Record of Meeting pg 1 of 2
10th Exploratory Mtg of the SMA Midday Rotary Water Project Committee
Where: CEDESA - Dolores
When: Thursday 23rd October 9am – 2pm
Who: Gary, Bob & Laura (Rotary), Holly Yasui, Chela Martinez, Tere Martinez (CEDESA)
Project Purpose - SMA Rotary has tasked Bob & Laura with defining the “needs” & determining the best proposal, for a major water Project involving the writing of a competitive grant for approx. US$100K.
Rationale: As part of the process of defining the “need” we will meet with as many people as possible that are directly involved in the provision of, or are aware of the need for the provision of, safe drinking water solutions to marginal communities.
Visit Purpose: For the project to have it’s greatest chance of success, the project team has determined we need to invest a significant amount of time in “mobilising” the community. i.e. getting them fully engaged & acting as driving partners of the project.
Rotary SMA Midday, is primarily an English speaking club & although we have the skills, expertise & experience (Bob Leonard is a world expert on Development) to implement this project, the difference in culture & language present difficulties.
CEDESA is a grass roots organisation that has been established & active for 40 years. They have a history of working with 120 rural (camposino) communities in the northern area of the State that SMA is in (Guanuajato). They have extensive training facilities & their primary focus is environmentally sustainable technologies & to assist people to thrive on the Land, & not be forced to move off the land, to the USA or subsist in urban communities.
This trip was to meet with the organisers of CEDESA & determine their suitability as mobilisation partners in this project.
Summary of Visit
We drove from SMA to CEDESA in Dolores (a nearby town), approx 1hr away. Holly is a volunteer that has been working with CEDESA to raise their profile & an awareness of what they can offer. She is bilingual & assisted with communication. We met with Chela & Tere – 2 sisters that (along with another woman, now passed) established this organisation in 1965 with a Catholic priest named Davalos.
We viewed a dvd which showed that they have been very active over the years, 1stly increasing literacy from 5% of the community to over 80%, & then helping to establish schools, training communities on environmental issues, including water collection & conservation. For 40 years they have been promoting the “art of living in the country”.
We were given a tour of their facilities, which involved grey water recycling, dry/composting toilets, water collection tanks, backyard gardens food production, hives for honey production & fields for large crops production.
Record of Meeting pg 2 of 2
10th Exploratory Mtg of the SMA Midday Rotary Water Project Committee
Currently they are hosting a diploma in water studies run by Dr Ortega of UNAM (Mexico’s largest university). It is held ever 2nd Saturday for 8 months. Included in
the course is a section on water testing & water filtration. They currently have a satellite laboratory set up to test water samples for Fluoride, arsenic, magnesium & will later test bacteria. This is of great benefit, as there is currently no access to water testing for the small communities.
The people running CEDESA are a very warm & caring group of people. They have the knack of being able to work with all strata of communities, from the indigenous people to the high level government. They thrive on empowering the people to take full control of their own issues & solutions.
Points of interest
They have “promoters” & “technicians” that visit the communities & assist with both social & technical aspects of the issues being resolved.
They have been active mostly north of Dolores but are interested in spreading their work south of Dolores in the SMA region
They are developing a new focus on the “family economy” enabling families to produce more than they need & have the balance for trade or sale.
From a Development perspective Bob believes they are “text book” examples of how to do it right.
Action:
We need to invite the women leaders of Los Torres to CEDESA to determine if Los Torres would like CEDESA’s help with this project. CEDESA (via Holly) will work on a suitable date & Laura & Judy (from Patronato Pro Ninos) will deliver the invitation.
