Celebration Salitrillo 10 December 2016

Today the Community of Salitrillo celebrated the completion of its cistern project.

Started in September, Salitrillo built eight cisterns with the pilot cistern being built at the home of Señora Cecilia Luna Rosas.  The project team was comprised of seven women and two men.  

Salitrillo is located west of San Miguel de Allende a short distance from the old road to Guanajuato.

The project begun with the project team attending a three-day training program which consisted of learning about the importance of the project and clean water, how to build a cistern and how to properly maintain the system in the future to ensure continued pure water.  The training program was conducted by a team from CEDESA.  The format of the three-day training program is a recent addition to the project.

The community then went on to jointly construct their cisterns.

Today's program consisted of comments on the project by each of the project team members, Lee Carter (project manager for the Rotary Club of San Miguel de Allende Mid-Day Club) & by Chela Martinez (of CEDESA, the founding partner of these ongoing water projects - CEDESA is a non-profit organization which conducts the training and provides technical support for the project).  

Members of the project team each received a Certificate of Completion from CEDESA and Lee.  Following a beautiful song by those in attendance, the ribbon cutting ceremony was conducted by Chela, Lee and Fred Collins, (President-elect, Rotary Club SMA Mid-day).

Following the official ceremony, a great meal of mole chicken and rice.  Cake was enjoyed by all especially the children.

The communities of Alonso Yanez, Presa Allende, Begoña de Progreso and Boca de la Cañada, were represented, many members of COCIRA joined in for the festivities, along with Mayra & Hilda, CEDESA promotors from Coralejos, 7 San Miguel Midday Rotarians, 2 visitors to SMA & a member of the Rotary Club of Somerville Tennessee.

Submitted by John Wallace (Rotary Club of Somerville Tennessee)

Celebration Charco de Araujo October 29, 2016

Today we celebrated the completion of 14 cisterns & 3 tinacos in the community of Charco de Araujo. 

This community is near San Diego de La Union & is the first community we have worked with this far north for several years. The area of eastern Dolores Hidalgo, San Diego de La Union & San Luis de la Paz has some of the most contaminated water in the Aquifer. It is for this reason that Rotary San Miguel Midday took the decision to expand its geographical service area with this grant for 319 water harvesting cisterns.

The rural grassroots organization, UCCANG, is working as a partner with CEDESA & Rotary in these projects. UCCANG was founded approx. 35 years ago to work to resolve the issue of lack of potable water resources in the northern part of Guanajuato. They are well organized & managed by a board of directors from those communities. UCCANG helps us identify communities that are requesting cisterns & play a critical role in the project in addition to choosing beneficiary families. 

They have the responsibility of inspecting & verifying all cisterns are in 100% working condition before we have our community celebrations. They are also going to make a formal review six months later to follow up on maintenance issues & recommendations for cistern water disinfection. This is critical to the long term success of these projects.

Seven UCCANG communities attended today’s event. The program for the day included testimonials from the beneficiary families describing their experience in self-constructing their cisterns in work groups each consisting of 7 families. All of the communities in attendance performed songs or dances that remembered their cultural traditions. A wonderful meal, including carnitas (!), capped off the day.

In attendance were:

Chela, Ceci, Benigno and Meche from CEDESA, UCCANG directors & members of the local communities.  Nate, Fred, Beatriz, Gary, Wendy (who developed the project’s education program), Lee, & two guests from Rotary Midday, Carla Cadena (a Jovenes Adelante Scholar who is doing social service in helping administer the project), Edgarkis Crisostomo, (a Rotary Foundation Water & Sanitation Cadre volunteer from the Dominican Republic - who conducted extensive interviews with CEDESA representatives) came with us also.

After the event we all went to La Colorada, down the road, to see their progress in their project.

Submitted by: Lee Carter

Eight Cisterns in Eight Weeks | Salitrillo Cistern Project

Wrapping Up   - 22nd Sept 2016

The cistern project in Salitrillo is well and truly underway. The Pilot cistern at the home of Señora Cecilia Luna Rosas is finished except for a curing period to set the concrete. 

Meanwhile the second cistern of eight which make up the first phase of the Salitrillo project is just about ready for its “gorro” or roof. At this point, the build team of seven women and two men are on their own except for weekly visits from Señor Abel, the technical advisor from CEDESA.

This year the Rotary San Miguel Midday Club working with the Rotary Action Group for Water and Sanitation (WASRAG) introduced an innovation in the cistern construction process: plastic wrap! 

As with any ferro-cement structure, cement must be allowed to cure slowly to prevent cracking and to attain its maximum structural strength. Normally ferro-cement structures are “watered”, sprayed down with water on a daily basis, for a period of days or weeks to make sure that the cement sets up slowly and remains crack-free. 

Needless to say this involves both careful attention to the watering schedule and the use of water which is then wasted. 

Hence, the use of plastic wrap. By wrapping the entire structure in a double layer of industrial sized plastic wrap (think kitchen plastic wrap on a grand scale), the cisterns wall and roof can undergo a slow curing period with much less care and feeding, and with virtually no wasted water.

Though it may seem modest, it’s important to place Salitrillo’s cistern project in perspective. The eight Salitrillo cisterns are among a total of 819 cisterns constructed since 2008. Each cistern collects 12,000 liters of rainwater when full. If you do the math, CEDESA and COCIRA, Project Beneficiaries and Rotary San Miguel Midday have created an amazing above ground reservoir capable of holding a whopping 9,828,000 liters of potable water storage. 

Think about that for a minute. 10 million liters is approximately 3 million gallons or roughly four Olympic sized swimming pools of water captured each year for the drinking and cooking needs of people living within the area of the Independencia aquifer.

When the current Global Grant is completed in the spring of 2017, a total of 1,092 cisterns will have been built representing an investment of over $10,000,000 pesos ($550,000 USD). Total rainwater collection capacity will top 13 million liters. And the geographic area serviced by the combined Rotary projects will include the communities surrounding San Miguel de Allende, San Diego de la Union, Dolores Hidalgo and San Luis de la Paz.

Guest post by Roger Brudno.

Nombre de Dios Cistern Project Completion Celebration – August 13, 2016

Approximately 50 people - friends & neighbors - came together today to celebrate the completion of the last of five cisterns. 

The night was full of rain & the road there was sometimes good & sometimes a muddy slip-sliding mess, but a 90 minute drive got us there. The day was overcast with a breeze & chairs were set up in a large circle under a large Mesquite tree. The view to the west to get to Guanajuato was beautiful. Everything green from recent rains. The cisterns already had 2 feet of water.

After thanks to the people coming, CEDESA, COCIRA, & Rotary Club Midday, the people all held hands & gave (one at a time) thanks. Some took longer but you were allowed to pass the “prayer” to the next person. 

The nice thing about travelling is seeing how people are the same but different. This prayer circle was a perfect example. They all held hands left under and right over. After “prayer” we all went to three cisterns close by & had ribbon cutting with the owners. 

One elderly woman, instead of materials for a cistern, received a tinaco (large plastic container) because she would not be able to do the work of building a cistern. 

Lunch was a potluck type where all families come together with rice, tortilla, mole, beans, macaroni & ham, beef, horchata (a rice drink with cinnamon), & pineapple water.

Lee Carter, Nate Fultz, Beatriz Salcedo from Rotary attended as did Carla Cadena, intern/administrator of GG1524911.

Guest Report by Nate Fultz, President Midday Rotary Club SMA

A Day at CEDESA

May 19, 2016

Yesterday, after going to Nombre de Dios with Chela and Abel, we returned to CEDESA for additional planning of our new global grant (GG1524911) for 319 more water harvesting cisterns in San Miguel, Dolores Hidalgo, San Diego de la Union & San Luis de la Paz. 

Present were Chela, Abel, Meche, Benigno, and Ceci.

We reviewed first the progress on the new education program & the principal objectives of that program. Meche has been working hard with Wendy Coulson to develop the program & didactic materials to go with that. We all agreed that in a nutshell our goals are to have people fully understand

1.       the reason for cisterns is lack of an improved water source or having water that is terribly contaminated with fluoride and arsenic.

2.      the cistern water is free from those poisons & they should never drink water from wells.

3.        they can improve their water & health even more by integrating disinfection steps to improve the cistern water & avoid any potential biological contamination &

4.       have people learn how to self-construct their water harvesting system & maintain it to get maximum benefit from it.

Those are our primary objectives for this project &grant. However we also will be using this opportunity to continue to develop the communities' capacity to work together to analyze their problems & seek solutions (resources). 

We'd like to build on this opportunity so that they can take advantage of other opportunities such as backyard gardens, natural medicine, beekeeping, & other eco-technologies such as gray water filtering & the eco-cina stoves. We'd like the cistern projects to continue to be the first step in the long process of community empowerment.

The education program is ready now to “beta test” in the first communities. We are going to start in Boca de la Cañada (San Miguel) in two weeks & then in Las Claveles (Dolores) after that. 

We will present the didactic materials in the “final draft” format & then make adjustments before going to press & printing enough materials to carry us through the project.

Everyone in the communities are enthusiastic & champing at the bit to get started. They all want to work through the summer rainy season in order to be able to harvest at least a little rain before the dry weather returns in the fall. 

CEDESA is going to work up a draft schedule next week so we can plan out each mini-project. They are talking about doing as many as four different communities per month. Yikes, that is going to be a lot of work for all of us!

As we worked through potential pitfalls & bottlenecks in this ambitious program, we realized that we would need another technician in addition to Benigno & Abel to be able to do the site visits in each community during the construction process. 

A great solution was devised that will also allow us to continue to develop our youth program in the process. We will select a young person in each community where we are working to become an expert in construction & maintenance of the systems. This person will do the project monitoring throughout the construction process & will be report & consult with Abel &/or Benigno as the mini-project proceeds. Instead of having a once a week visit from the technician, we will have someone there overseeing the construction on a daily basis as each group builds cisterns at each home. 

Once the project is complete we will be leaving behind “a community expert” who can continue to monitor cisterns & even assist in repairs as needed. We already have a budget for an albanil for the pilot week. Since each group is now obligated to provide an albanil throughout the mini-project including the pilot cistern week, those funds can be used as a stipend for developing our new community expert. CEDESA will be responsible for handling the payment process.

We also reviewed the financial resources available in the grant so that we could come up with a simplified billing plan. When we combine our organization budget with our education teaching budget, we have 2,400 pesos for Pre-Pilot expenses. For the Pilot stage of the project we have $4,750 in funds available. And for post-project monitoring & evaluation we have 900 pesos available. 

We budgeted for 11 mini-projects as we were developing the project but as the number of cisterns grew the number of mini-projects is likely to be 15 to 18 … thank heavens for our contingency budget!

CEDESA is to be responsible for tracking certain costs/expenses each month & reporting them to Rotary for reimbursement. They need to record all KM driven in CEDESA vehicles in executing the projects to be reimbursed @ 3.5 pesos / KM. They also need to keep all tickets from using public transportation so that can be reimbursed as well up to a total of $9000 for the project. We will also be providing an $800 peso phone allowance per month to be split up between the various promotors & technicians.

Equipment: We need to get the new vehicle as soon as possible. Rotary has $5,000 dollars to contribute to that. CEDESA has 30,000 pesos set aside as well. We are going to purchase one “very good” vehicle that will last many years into the future for project monitoring. We are going to invest about 10,000 pesos of that money in upgrading an existing vehicle. Even with two new vehicles in play, transportation will still be a headache for CEDESA. 

The electrode in the fluoride testing laboratory has failed & we are looking into replacing that. Initial quotations that Meche got are expensive … about US$1,500. We had not counted on needing this within the time frame of this grant. We will probably reduce our “tools” budget to get this back on-line &I will try to see if we can find outside resources to help cover this unexpected expense.

We are working to be able to get the communities on the edges of San Diego de la Union & San Luis de la Paz involved in this grant. To do so, the two “subgroups” will have to work under UCCANG. 

UCCANG is responsible for carrying out several functions … community selection, receiving solicitudes & for providing monitoring and evaluation for six months after the construction phase. Integrating them into UCCANG does not seem to be a problem. The two subgroups are SECOPA (Servicios Comunitarios de Pozos Ademada – San Diego Union) and CUVA (Comunidades Unidas Para La Vida y Agua – San Jose Iturbide).

Recently a well in the San Jose Iturbide area, in the community of La Cantera, was discovered to have radioactivity in the water. There has been a high rate of documented child leukemia in that town as well. Dr. Ortega of UNAM is studying the problem to determine if this is an isolated instance of industrial contamination or if it is going to be as a result of the ever-challenging problems we are facing in the aquifer. There are 120 affected families & the government is, of course, denying that there is a problem.

Submitted by: Lee Carter

And So It Begins...GG1524911 Progress Report – April 10, 2016

We are full forces ahead in getting our new Global Grant for US$199,400 for the next 319 water harvesting systems in the Independence Aquifer. 

The first step in this grant is to develop a comprehensive education program to teach beneficiaries about water & water safety. The program also includes cistern construction & maintenance.

We have contracted with Wendy Coulson, a professional curriculum writer & an experienced teacher in the Waldorf method to help us develop the program but more importantly the teaching methods to use in making this program as effective as possible. Wendy is also a Rotary Peace Scholar.

Alejandro Guerra & Lee Carter have been working with Wendy for several weeks in filling in the blanks for the program. CEDESA has been consulted constantly as they will be the “teacher” &their buy-in & enthusiasm is critical for the success of the program.

On Wednesday, April 6^th, Alejandro, Wendy & I traveled to CEDESA headquarters to present our final “draft”. At this point the didactic method is written down on paper & we wanted to hear from CEDESA & UCCANG about how to proceed. In addition to that, we wanted to discuss the didactic materials that we will develop along with this. Present from CEDESA were Chela Martinez, Director, Meche Paramo, coordinator for COCIRA,  Cecilia Vazquez, Coordinator for UCCANG, & Abel Seratze, Cedesa technician for cistern construction. Araceli Rojas, President of UCCANG also joined us.

It was a long day in project planning as well as presentation of the education program. We arrived at 9:00 am & finished at 5:00 pm. I felt very anxious that CEDESA be truly excited about the education program. Upon leaving we all felt that we were right on track & we had very valuable input from CEDESA throughout the day. Wendy is following up with Meche about various details next week. Once everyone’s input is incorporated in our plan, we will have our next project planning meeting on Friday, April 22 at CEDESA. We will be finalizing the education plan & also planning out the details of the grant including the communities where we will start, billing and administrative issues, & so forth.

This project will be a lot of work but it will be a lot of fun as well. I have seen both Meche & Abel since that meeting &I have been communicating with Ceci also. All three have independently said how excited they are with the new education program. I think we are doing well.

Lee Carter

Rotary San Miguel Midday

March 28, 2016 COCIRA DIRECTOR’S MEETING CIENEGA DE JUANA RUIZ

10:00 am CIENEGA DE JUANA RUIZ

Today Lee Carter, Rotary, traveled to meet with the Directors of COCIRA & talk about the newly approved Global Grant (GG1524911) for 319 more cisterns in San Miguel, Dolores Hidalgo & San Diego Union. 

The grant is for US$199,400 (approx. MXN3,500,000).

There were approx 29 people present incl. Meche from CEDESA. After everyone presented themselves, we had a moment of reflection before beginning the meeting. A meeting leader was elected as well as the Secretary of the Day. Following that the agenda & a time schedule for finishing the meeting by 2:30 was established.

Meche emphasized the importance of COCIRA to continue to develop its independence & to look at CEDESA & Rotary as resources while they made their own decisions in things that affected the organization.

Lee Carter announced that the next grant for 319+ cisterns had been approved & explained that the Rotary Foundation would like to have a MOU with COCIRA and UCCANG in addition to CEDESA. This is important as it formalizes all of the responsibilities that COCIRA has been taking on over the course of the last water project. Lee presented the list of responsibilities that he recommended for the MOU & after discussing them in detail, COCIRA was in favor of all.

COCIRA for its part is asking Rotary to provide them with the didactic materials developed for the new grant so that they can use these as they continue to evaluate all of the cisterns built since 2008. COCIRA is committed to completing their role in the whole water harvesting process. As we have budgeted printing hundreds of extra copies of didactic materials in the next grant, I believe that we can provide them with what they need without having to increase our printing budget or seeking additional funding outside of the grant.

COCIRA further discussed the “rules & guidelines” that they would like to place on beneficiary families including a simple contract between COCIRA & the beneficiary that they would complete their obligations & work. Other rules were suggested that would ensure that beneficiaries completed their obligations in both the education program & in the construction process.

It is a great pleasure seeing COCIRA carrying out their role with such vigor & enthusiasm to ensure that this next project will be a great success.

Lee Carter

Rotary San Miguel Midday