Water Info Day 36th Event of the SMA Midday Rotary Water Project Los Torres

Record of Event pg 1 of 2
36th Event of the SMA Midday Rotary Water Project Los Torres

Where: Los Torres Primary School – Water Information Day
When: 5th March 11-2pm
Who: Chela, Holly, Gerardo (Holly’s partner) + Jesus (Cedesa), Laura (San Miguel Midday), Laura, Tony & Caroline, representing SMA Midday Rotary, Jonathan Murray (visiting Rotarian from Nova Scotia), Jim Grant – representing San Miguel Community Foundation (SMCF) & later Julio, from Ecology Department.

Purpose/ Objective:
To inform the kids at Los Torres Primary of the issues re water in their region, at home & at school, & make them responsible guardians of the water in the cisterns at their school.

Many of the children have parents involved in the water project, & have already been educated by their parents as to the importance of water conservation, turning taps off tightly etc.

Jesus has been working with Cedesa & has put a plan together for the Water Info day. He provided me with a very comprehensive planning paper in Spanish. (I have this on file).

Description of the day:
Laura & the visitors met at the Fabrica Aurora car park & drove in 2 vehicles to Los Torres.

We arrived in Los Torres about 10.50 & found a hive of action. People were already at their “stations”, tables were set up with women ready to serve food (later), & Jesus was buzzing around making sure people knew the plan & their roles in it.

The visitors were immediately put to work assembling the bracelets (mentioned below), they joked about being qualified or not, since we had lawyers, a teacher & a surgeon amongst us!

Gerardo was at the ready with water bottles to hand out to the kids. The water bottles served as both prizes for attending & participating, but also as a method to conserve water. The kids did not previously use water bottles at school, when they were thirsty they went to the tap & slurped the water as it gushed past! By giving them all bottles, we hope they fill them (without waste) & drink more water as a result.

The groups had been created, 7 x 12, & each group came out of the classroom, lined up & received their water bottles.

Marker pens were passed around & the kids wrote their names on their bottles...

Each group went to each of the 7 stations to begin the “rally”.

At each of the stations was a small team of adults, a devil, an angel & a leader. The leader talked about the topic of the station, eg the hydrolic cycle, or salt water v fresh water on Earth, or methods of conserving water, or sources of water in their community...

The kids had to answer the questions correctly & receive a “bead”, the devil was their to tempt them with the wrong answers & the angel the opposite!

After each of the groups had visited all 7 tables, their beads were tallied up & the winning team were rewarded with the position of Guardian of Water (with a bracelet to signify their position), others were also given the opportunity to volunteer for the role of Guardian, & were voted by their peers, the top 6 contenders also joined the Guardian team... About 10 kids volunteered for the role!

While all this was going on, the kinder kids arrived & joined in, & there were many young kids & babies also running around, these guys were all very happy to receive a water bottle too, & within minutes were rushing to fill them from the cisterns, I hovered at the cisterns for a while to see how they did, & they were all very specific about turning the tap on & off & not wasting a drop!

I noticed they have also put small containers under the taps to catch any drips, & then use these to water the plants (their idea!).

One of the Teachers at the school participated, & the others watched with smiling faces.
Record of Event pg 2 of 2

At the conclusion of the rally, once the winners were awarded their bracelets, Concha & Saul, showed a big poster they had created to describe the water situation in Los Torres historically, Concha spoke loudly & well & involved all the kids, who yelled answers back to her questions... I congratulated her later & she admitted that 4 of the women had stayed up til midnight the night before to finish the poster, & that she’d had lots of practice yelling in her life, which was why she was so good at speaking loudly to the crowd of kids!

I couldn’t believe how involved these kids were in the day, at school events in my past, I’ve seen kids running around like mad things just to be outside, these guys were very quiet, & interested & took the whole process very seriously, but at the same time had a lot of laughs with Jesus playing the clown...

When it was all finished, the mums set up food stations & handed out delicious nutritious food to everyone, tostadas with refried beans & lettuce & cheese, tacos with soya, tomato, cilantro & onion, & other yummy snacks. We all ate lots!

Tony was called into duty to help remove a flat tyre Julio discovered when he went to leave. He met Rafael (one of the Los Torres cistern expert team) & between 4 guys managed to get the tyre replaced... Something about oxidised nuts making the process harder!

This day far exceeded my expectations – it was very professionally executed, the kids learnt a lot, & proved how much they already knew! All ages participated, even the littlies knew more than the big ones in some cases... & most importantly they all had fun!

It was great to see the kids leaving sipping on water from their new bottles, instead of the usual soda’s or plastic bags filled with cordial...


Everyone headed home tired & full, a good day was had by all!

Next event 24th March – Los Torres Assembly.

See photos at this link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lauramex/WaterProjectLTWaterInfoDay2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCOTh-J_ytbaHyAE&feat=directlink