Monitoring

Although monitoring is one of the most important aspects of the filter project it has been our tendency to overlook monitoring in favor of installing more filters. However, this month we were able to do monitoring in five different communities under the Carroll Creek Matching Grant including La Espanola, San Isidro, Tacaulapa, Ceibita Sur and Buena Vista. We had the help of four students from La Independencia, a local technical institute, helping us as part of their practicum so things went a lot faster.

We found mixed results among the communities. San Isidro, for example, is a neighborhood about five minutes away from downtown Santa Barbara, however it is right near the garbage dump and the people are very poor and live without electricity. Out of 15 houses that have filters only 7 are functioning. Among the 8 that are not working, 2 no longer want the filters and 6 want us to reinstall the filters. Similarly, only about 60% of the filters are functioning in Ceibita Sur, so we need to reinstall the rest. Tacaulapa, on the other hand, is doing quite well with the majority of the filters functioning as they should. Although it is disappointing to find filters in disuse it shows us how important monitoring is to make sure there are no problems and to correct them as quickly as possible. Or in the unfortunate circumstance that a family no longer wants their filter it is better to remove it so another family can benefit from its use.

Buena Vista, Atima

Buena Vista is a community that we discovered through a Rotary medical brigade from Minnesota. When they were here last February they went to Buena Vista to do medical work and saw a great need there, considering the community has no electricity or running water. They suggested that Agua Pura install filters there so we did. Unfortunately the community is more than 3 hours away from Santa Barbara so we hadn’t yet been back to do monitoring. A team from the Minnesota Rotary Club was on its way down to Santa Barbara in late October to investigate a water project in Buena Vista with the help of Katie, a Water & Sanitation Peace Corps volunteer. So we took advantage of the fact that Katie needed to go there to do surveying and went to do monitoring. One of the problems we encountered is that many of the filter owners are not able to put water in the filter everyday (which is necessary to maintain the filter in good use) since they do not have running water and thus have to walk up to 1 km to get water. The Minnesota Rotary group is hoping to fund a water system there through a Matching Grant, which should fix this problem. There were also some filters where the water was passing through the filter too quickly due to the fact that the people were performing filter maintenance (mixing up the sand) too frequently. So we reminded them that they only need to do filter maintenance when the filter is full of water and only drips of water come out. We plan to return to Buena Vista within a few weeks to hold another capacitation to remind the community of proper filter use as well as work with Katie, the engineer, to gather data for the water system.

The view from Buena Vista

Buenos Aires, San Nicolas

Buenos Aires is a new community for us to work in. As usual we started by meeting with the community leaders who seemed supportive. Next we planned to hold a socialization with the entire community to introduce Agua Pura and the filter project. As you can from the picture below taken during the socialization we didn’t have our regular turn out.

Socializacion Buenos Aires

Only about 13 or 14 people showed up, many from the same family, out of a community of 70 houses. A number of factors could have influenced the low attendance, including the weather and bad filter publicity. First, it was raining, which always puts a damper on any meeting. Second, a filter owner from Descansadero, San Nicolas had gone to Buenos Aires and told people that the filters didn’t work. What had happened is that he had installed his filter as well as his fathers’ filter himself without Agua Pura staff or Community Agents and inevitably installed it improperly. As a result the filters didn’t work for him or his father and he blamed Agua Pura. This is the first time we have ever had anybody try to install their own filter and then criticize the filter project. Hopefully it is an isolated incident and nothing like this will happen again. We will make sure to re-emphasize the importance of having trained personnel only install filters and if a filter is installed improperly it should be corrected immediately.
As always, community support is necessary for a filter project to function properly in a community. Thus we put the few that attended the socialization in charge of talking to their community to see if they were in fact interested in having filters and create a list of those interested. When we went back they had already created a list of those interested, so we are going to plan another socialization and we expect a much better turn out this time.

Las Flores, San Nicolas

Although we finished delivering and installing filters in Las Flores in record time there were still a few loose ends to tie up. We returned to change a few filters with leaks and deliver the remaining water bottles.

This is the only way we can deliver filters in a reasonable amount of time without breaking our backs…community teamwork!

Family Profiles

With each community we work in we try to take pictures of the whole process to have a record of what we did. While the Rotary Club members from Maine were here they suggested that we begin doing “family profiles” of a few families from each community where we install filters. In each community there are always a few individuals or families that catch our attention. Whether it be their community leadership role, their participation as a Community Agent, unsolicited kindness or just a little wackiness, there are always those who we remember most from the communities we work with.


This is Miguel Angel Rodríguez (nickname: beard) with his wife Brenda and their son Miguel. Miguel was born in San Nicolas, Santa Barbara. He received his teaching degree in San Pedro Sula where he became the director of the I.N.T.A.E. Institute. He then returned to San Nicolas, where he met Brenda, and they moved to Descansadero. He currently owns a coffee farm and is the President of the Water Board in Descansadero. His family has served as an amazing support to Agua Pura throughout our work there. Miguel has given us unconditional support in the filter project, Brenda has made a wonderful host (she probably cooked about 30 ears of corn for the Maine Rotary group) and their son is very entertaining (he found a fast friend in George).