Miami Herald- January 6, 2008
David Smiley, dsmiley@MiamiHerald.com

But the day before Joanne Young and daughter Brittany were to return to their Coconut Creek home, they traveled 200 miles from their hotel to the rural town of Acornhoek for a glimpse of "real life" in one of the country's poorest regions.

"We had no idea what we were getting into," said Brittany, a 16-year-old junior at North Broward Preparatory in Coconut Creek.

The Youngs arrived at the Beretta Primary School and were greeted by nearly 1,300 children who studied in cramped, dirty classrooms and received most of their food from a garden at the school and their water from an often-inoperable government pump miles away.

Acornhoek, the Youngs learned, had no public source of constantly running water.

But today, three years after their first visit, the children have water to wash their hands, and the school's lush garden is fed by a well dug just a quarter mile away, thanks to the efforts of the Youngs and a nonprofit organization they founded along with several other North Broward students.

"It's really helping," said Sheri Schmikl, who brought the Youngs to the South African school and did the administrative work to dig the well in the summer of 2006. "They grow these massive cabbages, and the garden looks really good."

The Youngs raised $10,000 to fund the well, and last summer they returned with a few others to film a documentary about Acornhoek and the well's impact.

The creators of the unreleased documentary Water have since formed the nonprofit organization A Spring of Hope and are screening the film to urge others to donate and help improve life for South African communities.

Since its creation, A Spring of Hope has raised more than $50,000, and members plan to dig wells for three more South African schools. Their purpose: provide children with the basic necessities so they can focus on education.

"There's one way out of poverty and that's education," said Jonathan Ossip, a 17-year-old senior and vice president of the club.

Jonathan, along with Brittany, Marianna Del Raso and North Broward Preparatory graduate Christian Hall, 18, created the film, which they hope will raise awareness by putting a personal touch on a problem affecting people thousands of miles away.

"It's not the same when you're standing right there next to someone whose life has been shattered by disease," Brittany said.

The film shows life in Acornhoek, where children walk for miles hoping to fill plastic jugs with water and may live in homes without roofs or floors. It also includes interviews with the school's founders and principal and visits to the 10 poorest families in Acornhoek.

The first visit the teens made was to a girl orphaned just the week before when her grandmother died. They made another visit to a woman suffering from tuberculosis who lives with orphans in a hut with no roof.

Many children, they learned, have HIV or have lost their parents to AIDSrelated complications.

"Some of the stuff I saw made it difficult to keep filming," Jonathan said.

But they kept the cameras rolling, and a screening of the yet-to-be released film last month at their school brought in $1,500 that night and led a private donor to contribute another $25,000 to the cause.

Howard York, a biology teacher at North Broward Preparatory and advisor to the school's A Spring of Hope club, which has about 20 members, said the students are inspiring.

'This isn't 'Let's raise a bunch of money and send presents,' " York said. "This is grass-roots."

And with visions of clinics and libraries, the students may have found a lifelong calling, Brittany said.

"I see myself doing this for the rest of my life."

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