Monitoring

As always, monitoring is one of the most important steps in our filter project. This month we dedicated our time to monitoring in 10 of the 14 communities under the Carroll Creek Matching Grant.
Tacaulapa, Tencoa
Ceibita Sur, Ceibita Sur
Santa Ana, Ceguaca
Tierra colorada, Arada
Zorca Arriba, Arada
Zorca Abajo, Arada
Buenos Aires, Concepción Sur
El ocotillo, Arada
El Carmen, Atima
Berlin, Atima
Family with filter in Buenos Aires, Concepcion Sur. The woman second from the left is the head of the family and is hillarious. She attended all of the filter workshops and remembered everything about the filter and asked about Chris Green and David Putt from Canada.

Although we have focused on monitoring this month it doesn’t mean that we have forgotten about installing new filters under the Maine Matching Grant. A number of factors make initiation of filter installation in new communities quite difficult; including the coffee harvest, the rain and Christmas. First, as many of you know, Santa Barbara is a large coffee producing department, and many of the communities that we work with are primarily coffee producers. We are currently in the peak of the coffee harvest, which means that virtually everyone is participating in the harvest and if we tried to hold a community meeting we would probably find ourselves in an empty schoolroom. Second, the rain makes some of the roads to communities impassable by the large truck we use to deliver filters, so new deliveries are stalled. Third, Santa Barbara is in feria right now and Christmas is approaching which means that people are more focused on the holidays and traveling to be with family than hearing about new filters. We plan to reinitiate filter installation in new communities under the Maine Matching Grant in February 2008.