WATERLOO - Ensuring impoverished African villagers have easy access to clean water may seem like an impossible task for a group of Iowa high school kids.But Columbus High School students are walking Saturday to raise funds and help make that possible for three communities in north central Kenya. The Walk for Water will be held at Hawkeye Community College beginning at 9:30 a.m. The public is invited to donate to the cause or collect pledges and join students in the five-kilometer (or 3.1 mile) walk around the college's interior courtyard.

Columbus' service club organized the event after the school was among 30 chosen for the fund-raising effort benefiting Kenyan and Ugandan water projects by Canadian nonprofit Impossible 2 Possible. Senior Grace Moore, the club's president, said they decided on the event because "the women and children would have to walk to get their water." Campus minister Mary Pedersen added, "The average is at least three miles to get their water."

Columbus students' efforts will help raise $15,333 so the organization Giving Water can install rain water harvesting equipment at three Kenyan primary schools. Another $15,000 is being raised for a region in Uganda so the organization Ryan's Well can drill two wells and provide pump mechanic and sanitation training.

Columbus applied to participate in the effort after technology coordinator Joanna Seymour heard about Impossible 2 Possible. The organization was founded by adventurer Ray Zahab, who became an advocate for water projects in third-world countries after a 111-day trek across the Sahara Desert in 2007.

The fundraising being done by Columbus and the other schools is tied to a 10-day run currently under way by Zahab and Kevin Vallely along the 650-kilometer length of Siberia's frozen Lake Baikal, which holds 20 percent of the world's surface fresh water. In April, the adventurers also will run through the Sahara in Tunisia as part of the campaign.

Other Columbus students have been helping with the fundraising effort, as well. Computer skills and art classes made posters and a DVD promoting the walk. Others are raising money through T-shirt sales by the ecology class, water bottle sales by the National Honor Society, and rubber bracelet sales by student government.

"What's really good is we're behind the students, but we want the students to drive it," said Sister Marie Gemar, a Columbus science teacher.

"We're shooting for 100 percent student participation," either in the walk or other efforts to raise money, Pedersen said. She noted that along with donating money the school is "trying to raise the awareness of the world's need for water and sanitation."

"And just to show the world that we can make a difference," added Moore.