Engineers for a Sustainable World will encourage students to give up a meal Tuesday to donate money for World Water Day.

Encouraged by Global Fast, ESW plans to use the money raised from meals donated to address World Water Day, an international observation on the importance of this natural resource.

“[Global Fast is] an event being put on nationwide where different universities would get students to pledge to fast something for a day,” said Pasha Beresnev, president of ESW and senior in civil engineering.

“We’re choosing students to give up their meals since that’s pretty easy,” Beresnev said. “There’s a lot of leftover meals week to week that students have on their meal plans.”

“A lot of students wouldn’t even see a difference if they donated those extra meals, as opposed to what would go to waste.”

The group plans to have students sign a pledge, indicating that they agree to donate one meal. Students can sign up at the dining centers, Hawthorn Market or the Memorial Union, where ESW members will collect the extra meals.

The group’s goal is to collect a total of $5,000 toward its water project for World Water Day.

The money raised will support two water wells which will then supply about 8,000 people with fresh water in India, Beresnev said.

The group hopes to host a water walk this week, and have students carry water jugs for a certain distance; an awareness toward the struggle to collect fresh water.

“We’re so privileged, particularly here in Iowa, in that we really don’t have to worry about turning on our facets in the morning and having water come out and for that to be clean water that we can drink,” said Merry Rankin, adviser of ESW and ISU director of sustainability.

“Unfortunately, even farther places in the U.S., and certainly places around the world, there’s not an adequate supply on an ongoing basis or a clean supply that everyone can be assured of,” she said.

Raising awareness as Rankin stresses is an important motive for ESW, including possibly the showing of a documentary about World Water Day.

“This group has been engaged in bringing awareness and even looking for ways to bring resources domestically and even internationally in many different ways,” she said.