Friday, March 25, 2011

Desarollo Social building cisterns too!!

Desarrollo Social is the Social Development department of the local Municipal Government.

We have been working with Desarrollo Social for a couple of years now & have good news to report.

We (Saul & I) met with Desarrollo Social (Miguel, Estefan & Felipe) on 25th March.
Subject of the meeting was to collaborate on our cisterns projects.

Desarrollo Social have 2 cisterns projects in planning.
One as part of the Vivienda Sustentable project & a cisterns only project.

They will be constructing cisterns the same model as ours.
They would like to follow the Cedesa model, ie involve the communities in the labor component of the project but the funding comes with it's own set of stipulations as it is Federal funding.
This model will include the participants contributing 15% of the cost of the cisterns, & a contractor will be enlisted to manage the project & construct the cisterns.
The participants unable to afford the 15% contribution will be able to pay in installments & this will not hold up the construction.
They are planning 268 cisterns at this point.

We discussed which communities we were working with to ensure there was no overlap.
The Desarollo Social priority is given to communities with no water, as opposed to those with contaminated water.
The need is great, it's very good we're all working together on this!!!!