The new Truck!

Mauricio and Sergio with the new truck.

After almost a month and a half without a truck in Santa Barbara we finally found a good one and Maria Inestroza and Hector Pavon drove it up from Tegucigalpa. Now that we have the new truck we are back to work in the communities.

Health Promoters

August 3rd Auga Pura para el Mundo held interviews to fill the two Health Promoter positions. The interviews were conducted by Hector Madrid, the president of the Santa Barbara Rotary Club, Maria Inestroza, the national director of APPM, Hector Pavon, the new national administrator for APPM, Nineth Mungia, the site manager for APPM Santa Barbara, and Allison O’Donnell, the Peace Corps volunteer who works with Agua Pura. In total we received 11 applications and held 7 interviews. In the end we were pleased to hire Sergio Arevalo and Mauricio Enamorado.

Mauricio Antonio Enamorado Trochez

I was born and raised in Santa Barbara and I completed my studies here as well. Upon finishing primary education I elected to continue studying Social Promotion in a three year program; the first two years included social practicums and the third included a professional practicum in another community. I began work as a Social Promoter and continued studying during the weekends to earn my title in Social Education.
I am a person that has always liked to learn new things in my life and from my work. My vocation has always been to work in a team, with groups of people of varying ages.
My work experience includes numerous community organizations ranging from the National Population Census, weighing programs carried out by the World Nutrition Program, the Coffee Fund and the National Program for Local Development.
I have also had experience working with children’s programs at various levels. I was involved with children’s enrichment programs at a local cultural center in Santa Barbara and worked as a supervisor for Youth Without Borders, an NGO that does HIV/AIDS prevention education among youth.
Working with Agua Pura allows us to educate the people we work with in hygiene and health and encourage them to incorporate the use of the filter into their lives as a solution to contaminated water. With monitoring and water testing we can observe both attitude changes as well as real improvements in family health.


Sergio Rubén Arévalo Casaña.
Sergio with an agente comunitario.
Sergio installing a filter.

I was born in San Pedro Sula and raised in Santa Barbara. I completed my primary education at Marcos Garcia de Santa Barbara, my secondary education at Instituto Departemental la Independencia and received my title in Social Promotion.
I have had substantial management experience working in the field of Social Promotion including work with Infant and Women Development, Mini Pharmacies (for people without access to health centers), agricultural development, reforestation programs and water projects. Overall I have acquired experience in organizing, socializing, planning and working with a team. Therefore I am ready to share my previous knowledge with the Agua Pura project and share in the responsibilities of the job.

Mauricio and Sergio have jumped right in and are already learning how things work at Agua Pura. Sergio has tons of experience working in the campo and is already familiar with most of the communities we are working with, so his presence eases our entry into each new community. Mauricio’s experience working as a health educator with Youth Without Borders brings creative education ideas to be used during our health and hygiene presentations.

Santa Barbara Rotary Club Meetings

In order to maintain good communication between the Santa Barbara Rotary Club and Agua Pura, Nineth Mungia will be attending one Rotary meeting a month to give the entire club an update on our most recent activities. As usual, we continue to have monthly meetings with the water filter committee to discuss more detailed issues.

San Nicolas

San Nicolas is a neighboring municipality of Santa Barbara where we will be working in four communities including Las Flores, Buenos Aires, Descansadero and Cruz Grande. When we first begin our work in a new community we start by meeting with the local leaders and introducing them to Agua Pura and all that the filter project entails. Thus far we have met with community leaders from Buenos Aires and Descansadero. The next step is to hold a community meeting called a socialization in order to introduce the filter project to the entire community and start to talk about hygiene, health and clean water.
Once we have met with both community leaders and the community and the filter project seems well accepted we start to train Community Agents; community members who will help us install filters and aid with monitoring. Members of Descansadero, Las Flores and IHCAFE (Honduran Institute of Coffee) joined us for a two day training to become Community Agents. This marks our second training and we are already figuring out what works and what doesn’t. For example, we held our first training in the Agua Pura office in Santa Barbara, but decided to hold this second one in the communities, which proved to work better. We were also joined by Parrish Berquist, a Peace Corps Volunteer from San Nicolas, the more local support we can get the better.

Parrish (on the right) and Sergio (in the middle.


We usually start of the training with a dinamica (like an ice breaker) to build confianza.

Next we introduce the project and the important role that Agentes Comunitarios play. Then we move onto basic hygiene, health and water information.
Nineth giving a hygiene charla (charlar=to chat)

The second day we teach them how to install filters and how to do monitoring.

Nineth (in red shirt) doing an installation demonstration.
Measuring the sand level.
Agente Comunitario measuring the choro (flow) of water (don´t worry, the water clears up quickly).

Agentes Comunitarios installing practice filters.

We finished of the training with cake and diplomas.