.
“The program itself is open to third through fifth graders. We did offer first rights to the academy where we are housed next we opened up to Henry Co. WE don’t have any kids outside of the academy yet but we did offer Transportation from hickory flats and walnut creek elementary. So if you still want to sign up go to our website www.lifebeyondwater.org You can register to look for the STEM program there. Just reach out. We are running through April.”
Water, clean water, of course is still a major issue and one that she keeps as her main focus. “I do believe African Americans need to be very aware of what they are doing, who they are electing, holding their elected officials accountable because they will get lost in the sauce. It’s about money and it's about votes. So we need to make sure we are electing people that have our interest at heart.”
She details the real issue behind the Flint Michigan water crisis from a few years ago.
“In flint it was about money. They changed the source of the water. It was a money move. It was going to be cheaper. And then they didn’t add certain chemicals. It's a whole long technical story I can get into but the fact was it was to save money.”
As she tries not to be an alarmist but rather a rationalist about the water crisis that could see itself in the continental U.S of A. “We are on the cusp of a crisis in the United States. We are consuming water faster than the natural system can replace it. We are constantly polluting the water that we do have in the system. It can’t be just local and it can’t be just global. South Africa took drastic measures to stop an impending water crisis. She foresees a future where all of the United States will have to do the same. Water is in everything. The chair that we are sitting on. It took water to produce it. Whether that was in the dying process or the manufacturing process or washing the fabrics. The food that you eat. It takes water to grow it. When they slaughter the meat and the animal, not only do they drink water, the plants that they feed the cows then when they slaughter the cows it takes water to process the meat.” Indeed the understanding and response to these vital issues are one that should concern us all. It is a good thing we have a person like Mellisa Ellis to champion these issues for us and educate and lead us to solutions for them.
Melissa Ellis, CEO/Founder of Life Beyond Water Appears On VOTV
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