H20

So, as I've mentioned before, my community is currently working on their own potable water project, but they’re at a standstill because they’ve run out of moolah to finish the thing. I met with my ADESCO last week to discuss the project in detail and begin the grant application for Engineers Without Borders. I asked any and all questions about the project in preparation for writing this grant application, and here’s what I learned:

The community raised about $21,050 on their own for the project. Each family that receives water paid $378 each to help fund the construction of the well and tubes to their houses. Los Hermanos Lejanos (aka the family members that live in the USA) contributed $5,000 for the cost of the water pump and the installation costs. And each family has to pay $7 a month for water, which goes towards the maintenance costs and electric bills of the project each month.

So I’m meeting with my ADESCO again this week to go over the grant application as a lesson for them in grant writing, and so that they have a copy of a general grant written in Spanish to solicit help for this project (and so that they’re capable of writing grants for other projects in the future). The actual application for EWB is in English, which I’ll be able to do easily in a day or two, but I figure I’ll give my ADESCO a couple days of grant writing training, you know, in the spirit of capacity building.

In learning about the water project, I learned that the general management of it is kind of a disaster. The guy who is collecting money just keeps it in a bag in his house. No transparency or accountability in terms of bill keeping. And many times families won’t pay their monthly fee and record keeping about who owes what is a mess. SO. After we finish writing a grant to finish the project, my next task is to set up a water committee and train them in how to run the program a little more efficiently, ie. Set up a bank account, enforce payments and initiating a proper book keeping system complete with receipts. Setting up and training a water committee should keep me busy for at least a month or so, right?

In other news, my tree project kind of fell through, so I’m going to start looking for free trees from some organizations in my area so I can do the reforestation campaign in the community. I know the school is interested in working on the project, and the men’s soccer team also wants to plant trees at the soccer field, so I may actually have some workers if I can get my hands on the trees!

Oh! And I got a new puppy! He’s still nameless, but I love him already. He’s 6 weeks old and weighs about 5lbs and is about the cutest dog I’ve ever seen in my life (after my shrimpy of course!). I’m hoping he’ll keep my busy and be good company out here in my site!!

Until next time,

“yorda”