As one enters the St Joseph summer club in Tarxien, some 10 girls are splashing around in a small pool in the school yard.

“This is to show them that water is fun,” Jacqueline Vanhear, the school’s coordinator says.

In an air-conditioned hall inside, Mary Rose Debono is giving a presentation to the primary school children on how vital water is and how to conserve it.

“One billion people around the world lack access to safe drinking water,” one of the slides reads.

Once the presentation is over, the students huddle in groups of two and discuss issues on a micro-level, such as “how can one save on water at home”, as well as wider-ranging ones such as “what would happen if Malta ran out of water”?

This was the penultimate leg of the summer programme called Catch the Drop, an initiative of the Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs to try to create awareness of water issues among the children.

The programme was run in 18 schools between February and March, while the summer version of it has done the rounds of another 20 summer schools.

“The programme aims to raise awareness of the value and importance of water conservation in schools, as well as increase consciousness of the challenges of water scarcity and drought in Malta and other countries,” Ms Debono, an adviser to the Ministry, said.

“The campaign has to keep going, even in summer, to keep them aware of the problems.”

The programme is accompanied by a “moving drop” made out of recycled plastic bottles, into which students post messages.

Upstairs, some other children are making craftwork related to water. Clisielli, seven, is keen to show how she saves water: “When I wash my hands, I rub some soap onto my hands, add some water, close the tap, rub my hands and then rinse”.

When Ms Debono asks Zoe, six, what she would do if she went home and found no water, the young girl is confident the problem would be easily overcome:

“Daddy would fix it. He always fixes things,” she says.

Students at the school are constantly reminded to save water and electricity, with signs accompanying virtually every tap and switch to drive the message home.

It seems that some of it has rubbed off: “Just a few minutes ago, the four- and five-year-olds came complaining that the cleaner was wasting water,” Ms Vanhear says.

“Malta will reap the fruits of this in the future. This awareness will be part of them.”