Four sixth-grade students at Oak Harbor Middle School know that clean water is a luxury in some parts of the world.

The students are working together to help bring clean water to other countries.

“It originally started as a science project,” said Olivia Kuykendall. “We were supposed to find a problem in the world or our neighborhood.

“All of us came up with a problem, but we all decided to do dirty water in Africa.”

To accomplish their goal, the four girls — Kuykendall, Elsa Hritz, Courtney VanGiesen and Ashleigh Merrill — created a website where people can learn about the problem and donate to The Water Project, a nonprofit organization.

The Water Project, through donations, helps to dig wells, build sub-surface dams, catch rain, protect freshwater springs, filter surface water and maintain proper sanitation and hygiene, according to the organization’s website.

“We thought that it was one (problem) that we could really make a difference,” VanGiesen said.

The idea for this project came from the school’s leadership group, said Merrill, where they’re working on a similar problem.

Aside from creating the website, the team is also experimenting with water filters in class to see how well they clean water.

“It won’t clean it so it’s clear like what we have,” Kuykendall said, “but it will clean it to where it’s better than what they have.”

Hritz said that she knows people who have come from areas without clean water, but instead had dirty water that could cause diseases. For her, that makes the problem more personal, and she wants to inform people of the problem and help to solve it.

For information or to donate to the cause, visit the students’ website at www.welovecleanwater.weebly.com or www.thewaterproject.org