Agua Pura para el Mundo Santa Barbara: 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.