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

Project Update July 23, 2016

The project (1624911) has been moving along at break neck speed!

We have now presented the education program 3 times: Boca de la Cañada, Charco de Araujo, La Colorada. 

This week I went with Ceci (CEDESA) to observe the final day of the program in La Colorada. Universally the beneficiaries are finding the program both helpful & also very fun. A number of people told me that they thought spending three days in water education was going to be boring & too much time. However, after experiencing the program, they are all very excited & relate that they understand much better now the water problems of the region & why the cisterns are so important. 

We are administering a Pre-education questionnaire & a Post-education questionnaire so that we can measure the success of the education program. I look forward to reporting those results at a later date.

We have cisterns under construction in Charco de Araujo (14 cisterns & 3 tinacos), La Colorada (24), & Boca de la Cañada (21) now. 

We have used all of the special caliber chicken wire from our vendor, Hierro Comercial, & are now waiting for it to be re-stocked. It is a special factory order & will take from four to six weeks to be restocked. This is OK as we are at a point that we need to review our progress to date & take care of many details. 

We hope to have the final version of the Water Education Manual finished & ready to go to the printer late next week. We are moving forward on the second draft of the Cistern Construction & Maintenance Manual next week. 

We still have not found a suitable truck for CEDESA & without it, getting CEDESA promotors & technicians to the project sites has been a challenge. With this respite in construction, I hope we can get these important details completed in the next few weeks. 

Next Thursday we will have a planning meeting at CEDESA to reschedule the project details & resolve questions about the next phases of the project.

Lee Carter - Rotary San Miguel Midday

Charco de Araujo, San Diego de la Union June 21 to June 23, 2016

After many meetings & lots of hard work on the part of CEDESA, COCIRA, UCCANG & Rotary under the guiding hands of Wendy Coulson; our expert in curriculum & adult teaching methods, the first five modules of the education program were presented in Charco de Araujo. 

The program is very hands-on & participatory so it is much more than just a presentation.

There was much enthusiasm among the participants with several persons proclaiming that EVERY person in the community should have an opportunity to learn all of this!

Overall, we are very pleased. We are now teaching at Boca de la Cañada in San Miguel & next week Wendy & I will meet to review & talk about revisions to the curriculum & also the manual which is in its "almost final draft" form. 

I will let the photos tell the story. Enjoy - Lee

ENCUENTRO CULTURAL CHARCO DE ARUAJO

MAY 7, 2016

About 250 campesinos gathered today in Charco de Aruajo to celebrate the culture of the Cuenca de Independencia & talk about the “defense of the territory” & other problems facing the rural inhabitants of our region. 

Over 20 communities were represented from San Miguel, Dolores, San Diego de la Union & San Luis de la Paz. All are members of either UCCANG or COCIRA – grassroots campesino organizations working together to protect their land, their rights & their water.

Fifty-seven members of the San Miguel based COCIRA arrived by bus that was generously supplemented by a special donation of the Rotary Club of Simi Sunrise. 8 promotors & Chela from CEDESA were in attendance. All the rest were members of UCCANG.

We began at 10am with an indigenous ceremony that recognized the four winds & the four elements of life. After that a panel of three persons, Chela (CEDESA), Araceli (UCCANG) & Jesusa from San Miguel  spoke about the importance of protecting the “territory”, using native seeds in the planting of corn, fighting to have agua “limpia” & the other outside influences that are degrading the life in the rural areas. 

Four work tables (discussion groups) were set up to discuss: Water & Health, Defense of the Territory, Saving the native planting & over 60 varieties of corn & saving the flora & fauna of the campo. Each group was instructed to devise specific activities that could be taken immediately to save the cultural roots of the communities.

Several persons offered entertainment in the form of songs, poems & special “felicidades” to the mothers in honor of Mother’s Day. Many wonderful story boards were on display showing the history of UCCANG, CEDESA, the Northern Guanajuato Beekeepers Association

As always a wonderful lunch was served by members of the community.