"There is hard work in life and then there is torture." It's a riveting statement from Yale Secondary's Tanya Drouillard that comes from a first-hand account of walking with young girls in Ethiopia as they make their daily trek to a spring in the ground for the water for their families.

"There are frail little girls as well as women eight months pregnant walking on treacherous paths with 50 pounds of water strapped on their backs by coarse ropes wrapped around jerry cans. No girl anywhere should have to do this."

Drouillard was part of a group of students who travelled to Ethiopia for spring break with Run for Water representatives to learn about the water crisis in the Bonke region.

Along with her was social studies teacher and former Run for Water board member, Stan Wiebe, his wife Renita, and Run for Water's Jana Ratzlaff, four other students, Kristen Day, Madi Gibbs, Tori Wong and Curtis Uhryn, made the trip.

"Wherever we went, whether the village had clean water or not, people would say we give them hope and encouragement," Wong said.

"But we were there to learn. They were the ones who became life within us. I will always remember these people. We will tell our stories to anyone who will listen."

In the heat of low 30s Celsius and high humidity, the group travelled with the guidance of Hope International's local staff to villages in different stages of the clean water process.

One village had received a clean water system through the fundraising of Run for Water events in Abbotsford.

The students learned how the next step after attaining water for villages was a small loan initiative sponsored by Hope International. Families with ideas for family businesses were given an opportunity to grow their business.

"The small loans allowed the people to save money for their kids to go to [post-secondary] school," Drouillard said. "They had a lot of hope for their futures, and they had dreams for the future."

The group also visited a village where the people were working with Hope International and digging trenches for a life-changing water system. "We carried some rocks and helped with a retaining wall," Wong said.

"The people were in good spirits, working really hard - young and old, men and women."

One of the last villages visited was scheduled to already have a clean water system, but government paperwork has held up the process.

Years ago, a river ran beside the village, but now the dried up riverbed provides a rocky and steep path for the young girls to travel daily for water for their families. "The journey to get water was a lot harder than I thought it would be," Wong said.

"On one side of the path was a rocky face and the other side was a huge drop off. We travelled to a spring found at the bottom of a hole."

The Yale students watched village girls jump into the hole onto a slippery rock and fill small jars to pass up to their friends. The students had their chance to go into the hole. Drouillard summed up the experience by saying, "This water they were travelling for, filling up their containers to take back to drink, our moms here in Canada would slap it out of our hands, it was so dirty.

"Little girls in Canada would be making mud pies out of it. And this was all they had to drink. This was it. I know it was full of parasites and bacteria. They did all this hard work, and it was all for something that could end up killing them."

The students wanted the full experience, so after the water jugs were filled, they strapped on the jerry cans and tried to take them back to the village.

After walking a mile in the different villagers' shoes, a surprising, non-tangible reflection was formed by the group. The students realized some people they met were so focused on survival that suffering clouded any space to dream of better days.

Drouillard said: "I have hundreds and thousands of hopes and dreams. It is a part of life in Canada. I didn't know it was a privilege and a gift to have hopes and dreams."