Agua Pura para el Mundo Santa Barbara

2009-04-24T12:45:00.001-07:00

We have not posted a blog entry for quite some time now, so here are some updates to get you up to speed on the progress of the project.

Truck

2009-04-24T12:44:00.004-07:00

As many of you know Nineth and Ramon were in a serious car accident last August. They were cut off on the highway and slammed into a tree on the side of the road. Thankfully neither of them was hurt beyond bruises and soreness, but the car was severely damaged.

While the car was in the shop for months we had to rent a truck to continue with the project. Finally, in February the repairs of the truck were finished and it is now back in use.

Filter Workshop

2009-04-24T12:44:00.003-07:00

When we started the filter project we originally bought the filters from Marvin (Pico) Chavez. After over a three years of working with Pico we were still unable to resolve some important issues, such as leaking filters and inconsistent flow rates from the sand. We were also faced with a price increase that our budget didn’t account for. So, in April 2008 we ended our working relationship with Pico and began to work with Eric Rodriguez. Eric is an engineer who has a workshop where he makes cement bricks and construction materials. We got the workshop up and running in July of last year and Eric has been committed to improving filter production. He has made substantial capital investments to his workshop to accommodate filter production and has worked closely with the Pure Water team to troubleshoot. For example, he identified a flaw in the mold construction that was causing filter leaks. We were also lucky enough to have Santos, an experienced filter producer from the project in Choluteca, come to Santa Bárbara to help train Eric and his workers.

Carroll Creek

2009-04-24T12:44:00.001-07:00

We are pleased to announce that we finished the Carroll Creek matching grant in September of 2008. We surpassed the original goal of 400 filters and ended up installing 456 filters, benefiting a total of 2,478 individuals. We also did full follow-up work on 140 additional filters in the villages of Santa Ana, Tacaulapa and El Diviso serving another 730 individuals.

Sand

2009-04-24T12:43:00.002-07:00

Due to inconsistent sand sources in Santa Bárbara we decided to buy our sand from Amapala, Choluteca, an island of the southern coast of Honduras. We have purchased 500 bags of this sand. The sand is of superior quality than what we were able to find in Santa Bárbara and produces more consistent flow rates during installation.

Accounting Help

2009-04-24T12:43:00.001-07:00

Nineth has worked diligently on keeping track of the project finances along with the help of Jim Dawson, from Maine and Allison O’Donnell, the Peace Corps volunteer that works with the project, and Douglas Diaz, the project treasurer. However, we were still having some issues keeping everything as organized as it should be. Luckily we were able to enlist the help of Javier Prada, a Peace Corps volunteer in a town a few hours away from Santa Bárbara. He is a Certified Public Accountant and made two trips to Santa Barbara to go through all the financial records with Nineth, develop a reasonable accounting system and teach Nineth how to keep track of everything herself. Thanks Javier!

Maine and Michigan Visit

2009-04-24T12:37:00.000-07:00

Once again we had the pleasure of spending a week with five visitors from Maine. Jim and Marjorie Dawson (our fearless leaders) Robin and Rick (Rotary members from Maine), and Raquel (an undergrad who helped us translate) all came down for a week in March. During their trip we visited the filter workshop and learned how to install filters. Jim and Robin drew on their technical knowledge to give us some important pointers about how to avoid crack in the filters and how to repair already cracked filters. We also took trips to the communities to deliver and install filters as well as give deparasiting medication and monitor filters already in use.

Katie Strass (Peace Coprs Volunteer and translator), Nineth and Robin

We finished off the week by attending the Santa Bárbara Rotary meeting.

Top from left: Robin, Rick, Jim,

Bottom from left: Allison, Nineth, Marjorie, Raquel

We were also lucky enough to welcome 14 more guests to Santa Bárbara. Rotary members and supporters from the greater Detroit area in Michigan as well as friends from Canada also joined us for a few days to learn about the filter project. They visited the filter workshop, received a lesson on how to install filters and then got their hands dirty in the filed installing filters.

Rotarct member, Dustin also joined the group and met with local Rotaract members in Santa Bárbara

Ramon

2009-04-24T12:36:00.004-07:00

During the Maine visit we also made some important decisions about the project. We officially hired Ramon Muñoz as a full time employee to help speed up installation of filters and support the rest of the team. Ramon first started working with Agua Pura as the driver during one of the Maine visits and proved to be a quick learner and a hard worker. We are happy to have him on the team.

Filter Molds

2009-04-24T12:36:00.003-07:00

To further speed up filter production we are lucky enough to be receiving 6 additional filter molds from the Pure Water project in Trujillo, on the north coast of Honduras, due to the finalization of their project. All we have to do is make the 8 hour drive to go get them.

Filters from Danlí

2009-04-24T12:36:00.001-07:00

We have also decided to buy 250 filters from a filter workshop in Danlí, the original Pure Water site in Honduras. This will give us a large stock of filters to help us reach our installation goals.

Adios

2009-04-24T12:35:00.001-07:00

Allison O’Donnell, the Peace Corps volunteer who has worked with the project for the past two years, is nearing the close of her service. She will be leaving Santa Bárbara in just a few days and will return home to Cleveland, Ohio. We will be welcoming a new Peace Corps volunteer from the business project to Santa Bárbara on May 16th; we look forward to meeting him.

Nineth

2008-06-11T15:54:00.001-07:00

Good news…Nineth and Sergio are fully recovered from their motorcycle accident and back to work full time!

Maine Communities

2008-06-11T15:52:00.001-07:00

The Agua Pura team had a challenging experience with filter beneficiaries in San Jeronimo del Pinal. Three families had snails in their filters and various others found tadpoles and mosquito larva. Unfortunately the community does not have an appropriate water source and they do not regularly sediment their water. Therefore, whatever was in their water source, went directly into their filter. However, the community did not see it this way and some of them were convinced that Agua Pura had put the bugs in the filters purposely and that now they were drinking water full of snails, tadpoles and larva. So, Agua Pura went back to the community in April and held a meeting to clarify this misunderstanding. Unfortunately, the families with the complaints did not come to the meeting. Therefore, we held another meeting in May and this time everybody came. In the beginning 60 families did not want their filters, but after 3 long hours of explaining how the filter works the Agua Pura team was able to convince all but 3 families that the filters do work and that we had not put bugs in them on purpose. Later we returned to the community and visited all of the houses to make sure people were still on board.
(Now we have a question during our Community Agents training that says True or False: The Agua Pura team puts bugs in the filter…People seem to get the picture now.)

After finishing the delivery and installing of the communities in San Francisco de Ojuera we held Use & Maintenance community meetings in the five of the six communities there.

We finished delivering and installing filter in Los Valditos, San Nicolas in record time and everything went well due to the cooperation from the community.

Los Vaditos

The Community Agents training in San Nicolasito, Nueva Celilac was a great success. We originally planned to train 3 Agents, but when we got there 5 showed up and they were so enthusiastic that we trained them all. Allison, the Peace Corps volunteer, developed new didactic material and activities to be used during the trainings to review what was learned in a fun and interactive way; the Community Agents loved it!

Paso a Paso

This activity is called Paso a Paso (Step by Step). The steps to install a filter are written on cards and the Community Agents have to work together to put the steps in the correct order.

Guy at door

This guy wasn’t a Community Agent, but he stood at the door and observed all day.

Carroll Creek Communities

2008-06-11T15:51:00.002-07:00

Santa Ana has been one of our most challenging communities, but we finally finished reinstalling 87 filters there over a two week time period. However, we still have to change filters with leaks and have been backed up in the process because the filter workshop had not consistently been producing materials. Before the close of the project we will return to Santa Ana one last time to supervise all of the filters to make sure the new filters are working well.

Hoy SI Circulamos

2008-06-11T15:51:00.001-07:00

The Honduran government attempt to confront traffic problems and high gas prices by prohibiting each vehicle from driving one day a week didn’t last very long so the Agua Pura truck can continue to work seven days a week (as it often does).

Water Analysis

2008-06-11T15:48:00.001-07:00

Our water analysis testing has been a challenge for us, but after consulting various sources (especially Tamara Risser from Maine), doing trial testing, getting new Coliscan and purchasing some simple yet useful equipment we are back on track. While the Maine group was here in February we discovered that the tweezers were causing some cross contamination. Therefore we purchased a mechero so we can flame our tweezers in between each sample. In addition we will clean our equipment with alcohol wipes before beginning analysis to insure that there is no residual contamination from the previous tests. Also, we will perform control samples with purified water before and after each testing seesion to make sure our procedures are working.

Visit from the National Agua Pura Team

2008-06-11T15:30:00.002-07:00

On May 8th, Maria Reginal Inestroza, the regional director of Agua Pura Central America and Oscar Andino, the new administrative assistant, visited the Agua Pura Santa Barbara project.

From left: Oscar, Maria, Hector

It was a great opportunity to review our annual Rotary report for Maine with Maria, introduce Oscar to the project and visit the workshop of Eric Rodriguez. The Santa Barbara Agua Pura team, Maria & Oscar, and members of the Rotary Club filter committee all met with Eric to discuss his interest and ability to work with filter production.

From left: Eric, Mario, Hector

We are still discussing filter prices and possible sources of sand. In the past we have gotten our sand from the river but it has been inconsistent and we have had lots of problems with washing the sand and not having consistent flow rates when we install the filters. The Santa Barbara Rotarians, Nineth & Eric have all gone out to the riverbanks to take samples of possible sand sources, but have not yet found anything promising.
Maria has been investigating the possibility of a central source for sand and has found a provider in southern Honduras. We are still discussing the economic feasibility of this.

Annual Rotary Report

2008-06-11T15:30:00.001-07:00

After about two months of reviewing receipts and bank statement we finally finished the annual Rotary report and audit for the Maine Matching Grant. The report was approved almost instantly and we will receive funding for year two of the project. Thank you to Jim Dawson, from Maine, for all his help on the report; we never could have done it without him!

Monitoring

2008-06-11T15:29:00.002-07:00

A few months ago Allison & Katie, two Peace Corps volunteers living in Santa Barbara designed a monitoring and evaluation form and database to help us keep track of our monitoring and create reliable statistics for the Agua Pura projects. So far we have used the format in 4 communities (3 from Carroll Creek and 1 from Maine).

New and Improved Filter Carrier

2008-06-11T15:29:00.001-07:00

When the Maine group came down in February they brought a filter carrier with them to test out. It worked very well, but we found that the metal wires dug into the cement filter on the edges and thus we had to put cardboard or cloth around the edges to protect the filter. In May Jim sent us a new and improved carrier with rubber tubing covering the metal to protect the filter.

Agua Pura Video

2008-06-11T15:27:00.000-07:00

While Rolf Stengl was here one of his goals was to create a video of the filter project in Santa Barbara. A few weeks ago we received the final product of all his work and it is very impressive. The video does a wonderful job of portraying the realities of living in rural Honduras and the various aspects of the filter project.

San Francisco de Ojuera

2008-04-21T17:13:00.000-07:00

March was a busy month in the municipality of San Francisco de Ojuera. We held socializations, capacitations in six communities and trained 17 Community Agents.

Rolf leading a Community Agents training for the communities of
La Palca
San Ramon
La Estancia
El Galivan
Santa Fe

El Chaparron

In El Chaparron the delivery truck couldn’t make it all the way into the community because of the roads so we unloaded the filters and loaded up the Agua Pura truck as well one of the trucks from the community to transport the filters the rest of the way. Fortunately, there were lots of community members around to help. Delivering filters in El Chaparron

The Community members of Santa Fe have come up with a few creative ways to transport filters given that the filter carrying devise that Jim brought down in February was being used in another community.
We also held a Community Agents training in San Jeronimo El Pinal and delivered and installed 98 filters there! This is our largest community yet.

Top: Community Agents, Bottom from left: Sergio, Mauricio, Rolf

From left: Blanca Rosa (community member), her grandson, Allison (Peace Corps Volunteer)

Solicitude for Filters

2008-04-21T17:09:00.000-07:00

In March we also finished installing filters in El Capulin, Nuevo Celilac. In February when the group from the Maine Rotary Club was here we received a solicitation from El Capulin while installing in El Conal, a nearby community.

Solicitation

El Capulin, Nuevo Celilac, Santa Bárbara Febuary 2nd, 2008

To the International Rotary Club,

We send you an attentive and cordial greeting to all the members of your institution, wishing you much success in your delicate functions on behalf of those interested.

The motive of sending you this solicitation is to see if by your dignified means you can support with the water purifying filters project in order to improve the health of all, especially the children. The signatories below are ready to help with manual labor as well as economically once the project is in place.

We hope for a positive answer from you as a cooperating organization to poor communities.

Signed by 23 members of the group with ID number

Note: We installed 50 filters in this community in March and February 2008.

Ramon

2008-04-21T17:08:00.001-07:00

Ramon was our driver during the Maine trip and liked Agua Pura so much that he just never went away…he is now helping us install filters on a day to day basis to get things moving along quicker.
Sergio on left, Ramon on right

New Delivery Truck

2008-04-21T17:07:00.000-07:00

In the past we have always had Marvin Chavez, the owner of the filter workshop deliver the filters to the communities. However, his prices have gone up steadily and he was no longer able to meet our need for deliveries due to limited space and time. Fortunately we were able to find another company to deliver filters for us at a lower price and they can deliver 25 filters at a time as opposed to 15 with Marvin. The truck they use has walls so we can stand the filters up during transport and thus save time, money and gas. We will continue to look for the best available companies for filter transportation based on price, availability and reliability.

Sergio loading filters onto the new truck.

$29 is the new magic number

2008-04-21T17:06:00.002-07:00

From the start of the filter project we have paid $25 per filter. However, due to past increases in materials such as cement, PVC and sheet metal the production cost of the filters has increased. Therefore we negotiated a new price of $29 per filter with Marvin.

Hoy NO Circula por Honduras

2008-04-21T17:06:00.001-07:00

Starting on April 7th, 2008 each vehicle must choose one day a week between Monday to Saturday when it will not drive in order to save on gas prices and reduce congestion. The Agua Pura truck will not be allowed to be driven on Mondays. We will use this day to focus on planning the week and the health promoters can always use the motorcycle to visit communities.

Moto Accident

2008-04-21T17:01:00.000-07:00

On Friday April 18th Nineth & Sergio had an accident on the motorcycle. Sergio is sore and a little scrapped up, but nevertheless was back to work on Sunday. Nineth on the other hand bruised her right knee badly and has a hairline fracture on her right foot. Currently she has a boot on her foot and a brace on her knee. They would like to put a cast on the foot but are going to wait until the scrapes heal so her foot doesn’t get infected inside the cast. We hope they both heal quickly.
Even with a broken foot Nineth still has a positive attitude (or maybe it is just the pain killers taking their course)

Annual Report & Audit

2008-04-21T17:00:00.000-07:00

Nineht & Allison in Santa Barbara and Jim in Maine have been busy working on the annual report and audit for The Rotary Foundation. For all Matching Grants above $25,001 an audit is required with the annual and final reports. It is the first time the Santa Barbara Rotary Club has had such a large sum, long term Matching Grant project and thus had necessity to do an audit, so it is a learning experience for all of us.

All Suited Up

2008-04-21T16:58:00.001-07:00

Sergio is ready for the rainy season (although we have had a welcome cold front the past week the rainy season is still a ways away).

Good-bye Douglas

2008-04-21T16:57:00.002-07:00

Douglas Diaz our trusty treasurer will be leaving Santa Barbara in the next few months. He will turn his responsibilities as treasurer for the project over to Melvin Sagastume, the current club treasurer. We will miss Douglas.

Carroll Creek

2008-04-21T16:57:00.001-07:00

Sergio has been visiting the Carroll Creek communities of Santa Ana, El Carmen and Buena Vista to check out filter use and will be continuing to re-visit Carroll Creek communities over the next few months to tie up all loose ends.

El Balsamo, Ilama

2008-04-21T16:53:00.000-07:00

Allison, our Peace Corps volunteer, Andrea, a visiting volunteer and Rotarian Dr. Alvaro Perez went to El Balsamo, Ilama to do hand out deparasiting medication. The new Community Agents were an incredible help in organizing everyone and making sure that families that couldn’t come still got medication. The whole community was waiting for us when we got there and the whole process took just a few hours.

Maine Rotary Club Visit

2008-03-07T08:16:00.000-08:00

February was absolutely packed with Rotary; groups from Maine, Minnesota and Canada were here from February 9th-March 1st. Between visiting groups and our normal filter goals the Agua Pura team was kept busy, working 28 out of 29 days this month!

Alter months of communicating with members of the Freeport and Portland, Maine Rotary Club by e-mail and Skype we finally got to meet a few of them in person. On February 9th a group of five showed up to spend a week in Santa Barbara to work on the filter project.

From left: Allison, Paul, Kaitlyn, Tamara, Marjorie, Jim, Hector

Paul & Kaitlyn are both software engineers from San Diego, California who came along for the ride because Paul’s mom is Jim & Marjorie’s pastor (thankfully they both speak Spanish, so they were very helpful). Tamara is a civil/environmental engineer from Maine and is the wife of a Rotarian. Jim & Marjorie are both engineers (mechanical & chemical respectively) from Maine and are members of the Portland Rotary Club. So, if you add that up, it comes to five engineers!

We were incredibly busy all week, visiting communities, meeting with the local filter manufacturer, local Rotarians and tying up administrative loose ends. Each member of the group brought important skills and was able to contribute to the project in a meaningful way. Tamara was able to help us evaluate our lab procedures for our water analysis, Paul & Katie helped with translating, Jim brought us a great filter carrier (they weight 300+ lbs) and Jim & Marjorie helped us straighten out contract, budget and planning issues. Most importantly they all had great attitudes, were patient and flexible, which is very important down here.

Sunday we all met in the office to do an overview of the project and talk a little bit about the culture and city of Santa Barbara.

Then we headed over to the filter workshop for a tour and a filter installation demonstration. They were ready for us when we arrived and had a welcome sign hanging above the filters.

From left: Tamara, Marjorie, Jim

While at the workshop we also gave our new filter carrier a trial run. Jim brought down a carrier made of steel cables that can support a small or large filter and can be carried by 4 or more people. This type of devise should come in very useful for us when we are delivering filters to homes, especially those with difficult access.
From left, clockwise: Jim, Paul, Rolf, Mauricio

Monday we went to El Conal to deliver 16 filters. The community is about 1 hour away from Santa Barbara with difficult access. Actually, we had no problem getting there, the challenge came with getting out. The Agua Pura truck had to help toe the filter delivery truck on the return trip because of the steep hill out of the village.

We used the filter carrier for the first time and it worked great.
While there we were treated to numerous types of oranges and other fruits that looked just like clementines but tasted wholly different. First, the people that were working with us climbed up into the trees to get them down for us…
Ramon, our driver, in the tree

And then peeled them for us…

Monday night Jim, Marjorie, Nineth & Allison met with Hector, Rene & Douglas from the Santa Barbara Rotary Club filter committee and Maria & Willam from the Agua Pura staff to go over administration. It was great to be all together in one place talking face to face, since most of our communication happens over e-mails half in English and half in Spanish. We were able to come to an agreement on a number of important issues and re-establish our commitment to the project.

Tuesday we started off the day with a quick visit to the hospital for a tour and to drop of a suitcase full of hospital supplies donated from the states.
From left: Morjorie, Dr. Peraza (Assistant Director), Jim, Dr. Mejia (Director), Dr. Marly (Rotarian)

Then we headed to Descansadero to do monitoring of filters that the Maine group installed last September during their visit. During the monitoring Nineth & Mauricio took multiple water samples in order to test the water quality and our lab procedures. Once we got back to the office Tamara helped Nineth and Allison go through the water analysis procedures step by step to identify any problem areas.

From left: Nineth, Tamara, Allison

Wednesday we went back to El Conal to install the filters we had delivered on Monday. Unfortunately we discovered that 6 out of the 16 filters had leaks, which prompted us to do some serious thinking about how we can prevent this in the future.
Paul installing a filter

Wednesday afternoon we returned to the office and analyzed the water analysis from the day before. We concluded that our lab procedures and current equipment were working just fine and we do not need to make any substantial changes or buy new more expensive equipment (that was a relief).

Thursday we went to Zorca to deliver deparasiting medicine to the filter beneficiaries.
Marjorie deparasiting

The Mobil Clinics project also accompanied us and performed basic check-ups.

Friday Kaitelyn, Paul, Tamara & Rolf took a trip to Copan Ruinas to visit the Mayan Ruins. Meanwhile Jim, Marjorie, Nineth & Allison worked on a revised budget and plan for the project, met with Marvin from the filter workshop to talk about improving filter quality and met with Douglas, the treasurer, to review the finances. Finally, we finished off the week by attending the Rotary meeting Friday night in the new Casa de Cultura.

Overall it was a very productive trip and also a wonderful opportunity to meet a great group of people.

Deparasiting

2008-03-07T08:14:00.001-08:00

To date we have done deparasiting in six communities under the Carroll Creek grant: Jimilile, La Española, Zorca, Buena Vista, El Carmen/Berlin and El Balsamo. Overall the process has gone very smoothly although it took us a while to get it up and running. Before doing the deparasiting we send one of the Agua Pura Health Promoters to the community to notify the community leaders and the community agents so they can pass the word along to the rest of the filter beneficiaries. We generally set up shop in the school and the families come to us. In the beginning the community members thought it was just for the kids, but we have since made sure to emphasize that we will be giving medication to everybody with a filter. In the beginning we weren’t sure if we should give medication to women to take home to husbands and other children that couldn’t come, but have since decided that this is a good idea in order to reach as many people as possible.

Just two days after the Maine Rotary group left, a large group from Minnesota arrived with doctors, dentists, carpenters and engineers. Rolf, Mauricio and Allison went to Buena Vista to do deparasiting while the Minnesota crew pulled teeth, did check-ups and surveyed the proposed water project there.

Mauricio handing out deparasiting medication.

Rolf helping with translation for the Minnesota Rotary Club medical brigade

Ambassador Charles Ford

2008-03-07T08:09:00.004-08:00

On February 22nd Charles Ford, the US ambassador to Honduras came to Santa Barbara to spend a day learning about the projects going on here. To start off his visit he met with four of the Peace Corps volunteers from Santa Barbara to hear about their projects.
From left: Molly, Aerka, Charles, Allison, Katie

After lunch he went with the Santa Barbara Rotary Club to visit the filter workshop and learn about the Agua Pura project. Then that night he spoke at a dinner with the Santa Barbara Rotary Club, the Minnesota Rotary group, the Peace Corps volunteers in town to translate for the Minnesota group, and Nineth & Allison from Agua Pura. He argued that Honduras is in a position to develop and right now small businesses in particular can take advantage of the US market through CAFTA. He talked about the “American Dream” that so many Hondurans have and suggested that instead of paying a coyote $5,000-$7,000 to get you to the US you invest that money in a small business and strive towards the “Honduran Dream” (In Spanish this is really catchy because it rhythms). He also compared Honduras to some of the Asian Tigers, citing how in the 1960s, Honduras was better off than South Korea and now South Korea is leaps and bounds ahead of Honduras. He used this comparison not to make the Hondurans feel bad, but to give them hope that they have the potential to develop within just one generation as South Korea did. His speech was respectful but did make some strong points that change really has to come from within the country. I asked a few Rotarians what they thought about his comments afterward and they seemed to agree that in the end they really are the ones that need to change to see their country change.

El Balsamo, Ilama

2008-03-07T08:09:00.003-08:00

We held community agents training in El Balsamo, Ilama, a Carroll Creek community. Soon after the training the agents showed that they were committed to the project by doing a great job of preparing the people for deparasiting. When we arrived in the community everyone was ready and waiting for us and the process only took about an hour. The community agents even volunteered to take medications to those families that weren’t able to come themselves.

Maine Communities

2008-03-07T08:09:00.001-08:00

In February we finished installing filters in the three communities of Linderos, San Antonio del Monte and El Conal.

We have also held community meetings and community agents trainings and started installing filters in the four communities of El Capulin, Quebrada Grande, San Jeronimo del Pinal.

We are currently starting work in two new municipalities of Santa Barbara, El Nispero (Tontolo, Nejapa, Paraiso, Barbasco, Nueva York) and San Francisco de Ojuera (El Galvilan, Santa Fe, El Chaparron, La Estancia, El Pilon, San Ramon, La Palca). In order to save time and money we will do one single community agents training in each municipality.

Choluteca

2008-03-07T08:07:00.000-08:00

Choluteca

Prompted by the high number of leaks found in the filter we installed in El Capulin we decided to take a trip to the Choluteca filter workshop to learn from their successes. Marvin, the owner of the Santa Barbara workshop, his daughter Ingrid, Nineth and Rolf drove down to Choluteca to talk with Carlos (Choluteca Agua Pura supervisor) and his crew for an afternoon and a morning. Carlos and the crew were a great help. They showed us their whole operation, washed sand for us, mixed and poured filters for us and discussed their installation process. They mentioned that all the staff including the concrete and sand guy have a filter at home. So they can honestly tell people the filter works and base their talk on their own experience.

Marvin was interested in everything he saw, and is enthusiastic about filter building. He asked lots of questions. Ingrid took pictures and notes in a notebook. On the way home they started discussing how to change things in the workshop. Marvin and his wife Melanie came out for a full day of filter and supplies delivery, so she could understand what happens in the field.

We are now conducting a number of sand washing experiments to see if we can come up with a more consistent product. It seems that river sand is inconsistent to begin with, so with the same washing process you will get different flow rates, depending on which part of the sand pile you use. We may get a quote from the Choluteca sand supplier, to see about getting sand shipped from there, as the Choluteca sand washes easily with only two washes and is consistent. It may be cost effective to go that route.

Hygiene and Sanitation Charlas

2008-03-07T07:55:00.000-08:00

Charla=talk

Hygiene and santiation are code words for washing your hands at critical times, and using a latrine instead of defecating anywhere that is convenient. The CAWST manual includes the following statistics. If people just change to clean water, intestinal disease and diarrhea goes down 21%. If you just teach people to wash their hands, disease goes down 35%. If you just install latrines, disease goes down 37.5 %. The combined reduction is 93%.

So the key is not to simply provide clean water and latrines, but to get people to understand the chain of bacterial contamination. To be healthy people need to actually use the latrines, and get into the habit of washing their hands at 4 key times- after going to the bathroom, cleaning their infants, before cooking, and before eating. That applies up North too :-)

We try to incorporate more of the health talks and habit changing information in our community education sessions and return visits. In the last few weeks we have been dividing the filter talks. For example, Mauricio will do a short introduction, then Rolf will do a 30 minute health talk, followed by Mauricio going into detail about the filters. Essentially, when we introduce the filter concept to a village we are travelling salesmen.

Rolf uses interactive learning, with little lecture and lots of questions and involvement by the audience, to get them to think about their own village and their own habits. Earlier this week in La Palca we got spontaneous applause after the health talk from our audience of 81 households. What a rush.

APPM National Meeting

2008-02-08T08:16:00.003-08:00

On January 14th-17th all of the Agua Pura para el Mundo projects from Honduras met in Siguatepeque for the annual APPM meeting. The staff from Santa Barbara, Choluteca, Copan, Tela, La Ceiba, Trujillo and a representative from Danli were all able to attend. It was a wonderful opportunity for Mauricio, Sergio and Allison to meet the staff from different projects since this was the first national meeting they had attended. It was also an opportunity to meet the new APPM Administrator, William.
Maria & William

We started with presentations from each project to share our current progress, experiences and lessons learned. It was interesting to see how different each project is and how approaches work in different regions even within Honduras. For example, some projects receive wonderful support from the Secretary of Health and are able to work with them to do all their water testing. Also, aspects such as terrain and occupation of the filter beneficiaries make a difference. There is a new project starting in Tela, on the north coast, and they plan to install filters in some communities with no road access, which adds a whole new element to transporting a 300+ pound cement filter. Also, the projects vary widely in their duration and the number of filters to be installed.

We also learned some important lessons from the other projects, such as effective ways to collect counterpart payments. Each family that receives a filter pays a ¨counterpart¨of 150 lempiras (about $8). During our Carroll Creek grant we gave the filter beneficiaries two months to pay this counterpart. This didn’t work out for us very well, because people would never end up paying. Now, Sergio has to return to past communities to collect money. Other projects collect the counterpart money either before or during installation of the filters with much higher success, so we plan to follow suite and do the same.

Despite the differences between projects we all agreed that the Community Agents training and thorough monitoring are indispensable.

Next, we received a presentation from Lucy Vallejo, a representative from Handals, which sells products for water analysis. She reviewed basic information about water quality and contamination and demonstrated how to use various water testing products. Every APPM in Honduras does microbial testing for fecal coliformes, however we all use somewhat different equipment and laboratory techniques. Over the past few months we have been having some trouble with our water analysis in Santa Bárbara so it was an important opportunity for all of us to compare what works well and what doesn’t. We are currently considering how to improve our quality of water testing by changing laboratory techniques and/or investing in new lab equipment.
We also had the pleasure of talking with a representative from the Secretary of Health about epidemiology in Honduras as it relates to water contamination.

After hearing from Handals and the Secretary of Health, we moved on to internal administrative issues within APPM Honduras. Although it was not the most exciting part of the workshop, it may have been the most important. We were able to work together to come up with a uniform reporting method that we could all agree on. From now on every project in Honduras will use the same format to report project progress and financial expenditure. We also created a new monitoring questionnaire to measure the success of filter use within each project and with the help of Katie Strass, a Water & Sanitation engineer with the Peace Corps, we were able to create a database to analyze all the data.

Maria & Nineth working on formating

William, the new administrator for APPM, then continued by talking about annual planning. Since each project has specific goals and deadlines it is important that we have a plan to be able to achieve our goals and meet our deadlines. Currently the Santa Barbara team is working on establishing our goals, identifying the activities that will allow us to achieve those goals and how we will measure our success. We are also working on the elaboration of a 3-6 month calendar that will help us stay on track with each of our Matching Grants.

From left: Mauricio, Nineth, Sergio, Allison

Clinicas Móviles

2008-02-08T08:16:00.001-08:00

Mobil Clinics is a project run out of the Santa Barbara hospital which sends doctors and nurses to communities in Santa Barbara without access to primary health care. The Agua Pura team met with them to figure out which communities they work with and how our organizations could collaborate. Currently, we have one overlapping community with the Carroll Creek Matching Grant and will have a number of other overlapping communities with the Maine Matching Grant. We think the relationship will be beneficial for both Agua Pura and the Mobil Clinics. First, installing filters in the communities where the Mobil Clinic work will improve the health of the community members, thus benefiting the Mobil Clinic team. Second, the Mobil Clinic staff can do informal supervision of the filters, encourage filter use and reinforce good hygiene and sanitation when they visit their communities with filters. Third, we can work together to hand out anti-parasite medication and may be able to share the cost of the drugs. We have scheduled to do deparasiting with them in Zorca, one of our Carroll Creek communities on February 14th.

Deparasiting

2008-02-08T08:12:00.002-08:00

After months of working to get the deparasiting component of the project started we finally have things up and running thanks to the help of the Rotary doctors and various donations of medicine. There are currently five doctors in the Santa Barbara Rotary Club and all of them have committed to help us with do deparasiting. We met with the doctors to discuss the type of medicine we would use and when each of them could accompany us to the communities to hand out the medicine. Although handing out the medicine is simple, having a doctor with us gives us added credibility in the community and allows the Rotary member an opportunity to support the project.

We were thankful to get a total of 1,100 doses of anti-parasite medicine donated to us from Robert Turner and Agua Pura. Robert Turner is a college student from Idaho who visits Honduras multiple times a year to work with filters and do deparasiting. He gave us 500 doses of Albendazole in tablets and 200 doses of Albendazole in suspension. Maria also gave us 400 doses of Albendazole in tablets. We were able to use these medications to do our first deparasiting in Jimilile, Arada. Overall things went very smoothly and quickly. Albendazole is straight forward, safe and easy to administer. Babies from 1-2 years of receive 200 mg in liquid form and everyone above 2 years of age receives 400 mg in liquid or tablet form depending on their age. There is no weighing necessary and the entire amount is given all at once. The tablet is chewable and tastes surprisingly good (Allison, our Peace Corps volunteer, ate one), little kids had no problem sucking on it. Although the tablet is chewable and tasty many of the women that came in to get the medication were either scared or embarrassed to eat it in front of us. We would give it to them and tell them to eat it and they would just hold it in their hand and smile and say they would eat it later. We preferred they all take the medication in front of us so we could insure that they wouldn’t use it or give it to somebody else. It took quite a bit of coaxing for some of the women, but we got all of them to eat it on the spot.
The liquid form also tastes good (Chris, our last Agua Pura volunteer, had some) but it can be more of a challenge to get the babies to drink it. They have a tendency to cry and spit it up.

This baby is surprisingly cooperative.

Although the process went very smoothly in Jimilile, it was our first time and we still need to work out a few kinks. Originally we thought that we would only give medication to those who actually came to us and got it, yet we realize now that this will almost always leave out a large portion of the community. In total, there are 244 beneficiaries in Jimilile, but we only gave medicine to 134 people, mostly women and children. Very few men or older boys came because they were working on the coffee farms. Although women and children are the most important groups to reach, we would still like to reach as many as possible. Therefore, we need to consider the possibility of giving extra medication to the female head of the household if she comes but her husband or children can’t come.

We are also considering the possibility of giving another type of medication in addition to or in place of Albendazole. Although Albendazole is preferable because is easy and cheap ($0.03 for one tablet and $0.50 for one bottle) it does not kill amoebas that are commonly found in Honduras. Therefore we are investigating the possibility of coupling it with another medication that will kill amoebas, to do a more thorough job.

Linderos & San Antonio

2008-02-08T08:12:00.001-08:00

This month we have started working in Linderos and San Antonio, two new communities under the Maine Matching Grant. These two communities actually solicited Agua Pura for filters after they heard about a neighboring community with filters. They met independently as a community and came to use with a list of people who already wanted filters. This community initiative is very important and has helped the entire process go smoothly. We have already held socializations, capacitations and Community Agents training and have finished installing filters in both communities.

New Agua Pura Volunteer

2008-02-08T08:02:00.000-08:00

Volunteers are an indispensable asset to the Agua Pura projects in Honduras. Not only do they contribute to virtually all aspects of the project they also gain a meaningful experience from serving. Currently, three of the projects in Honduras are working with long term Agua Pura volunteers and two work with Peace Corps volunteers. As we become increasingly busy here in Santa Barbara, we feel a need for extra help. Therefore, we have requested a full time Agua Pura volunteer to work with the Santa Barbara project.

In the meantime we have the wonderful opportunity to work with Rolf Stengl, an Agua Pura/CAWST volunteer from Calgary, Canada, here to work with us for two months. Rolf has traveled in Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and Ecuador. Even so, Rolf says “Honduras and this project is totally different. Today in El Balsamo we went on roads and trails right out of an Indiana Jones movie, including the hanging bridge. I’m amazed they got filters in there. It’s worth it, as everyone we talked to say their health has improved and they use the filters daily. This group is a fun bunch, and I’m glad to be working here.”

December 2007

2008-01-08T14:29:00.001-08:00

Although we only worked a few weeks in December we were able to get a lot done. We did monitoring in El Diviso, El Carmen and Buena Vista. Held community meetings in El Carmen and Buena Vista and trained Community Agents from San Francisco de Ojuera, Buena Vista and El Carmen.

Buena Vista, Atima

2008-01-08T14:22:00.000-08:00

Buena Vista, Atima is a community over three hours away from Santa Barbara. It is by far the poorest community we work with. They have no electricity, no running water, no pilas and no latrines.

They don’t have fences either…

They get their water from about 15 different wells (more like holes in the ground) and have to carry it back to their house. The women usually make three or more trips per day, each trip taking 5-30 minutes depending on how far away the well is from their house. During the dry season they wake up at 4 am to go to the well to get water before it dries up. This can take hours because all the women are there at the same time trying to get water.
At the urging of a Rotary Club from Minnesota that visited Buena Vista for a medical brigade last year, Agua Pura installed filters in the community. In early December the Agua Pura team went to Buena Vista for the week to do monitoring of the filters and train Community Agents from El Carmen and Buena Vista.

Mauricio teaching about the three steps of water treatment

Nineth teaching filter installation

Proud graduates

It was wonderful to find that the health of the community has improved greatly since they started using water but they still have a serious lack of water. Luckily the same Minnesota Rotary Club that visited last year is hoping to fund the installation of a water system in the community to provide everyone with running water. Therefore Katie Strass, a Peace Corps Volunteer who works as a Water & Sanitation engineer, also went to Buena Vista for the week to collect data for the water system. Meanwhile, Allison, the Peace Corps Volunteer that works with Agua Pura, went door-to-door conducting a needs assessment for the application to Rotary International for the funding for the water system. Everyone in the community was happy to see us and thanked us for visiting.

Family Profile Buena Vista, Atima

2008-01-08T14:20:00.001-08:00

Besy & Doni

Besy and her 3 year old son Doni were instrumental in our work there. They both accompanied Allison from house to house for the needs assessment. While the Agua Pura team usually wears sturdy hiking boots or tennis shoes when we go out into the field (and still manage to fall in the mud).Besy wore flip flops and Doni wore dress shoes. He was amazing! He didn’t complain once and walked the whole way without asking to be carried, meanwhile the Agua Pura team was absolutely exhausted hiking up and down mountains all day.

Besy is a very strong woman who works hard and understands the importance of serving her community. She even withstands the challenges and criticism that sometimes comes along pushing the boundaries. For example, she had to ask her husband for permission to attend the Community Agents training. He was reluctant at first but then conceded. Also, she has to brush off the comments that some community members make about her for leaving the community to work on projects. They suspect her to be a “bad woman” if she is leaving and sleeping somewhere else for a night or two. Through all of this is was wonderful to hear that she has confidence that she knows she is doing what is right and doesn’t care what others say about her. She is thankful to have a filter and is excited to see a water system come to Buena Vista. Here she recounts her daily routine during the dry season: “I wake up at 4 am to bring water because early in the morning there is water, in the day there is no water. We have to wake up early to bring water for the entire day. The women and children go in groups of 5 or 6. I can’t carry water in buckets because I wasn’t born here, the women that we born here can, I carry water in smaller containers. I go 3 or 4 times in the morning so I don’t have to go when there is sun. From 4-6 am I bring water. I only bring water for the kitchen. To bath and wash clothes I have to leave again.”

We didn’t see much of her husband or older son because they were out working. Humberto, her husband was with Katie, doing the study for the system and her 8 year old son was working in the field all day.

Happy Holidays

2008-01-08T14:14:00.001-08:00

We were all ready for a break and really enjoyed spending time with our families. Nineth went to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, to spend Christmas with her family. Allison went home to Cleveland, Ohio for a week and then traveled through Honduras with her parents. Mauricio and Sergio stayed in Santa Barbara to spend the holidays with their families here.

The Office Gets a New Look

2008-01-08T14:10:00.000-08:00

During the holidays the Agua Pura office got a new paint job. Purple and cream in one room and yellow and pink in the other…kind of like an Easter basket.

Monitoring

2007-12-08T11:55:00.001-08:00

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.

Deparisiting

2007-12-08T11:46:00.000-08:00

Initiation of deparasting continues to be a slow process, although we are making progress. In order to demonstrate that there is in fact a need for deparasiting in the communities where we install filters (although we know that there is through experience) we ran lab tests of feces samples of seven beneficiaries of filters from Jimilie.

We found that each individual had between 1-4 different parasites, the three youngest sampled had the most. According to the World Health Organization, the prevalence and intensity of worm infections peak in children aged ~6-15. This is also the age at which parasites can affect the body most, causing malnutrition, anaemia, stunted growth, and can retard both physical and cognitive development.

We have also made progress working with Dr. Alvaro Perez, a Santa Barbara Rotary Club member to determine which medications we need to buy. The next step is to find the best source for the parasite treatments and get started.

If you would like results from the tests please contact Agua Pura Santa Barbara at aguapurasb@gmail.com for a copy.

CAWST Workshops

2007-12-08T11:41:00.001-08:00

CAWST (Center for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology) is an NGO based out of Canada that supports filter projects with technical information and trainings all over the world. The Agua Pura team was lucky enough to attend a filter workshop facilitated by Andrea Roach. Andrea Roach joined CAWST in 2005 to provide training and consulting services for the Central American region as well as Mexico and Brazil. Andrea is a Professional Engineer and brings to CAWST water and sanitation experience in El Salvador, where she lived for two years, as well as five years of experience in the petroleum industry. She holds a Chemical Engineering Degree from the University of British Columbia and is a qualified CAWST trainer including technical training in Biosand Filtration and other treatment technologies.

The workshop was sponsored by a church from the states that has adopted four communities in south east Santa Barbara (don´t worry, no interference with our project, only support) where they will be introducing filters. It was especially important for Sergio, Mauricio and Allison to attend the workshop, as they have never received outside formal training. Overall, we were able to hone our understanding of the filters and share our experiences with the other attendees.

From left: Andrea Roach, Alliosn O´Donnell, Nineth Mungia

Following the workshop Nineth went to Tegucigalpa to attend the Taller Centro Americano de Implementadores de Filtros Bioarena (Central American Workshop of Biosand Filter Implementers) held by CAWST and International Aid.

Monitoring

2007-11-06T15:32:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-06T15:31:00.001-08:00

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

2007-11-06T15:29:00.002-08:00

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

2007-11-06T15:29:00.001-08:00

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

2007-11-06T15:26:00.000-08:00

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).

Hurricane Felix

2007-10-11T11:31:00.001-07:00

As many of you already know hurricane Felix passed through Honduras and other Central American countries in early September. Thank you for all of your e-mails to make sure the Agua Pura crew was doing alright. Luckily Santa Barbara was not hit too hard and no major damage was caused. It rained for about a day and a half, which is of course is a lot of rain, but nothing disastrous. The rivers rose substantially in Santa Barbara but not enough to do any damage.

This is what the river usually looks like...

This is what the river looked like after it stopped raining...

Hurricane Felix did affect Agua Pura in a few ways. First, it caused us to loose about two work days because of the rain, the truck just can’t make it to the remote villages because the roads get washed out. Second, it caused the water level of the Ulua River (where we get our sand from) to rise, so we had to find a new location on the banks of the river that wasn’t as affected by the flooding. Luckily, we found a new location and the new mix of sand seems to be working fine.

Las Flores, San Nicolas

2007-10-11T11:30:00.001-07:00

We started and finished the training and installation process in Las Flores, San Nicolas in record time. We were able to hold all our community meetings, train community agents, deliver and install 92 filters in less than one month. Without a doubt the efforts of the community to make sure that all the filters were delivered to each individual house and ready to be installed as well as the help of the amazing community agents helped move the process along wonderfully

Santa Ana, Ceguaca

2007-10-11T11:29:00.000-07:00

We held three meetings in Santa Ana this month: a socialization, capacitation and community agents training. We handled these meetings a little differently, however because the goal was to remind the community of the importance of using the filters properly. The community agents training was modified in that we only taught the community agents how to do monitoring because the installation had already been done. Although it has been a long process, Santa Ana is on its way to having fully functional filters once again.

Maine Rotary Club Visit

2007-10-11T11:20:00.000-07:00

This month we had the privilege of a visit from members of three Rotary Clubs from Maine, including Freeport, Portland and Brunswick. A group of six Rotarians and the lovely, intelligent (and most importantly Spanish speaking) daughter of one of the said Rotarians joined us for a week in Santa Barbara.

Saturday: The Agua Pura crew, a few local Rotary Club members, and Abundio, the wonderful driver for the week, all met the group at San Pedro at the airport. We loaded their 15 suitcases and the 7 of them into three cars and headed back to Santa Barbara without any glitches (except that it started to rain on the way back and the bags were in the pack of the pick up so we had to stop and buy a tarp).

Sunday: We all woke up early on Sunday and headed to Descansadero, San Nicolas, to hold a capacitation (hygiene and filter use training). We had a great turnout from the community; they were all waiting for us at the entrance of the school when we arrived. Miguel (aka barba, which means beard), a retired teacher and community leader, started off the morning by giving a little background about his community and thanking the Rotary Club for all they have done to make these projects possible. One thing that he mentioned is that the single room we were sitting in served as the school for grades 1-6, which were taught by one single teacher. Then we started the meeting off with a dinamica, like an ice breaker, which Hondurans love. Here is George Crocket in a “human knot” trying to work his way out of it.

Nineth continued with a basic hygiene charla, recapping what we had talked about in the socialization, the first community meeting, and then moved on to talk about the filter use.

We finished by handing out prizes of soap, toothbrushes, dish towels and the coveted bucket with a spout on it. To encourage the community to participate we handed out many of the prizes to those who could answer questions about hygiene and the filters (they wanted to participate).

After the meeting ended the community treated us to tamales (corn meal with meat inside boiled in a banana leaf) and the Rotary Club treated them to all sorts of toys to play with.

That night we had a meeting and dinner with the local Rotary Club to receive an introduction to Santa Barbara and meet the junta directive of the Santa Barbara Rotary Club.

From left: Elizabeth, George, Dick, Andrea, Tom, Les, Marge

Monday & Tuesday: The Rotary Club members from Maine spent time in El Nispero, a neighboring community of Santa Barbara, with Erin, another Peace Corps volunteer, visiting the schools to donate shoes and school supplies. Meanwhile the Agua Pura team delivered filters to Descansadero to prepare for the Friday installations.

The delivery truck from the filter workshop

Wednesday: The Rotary Club members from Maine took a trip to Copan Ruinas to check out Honduras’ Mayan Ruins.

Thursday: We went to Jimilile to do monitoring. Which means we went to each house with a filter to make sure it was working properly and to talk to the family about how the filter had impacted their health. Every family that we talked to reported improved health, many of them experiencing no diarrhea whatsoever since initiation of filter use. This aspect of our work was very important for the Rotary Club from Maine to see because it showed them what an important impact the filter project has on the people’s lives.

Jimilile

Thursday afternoon we went to the filter workshop to watch the filter making process, including pouring the cement into the filter molds and watching the sand be washed and tested.
Sergio at the filter workshop, working with the filter molds.

A few of the Rotary members left the workshop early to meet with Douglas Diaz, the previous Santa Barbara Rotary Club treasurer, and Rene Vazquez, the previous president, to review the project accounting and make sure everything was in line. Luckily Nineth’s organizational skills paid off and everything was as it should be. Thursday night we had a second meeting with the water committee from the Santa Barbara Rotary Club, members of the Maine Rotary Clubs, the Agua Pura team and Maria Inestroza, the Agua Pura National Director. Despite the language barriers we were all able to communicate well, clarify operational issues and make some important decisions that will improve our future functioning.

From left: Vasquez, Douglas Diaz, Maria Inestroza, Hector Madrid

Friday: We went to Descansadero (the village we visited in the beginning of the week for the capacitation) to install filters. The first filter we installed made us thankful that we weren’t the ones to deliver it because it was at the bottom of a huge hill. After installing the first filter together we broke up into teams and installed about 15 filters (in total we will install 45 filters in Descansadero).

Dick is measuring the flow rate of a newly installed filter.

We finished up the day by eating tons of fresh corn on the cob prepared by the gracious wife of Miguel.

Friday night we attended the Santa Barbara Rotary Club meeting, which incidentally coincided with a visit from the District Governor. Each Rotary Club from Maine, was presented with a Santa Barbara Rotary Club banner as a token of appreciation. Earlier in the week it was discovered that Hector Madrid, the current president, and his wife Doris belonged to a local folkloric dance group and at the insistence of the Rotary Club members from Maine they were convinced to perform at the end of the meeting. So we finished the meeting with a wonderful cultural show followed by a catered dinner.

Allison & Nineth all dressed up for the Rotary meeting

Saturday: Saturday we packed up the cars and headed back to the airport to say goodbye and finish off an exhausting but memorable week. Overall, the trip was important because it allowed many people that have all been working towards the same goal to finally meet each other in person and get a feel for what is really happening on each end. We can’t wait to see you again next year!

Special thanks to the Rotary Clubs of Freeport, Portland and Brunswick, Maine for sending great representatives. Special thanks to George Crocket for all your planning. Special thanks to Elizabeth Crocket for your Spanish skills. Special thanks to Abundio for not crashing the SUV. Special thanks to the Santa Barbara Rotary Club for being wonderful hosts throughout the week.

The new Truck!

2007-09-06T10:38:00.001-07:00

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

2007-09-06T10:34:00.002-07:00

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

2007-09-06T10:34:00.001-07:00

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

2007-09-06T10:20:00.000-07:00

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.

Camisetas

2007-08-01T14:11:00.000-07:00

The Agua Pura team is looking very professional in our new embroidered polo shirts!

El equipo de APPM Santa Bárbara luce muy profesional en sus nuevas camisetas con el logotipo de APPM (próximamente lucirá también el Logo Rotario).

Chris, Nineth and Allison in front of the Agua Pura office

Chris, Nineth y Aly enfrente de la oficina de APPM Santa Bárbara.

Zorca and Ocotillo

2007-08-01T14:06:00.001-07:00

View from Ocotillo

We finally finished up installing the last few filters in Zorca and Ocotillo and changing the filters with leaks.

Finalmente hemos terminado de instalar filtros en Zorca y Ocotillo, Arada; y realizamos los cambios de filtros con fuga.

Filter in Zorca

Adan has two wonderful assistants

Woman cleaning her filter in Ocotillo before we install it

The Truck

2007-08-01T14:03:00.000-07:00

Chris & Nineth with the old truck at the workshop

We had to say a sad goodbye to our wonderful truck that has safely delivered us to all reaches of the Santa Barbara hills. The truck was actually on loan to Agua Pura Santa Barbara from another project and it came time to give it back. The Agua Pura team made the trip to Tegucigalpa for the weekend to both drop of the truck and meet with Maria Inestroza, the national director. We also said goodbye to Andrea & Bernardo, a Peace Corps couple finishing off their two years of service in Santa Barbara. During their two years in Santa Barbara, Andrea and Bernardo worked with Agua Pura both helping with Book-Keeping and Filter Installations.

Obviously not having a truck makes installing filters a little more difficult so Nineth & Maria are currently looking for a new truck that will meet all of our needs (ie. needs to be able to get us in and out of some tough places). When the perfect truck is found, it will be purchased under the new Maine matching grant.
Hopefully we´ll get a great new truck and we´ll never have this happen!

Tuvimos que decir adiós a nuestro increíble carro de trabajo, que nos llevaba con seguridad a todas las comunidades en las diferentes montañas de Santa Bárbara, el carro era un préstamo de otro proyecto de APPM (Danli) y al fin llego el plazo de devolución. El equipo de APPM Santa Bárbara hizo el viaje a Tegucigalpa el primer fin de semana del mes de julio para reunirnos con Maria Inestroza, la Directora Nacional de APPM y así devolver el carro. También aprovechamos el viaje para despedir a la pareja de voluntarios de Cuerpo de Paz, que finalizaron sus dos años de servicio prestado en Santa Bárbara. Durante esos dos años de servicio Andrea Y Bernardo, trabajaron en los diferentes proyectos realizados por Rotarios y en su último año apoyaron en gran manera el de Filtros Bioarena.
Obviamente no tener un vehiculo de trabajo a hecho muy difícil la labor de instalar filtros, es por eso que Maria y Nineth están buscando un nuevo carro que cumpla con todas nuestras necesidades y poder volver a funcionar como lo hemos acostumbrado. El nuevo carro será comprado bajo el presupuesto del Matching Grant de Maine.

El Balsamo, Ilama

2007-08-01T14:00:00.000-07:00

Although we do not have a truck we still have the trailbike which allows two members of the Agua Pura team to start monitoring the communities where we have installed filters.

Aunque no tenemos carro de trabajo en este momento, tenemos una motocicleta que nos permite la movilización de dos miembros de nuestro equipo, y así pudimos dar inicio al componente de monitoreo en las comunidades que hemos instalados filtros.
El monitoreo es un componente clave en nuestro trabajo porque involucra el retorno a cada casa con filtro, para sentarnos y hablar personalmente con cada una de las familias. Y así podemos conocer sus pensamientos acerca del filtro, de su contribución a la salud de su familia, si tiene alguna consulta o comentario y crear una relación más sólida en el desarrollo del proyecto.

Chris & Nineth using the moto to do monitoring

Monitoring is a key component of our work because it involves going back to each and every house with a filter to sit down and talk with each family. We are able to hear their feedback and how they like the filters, how the filter has contributed to the health of their family, as well as any questions or concerns they may have. Often, the water that comes from the filter is more persuasive than our Capacitation sessions, and Monitoring is a chance for other families without a filter to express interest. It is a way to reconnect with the community and let them know that Agua Pura is still available if they need help.

Nineth and Chris took three days do the first round of monitoring in El Balsamo. 40 minutes from Santa Barbara by trailbike, El Balsamo has only forty houses with filters but they were well spread out - across valleys and rivers, way up on hills or hidden behind them in dense green. The filters were well maintained, with many reports of improved health. Nineth was accompanied by Tonio, a pleasant father of two and filter owner so as to find the most distant and hidden houses, and was paid a days wage for his help, which was without expectations.

Chris checked up on a filter at the home of a woman of a hundred and two years. Perhaps the clean and smooth water that comes out of the filter will help her push the limits of her impressive age!

El Balsamo, along with Santa Ana mark the beginnings of more monitoring after a long blitz of installation in Arada - which includes Tierra Colorada, Zorca and Ocotillo.

Another part of monitoring involves gathering information about the ages of each family member in order to plan accordingly for the de-parasiting component.

Christopher y Nineth realizaron monitoreo durante tres días en la comunidad de El Bálsamo, Ilama; comunidad que queda a 1 hora de camino en motocicleta de Santa Bárbara. Esta comunidad solo cuanta con 40 casas con filtro, pero son muy dispersas a través de valles, montañas, puentes hamaca y ríos. Fue muy satisfactorio encontrar los filtros en buen estado y uso, con testimonios de mejoría en la salud de las familias beneficiadas; para realizar este monitoreo contamos con el apoyo de un miembro de la comunidad: Toño; un hombre alegre, padre de familia responsable y beneficiario del filtro bioarena, quien sirvió de gran ayuda para la ubicación de las casas, dispersas y escondidas, labor que duro todo el día y que reconocimos con el pago de Lps. 100.00. Chris, monitoreo otra área de la comunidad donde conoció una señora de 102 años! la cual esta muy feliz con su filtro y asegura que le servirá de mucho para seguir con una vida mas larga porque será mas sana.

Las comunidades de El Balsamo y Santa Ana, marcan el inicio del componente de monitoreo; después de instalar muchos filtros en 11 comunidades, los últimos en Arada, que incluye Tierra Colorada, Jimilile, Zorca y Ocotillo.
Parte del monitoreo involucra el censo de las edades en las familias beneficiadas, para la planificación del componente de desparacitacion.

Nineth crossing a bridge to get to a house with a filter (how did they ever get the filter across that bridge?)
Nineth talking with a woman about her filter

De-parasiting

2007-08-01T13:59:00.000-07:00

We met with Dr. Marta Elizabeth Mancia, the Coordinator of the Provision of Services for the Secretary of Health, to coordinate our de-parasiting project. We hope to work with the Health Centers in each community where we install filters to help us organize delivery of the medication as well as gain trust in the community.

Nos reunimos con la Dra. Marta Mancia, Coordinadora de Provisión de Servicios de La Secretaria de Salud Publica del Hospital Santa Bárbara Integrado; para coordinar nuestro componente de desparacitacion de manera responsable. Esperamos poder trabajar en coordinación de los Centros de Salud en cada comunidad para facilitar la entrega de medicamentos y contar con el respaldo profesional en dicha área dentro de la comunidad.

Santa Ana, Ceguaca

2007-08-01T13:58:00.001-07:00

We have also started another sort of monitoring in Santa Ana. Santa Ana is a beautiful community in the hills just outside of Santa Barbara where 107 filters were installed over a year ago. At the time, Agua Pura did not exist in Santa Barbara and the filters were installed by members of the Santa Barbara Rotary Club and Plan Honduras. Although we had no part in delivering and installing these filters we still think it is important to see the work through to completion. Our experience in Santa Ana has only reinforced our conviction that monitoring and follow through are indispensable during the first months following installation. We consider abandoned or out-of-use filters to be bad publicity for the filters, and so we are glad to be tying up loose strings in Santa Ana.
Tocaulapa, Tencoa and El Diviso, San Francisco de Ojuera are two additional communities that received filters before the current Agua Pura team was around. Under the Carrol Creek Matching Grant we plan to install the filters that were never installed, repair those that need it and hold additional community meeting to re-inspire the communities to take responsibility for their filters.

También hemos dado inicio a otro tipo de monitoreo en la comunidad de Santa Ana. Santa Ana es una comunidad muy agradable que crece en pequeñas colinas en las afueras de Santa Bárbara, en donde se instalo 107 filtros, esta comunidad forma parte de 3 comunidades en las que se instalaron filtros hace poco mas de un año, como ejecución de proyecto piloto del Club Rotario de Santa Bárbara; en ese momento APPM no existía en Santa Bárbara, los filtros fueron instalados por miembros del Club Rotario local y el fabricante de filtros. Aunque nosotros no participamos en el proceso de estas comunidades, creemos al igual que el Club Rotario Local, en la necesidad de dar continuidad e implementar las diferentes fases que hacemos en las otras comunidades donde instalamos filtros. Consideramos que los filtros abandonados o en mal uso crean mala publicidad al proyecto. Próximamente estaremos dando continuidad a esta comunidad.

Tacaulapa, Tencoa y El Diviso, San Fco. De Ojuera: también forman parte de este pequeño proyecto piloto, al igual que Santa Ana. Como acuerdo con el Club responsable de MG de Carrol Creek tomaremos los gastos de reactivación de estas tres comunidades bajo el presupuesto de este Matching Grant, y tomar la responsabilidad sobre ellas.

Filters waiting to be installed in Santa Ana

IHCAFE

2007-08-01T13:57:00.001-07:00

The Honduran Institute for Café is an organization that coordinates coffee production in all parts of Honduras. Coffee production is a vital part of the economy in Santa Barbara and many of the communities that we work with are coffee producers. We met with them in order to discuss how we can work together to improve the functioning of Agua Pura in Santa Barbara. One key aspect of a successful filter project is to gain the trust of the community we are working with. In the future we hope to partner with IHCAFE to make community contacts and build confidence since IHCAFE already has a strong relationship with farmers from every municipality of S.B.
IHCAFE office in Santa Barbara

El Instituto Hondureño del Café, es una organización que coordina la producción del café a nivel nacional. La producción de café es parte fundamental en la economía en Santa Bárbara. La mayoría de las comunidades en las que trabajamos son productoras de café.
Tuvimos una reunión con el equipo de trabajo de IHCAFE para determinar la manera de iniciar una relación interinstitucional y obtener un aprovechamiento funcional en las comunidades beneficiadas con el proyecto de filtros bioarena. Un aspecto muy importante para alcanzar el éxito dentro de un proyecto comunitario es ganarse la confianza en la comunidad en que estemos trabajando. En el futuro esperamos trabajar con los productores de café a través del IHCAFE, pues esta institución cuenta con muchos años de presencia en las comunidades y seria un gran aliado para facilitar una relación solidad y de confianza para nuestro proyecto.

Health Promoter

2007-08-01T13:55:00.001-07:00

Adam explaining how to use the filter

Adan Acosta has worked with Agua Pura for over 5 years. He began painting filters in Danli and then moved to Santa Barbara as Health Promoter for Agua Pura Santa Barbara. Unfortunately he resigned his position this month for personal reasons. We are currently accepting applications for a new Health Promoter. Nineth, Maria, Hector, new president of the Santa Barbara Rotary Club, and Allison will hold interviews Friday, August 3rd. We are actually thinking of hiring two Health Promoters at this time to bring our team to four people, a minimum number to be able to accomplish our goals.

Adán Acosta, ha trabajado por más de 4 años con APPM, inicio pintando filtros en el proyecto de Danli y se mudo a Santa Bárbara para trabajar como Promotor de Salud; desafortunadamente renuncio a su cargo este mes por razones personales. Hemos estado aceptando aplicaciones por un nuevo Promotor. Maria, Héctor, Aly y Nineth, estarán realizando las entrevistas el día viernes 03 de Agosto de 2007 en las oficinas de APPM Santa Bárbara, estamos pensando en contratar 2 promotores en este momento para tener un equipo integrado por cuatro personas, requerimiento mínimo para cumplir nuestras metas.

Adan measuring the flow rate of a filter just installed

Farewell Chris

2007-08-01T13:53:00.000-07:00

We are actually loosing two members of the Agua Pura team this month. Chris Green has been working with Agua Pura as a volunteer for the past six months. He has been an integral part of the team and will be missed dearly.

Este mes estamos perdiendo dos miembros del equipo, Chris Green ha trabajado en este departamento como voluntario de APPM por los últimos seis meses. Este joven hombre a sido parte integral de nuestro equipo y realmente lo extrañaremos!

The Red Cross

2007-08-01T13:51:00.000-07:00

Dana, a volunteer at the Red Cross, with an Agua Pura filter

The Red Cross Santa Barbara is a vital organization that provides first aid emergency services to the community of Santa Barbara. All of its workers are volunteers who generously give their time. In order to say thank you to all the volunteers of the Red Cross and improve Agua Pura’s recognition in S.B. we installed a filter in the Red Cross office so all the volunteers will have access to fresh filtered water. They all claim to have been drinking tap water at their headquarters.

La Cruz Roja de Santa Bárbara es una organización vital que provee asistencia de primeros auxilios y servicios de emergencia en la comunidad de Santa Bárbara. Todo su personal es voluntario que generosamente ofrecen su tiempo para los necesitados; en agradecimiento al voluntariado que realizan estas personas y con el consentimiento del Club Rotario Local, el voluntario de APPM Santa Bárbara Chris Green, entrego e instalo un filtro Bioarena en la oficina de la Cruz Roja de esta cuidad, y así estos voluntarios tendrán acceso a fresca y filtrada agua lista para tomar sin costo alguno.
Ellos nos contaron que anteriormente tomaban agua directamente de la llave!!!

Welcome!

2007-07-12T15:26:00.001-07:00

Agua Pura para el Mundo is a non-profit organization that works in partnership with local and international Rotary Clubs to provide water filters to those without access to clean drinking water. Agua Pura Santa Barbara is one of six Agua Pura projects currently functioning in Honduras. This blog is designed to keep all interested parties informed of our activities. We will update the blog every month with information about filters installed and communities served. Please feel free to share the blog with whoever is interested and make comments as you like.

Agua Pura para el Mundo es una organización sin fines de lucro, que trabaja en coordinación y financiamiento de Clubes Rotarios Internacionales y el Club Rotario de SB para proveer filtros bioarena a personas en comunidades sin acceso al agua potable. APPM SB es uno de los seis proyectos que esta funcionando en la actualidad en nuestro país. Este Blog esta diseñado para brindar información a todo aquel que este interesado en tener información de nuestro proyecto; ofreceremos información actualizada cada mes, de cada una de nuestras actividades: Filtros instalados y Comunidades beneficiadas, así como de los diferentes componentes del mismo. Por favor siéntase libre de compartir este blog con cualquier persona u organización que tenga interés sobre El Proyecto Filtros Bioarena del Club Rotario y Agua Pura para El Mundo.

Filter Number 400 & Filter Number 1

2007-07-12T15:19:00.000-07:00

June marks a transition point for Agua Pura Santa Barbara. We have just finished successfully installing 400 filters in 11 communities in Santa Barbara under the matching grant from Carroll Creek of Frederick, Maryland! We have also begun installing the first of 1,875 filters under the matching grant of Maine! We’ve come a long way and we have a long way to go.

Junio marco una transición para el proyecto de Filtros Bioarena SB, acabamos de terminar de instalar 400 filtros en 11 comunidades del departamento de Santa Bárbara, bajo el MG de Carroll Creek, también hemos empezado a instalar los primeros filtros del MG de Maine. Hemos estado haciendo mucho… pero aun nos falta mucho, pero mucho por hacer!

Monitoring & De-parasiting

2007-07-12T15:18:00.000-07:00

Now that we have finished installing the 400 filters under the Carroll Creek grant it doesn't mean that we are done yet...Monitoring and de-parasiting are two important phases of Agua Pura's work. After installing filters in each community we return to those communities and visit families with filters to insure that they are using them properly and answer any questions they have. In coordination with the Ministry of Health of Santa Barbara we are beginning to work on our deparasiting component as well. We were lucky enough to receive a donation of 200 dosages of parasite medicine from a group of brothers from Idaho who are interested in water projects in Honduras.

Ahora que hemos instalado los 400 filtros del MG de Carroll Creek, no significa que hemos terminado aun… El monitoreo y la despasitación son dos fases muy importantes del trabajo que Agua Pura realiza en este proyecto, después de haber instalado los filtros en las comunidades beneficiadas nuestro equipo regresa a cada una de ellas y visitamos cada familia con filtro; para asegurarnos del uso y manejo apropiado por parte de ellos, hacemos algunas preguntas y brindamos respuestas a sus dudas o consultas, además de supervisar el estado físico del filtro. Así también tomamos muestras de agua de cierto porcentaje de filtros y fuentes en cada comunidad para hacer los análisis comparativos. En coordinación con el Ministerio de Salud Publica de la Región #16 de Santa Bárbara, hemos iniciado el trabajo para ejecutar el componente de desparacitacion. Además contamos con la suerte de tener el apoyo de un grupo de hermanos del estado de Idaho, USA; interesados en los proyectos de Agua Pura en Honduras, de quienes recibimos la donación de 200 dosis de medicamento desparasitante.

Community Agents

2007-07-12T15:17:00.000-07:00

Community Agents with diplomas for finishing the training.
Agentes Comunitarios con sus diplomas del entrenamiento.

We held our first workshop to train community agents with four individuals from Ocotillo, Arada. Each received basic information about hygiene, water purification and disease transmission as well as how to install and maintain filters. The community agents work with us to help install filters, which speeds up the process immensely. They will also serve as contact points in their community to assist people with any questions they have about their filter in the future and perform monitoring to ensure that people are using the filters properly. This program is an attempt for Agua Pura to develop sustainability and empower community members to take a more active role with the project and the health and well-being of their communities.

Hemos realizado nuestro primer taller de Agentes Comunitarios!!! capacitamos a cuatro personas líderes de la comunidad de Ocotillo, Arada. Cada uno recibió formación básica sobre higiene, tratamiento del agua de consumo humano y transmisión de enfermedades. Y como es de esperar, como instalar y brindar mantenimiento de los filtros bioarena. Los Agentes Comunitarios trabajaron junto a nosotros, ayudando en la entrega e instalación de filtros en su comunidad, lo cual acelero con eficacia dicho proceso. Además de servir como nuestros enlaces directos en la comunidad, son el contacto inmediato dentro de la misma, para asistir sobre alguna duda o necesidad que los pobladores puedan tener con su filtro. En la actualidad y futuro seguirán brindando el apoyo, monitoreando el uso y manejo adecuado de cada filtro en su comunidad. Este programa es una iniciativa de Agua Pura para El Mundo, para desarrollar que los miembros de las comunidades tomen un rol mas activo en el empoderamiento y autosostenibilidad del proyecto, y así dar inicio a uno de los objetivos principales en el mismo: El mejoramiento de la salud de nuestras comunidades.

Choluteca

2007-07-12T15:16:00.000-07:00

There are currently Agua Pura projects functioning in six locations throughout Honduras, one of them being Choluteca, in southern Honduras. Allison O'Donnell, our Peace Corps volunteer had the pleasure of visiting their project in order to learn how things work down there. Below is a picture of the Agua Pura team from Choluteca installing a filter in a school.

En la actualidad Agua Pura funciona en seis departamentos de Honduras, uno de ellos es Choluteca, en el sur del país. Nuestra voluntaria de Cuerpo de Paz, Allison O’Donnell tuvo el placer de visitar ese proyecto para conocer como funcionan las cosas en ese lugar!

Sand

2007-07-12T15:15:00.000-07:00

We were having problems with the flow rate of the filters we were installing and finally realized that the workshop had changed the mix of sand so we had to change it back. We were able to change the sand in the filters we installed with the wrong sand and now all the filters are flowing well.

Tuvimos problemas con la calibración del chorro de filtración de los últimos filtros instalados, esto debido a un cambio imprevisto en la mezcla de la arena. Al finalizar nuestro taller de Agentes Comunitarios tuvimos que cambiar nuevamente la mezcla de cantidades de arena gruesa y arena fina, así como el tiempo de lavado y desinfección. Después de pruebas y análisis… obtuvimos el resultado esperado! Pero entonces tuvimos que cambiar la arena de todos los filtros instalados con la mezcla equivocada y reinstalarlos con la nueva… Ahora la calibración esta bien!

Cataracts

2007-07-12T15:14:00.000-07:00

While installing in the communities we came across two older individuals who were nearly blind due to cataracts. Through the help of a medical brigade we were able to help the individuals get access to medical facilities where they received cataract surgery to restore their sight. Below is Don Justino´s home in Jimilile.

Mientras instalábamos filtros en las diferentes comunidades beneficiadas; en nuestro camino conocimos a dos ancianos que a pesar de estar prácticamente ciegos, debido a las cataratas que cubrían sus ojos, son hombres tan agradables. Lo que nos motivo a buscar ayuda de una brigada de oftalmólogos estadounidenses que ofreció sus servicios medico quirúrgicos para ellos… y así después de algunos viajes extra a las comunidades, en este momento estos dos señores tienen la oportunidad de disfrutar nuevamente del sentido de la vista, mejorando por completo su calidad de vida y ahora de manera independiente tienen la capacidad de manejar su filtro bioarena sin ese limitante físico. Debajo es una foto de la casa de Don Justino en Jimilile.

Carlos

2007-07-12T15:12:00.000-07:00

Carlos is a 13 years old boy who lives in Zorca, Arada and has been helping us install filters in both Zorca and Ocotillo. Without the help of the kids from each community it would probably take us twice as long to install all the filters. They tell us where people live, who has filters, etc. and love to carry our buckets. On our first visit to Ocotillo Carlos went with us to every house to help install. Sometimes he can get a little too involved, though. One time he jumped in the back seat of the car as we were heading home for the day and we didn't notice him until about 30 minutes into the trip and had to turn around and take him back. He also “stole” one of our cell phones once, but he gave it back the next day and we’re sure he just meant to borrow it. To redeem himself he has managed to let his parents know when we are hungry and they always have some great food for us and send us home with huge stalks of sugar cane.

Carlos es un joven de 13 años que vive en la comunidad de Zorca, Arada. El ha estado ayudando en la realización de las entregas e instalaciones en las comunidades de Zorca y Ocotillo. Sin la ayuda de los niños de cada una de las comunidades, es muy probable que nos tomara el doble del tiempo que nos lleva realizar las instalaciones; estos niños nos ayudan a ubicar las casas y personas para la entrega e instalación de los filtros, etc… y realmente adoran acarrear los sacos de arena, cubetas, tapas y nuestro equipo de instalación, especialmente si usan nuestro trocó! En nuestra primera visita a la comunidad de Ocotillo Carlos nos acompaño a cada una de las casas en la comunidad, ha sido un niño muy colaborador.

The Rotary Club gets a new president

2007-07-12T15:11:00.000-07:00

The Agua Pura team attended the inauguration of the new president of the Rotary Club Santa Bárbara. Rene O. Vasquez will be replaced by Hector Madrid. There we received recognition for our achievements. Although there is new leadership in the Rotary Club, Rene will continue to work with Agua Pura and sign off as necessary.

El equipo de Agua Pura para El Mundo Santa Bárbara, estuvo presente en la toma de posesión del nuevo presidente del Club Rotario de Santa Bárbara, Profesor Héctor Madrid. En ese evento recibimos de parte del presidente saliente Rene O. Vásquez un reconocimiento por nuestra labor en el desarrollo del proyecto de filtros bioarena y por el apoyo de algunos de nuestros compañeros en las diferentes actividades Rotarias. Aunque contamos con un nuevo liderazgo Rotario, Rene O. Vásquez seguirá trabajando de cerca con nosotros.

Agua Pura Team

2007-07-12T14:57:00.000-07:00

Nineth Mungia: Supervisor of Agua Pura Santa Barbara.

Gerente de Proyecto de APPM Santa Barbara.

Adan Acosta: Health Promoter

Promotor de Salud

Allison O’Donnell: Peace Corps Volunteer from the states

Voluntaria Consultor de Cuerpo de Paz, USA

Chris Green: Agua Pura volunteer from Canada

Voluntario Consultor de APPM, Canada