Speaking in front of 1,000 people could make anyone nervous, but four young Bermudians managed to engage an audience containing that number of their peers recently — and to ensure that no one fell asleep.

The students made a presentation earlier this month to the United Nations International Schools conference at the UN headquarters in New York City.

They presented the gathering of students from around the world with a prototype design for collecting rainwater, based on the traditional Bermuda method of collecting water from roofs. It is hoped that this model can be implemented in a variety of developing nations.

While, the experience may have been nerve-wracking, all involved in the UNIS conference said the students did a fine job.

Denae Saunders, an 18-year-old Berkeley Student, said of her experience: "I was really nervous, but I had been practising since the night before so I could speak without looking at my paper too many times. We tried to make it lively, because others would just read off their papers or scientists would put up graphs that no one understood and people in the audience would be sleeping."

Miss Saunders was one of four students from Bermuda to speak in the General Assembly Hall as part of the UNIS conference on Global Warming.

Sasha Slayton, 16, from Saltus Grammar School, Mario Swainson, 19, from CedarBridge and Mackinnon Eldridge, 17, of Bermuda Institute, were the other three speakers and all said they had butterflies in their stomachs.

But the anticipation paid off — no one fell asleep. Miss Slayton added: "We made our presentation professional and we tried to memorise it before presenting so we weren't just reading off the paper like other presentations.

"It was also interesting because usually adults are the ones who make a huge impact there and here we were presenting in the same place."

Sixteen students from local schools attended the two-day conference where the four students and a local architect pitched their idea of a water harvest and water cleansing programmes.

Christopher Douglas, 17, from Berkeley School who attended, but did not present, said: "My favourite part was Laurie David, who did the film 'An Unconventional Truth', because she was interesting and she gave us things to do as teenagers. "It really makes you think, if I turn off my computer it will save the environment."

Mr. Swainson also felt the conference had a lasting impression on him saying: "It gave me a new outlook on what I do and how it affects the environment; like unplugging my phone charger if its not being used, because it will still use electricity."

Clearly all of the students felt the conference was about more than just them and their presentation.

Mr. Eldridge said: "The whole of UNIS was there and there were so many viewpoints. Here everyone seems to be on the same page and when you meet students from Japan and Germany it's amazing how many different viewpoints there are. "We were able to learn how teenagers use their free time in different countries and how they hang out — pubs for some and horse-racing for others."

Mr. Eldridge now plans to gain a degree in International Rescue and Disaster Relief and Mr. Swainson is also contemplating a career with an international slant at the United Nations.

As the Premier said last week, however, the 16 students who went to the conference still have a lot of work to do.

It will continue today and tomorrow, when ten students from all of the secondary schools on the Island will join them to form business plans to place the water catchments in two villages in Ghana, one in Kenya, one in Haiti, one in Jamaica and one in Mexico.

The students will also be expected to construct a marketing plan and commercials, which will all be judged by a panel on tomorrow and will ultimately help these countries with either their lack of water or water cleansing. And hopefully the project these students have been so diligently working on for a year will actually make a difference to the world and give those struggling for drinking water a real chance.