We are funded! Thank you to Middletown
Rotary Club and District 7980 who provided matching funds. Thank you to Chinook
Rotary Club of Calgary, Canada.
On Valentine’s Day (February 14, 2013), the
pre-construction organizational meeting was held at Las Magueyes. In attendance
were 17 women, 7 men and 2 children of the Las Magueyes and La Palma
communities. The hard work of community development continued. Saul and Holly
of CEDESA were there and Saul began the meeting by greeting all and recognizing
San Miguel Midday Rotary members who were in attendance. Steve and Jim, members
of the Walla Walla, Washington Rotary Club came with Denis and me. They have
already made a down payment to be contributing members of our next water
harvesting project.
The first order of business in developing a
community is to guide the community members in learning how to run a meeting.
Saul teaches this brilliantly and with much patience. To begin, a meeting
leader and secretary were elected. The community leader then began to develop
the agenda for the day and reviewing the meeting notes from the last meeting. Each member of the community participated by proposing
a list of things to be discussed and decided before the next step, building the
pilot cistern, begins. Early in the meeting it was determined that three
families who had indicated a desire to have a cistern had not attended
pre-construction meetings and they had not shown the necessary intent required
to earn a cistern. After discussion amongst all of the community members, they
decided that only the 16 families that had done the work to deserve a cistern
would be included in the project. Alas, the project is now cut back to 16
cisterns. We are overfunded!
It is an appropriate decision to decide to
only do 16 of the potential 19 cisterns in this case. Persons/Families truly must
earn their cisterns through attending meetings and demonstrating responsibility
and willingness to do the work. There is significant time required for
construction and teams must believe that all participants will be there to do
the work, not only for their own cistern but also for the cisterns for every
other family represented on their work teams. I will now discuss what to do
with our international partners. I hope they will agree to apply the excess
funds to the next project. We already have a list of other communities with
dire need for safe and potable drinking water.
Rotary as a mechanism to bring water to
poorer marginalized communities has become recognized by the rural communities
of the San Miguel Municipality. At this meeting, five persons representing the
community of Ex-Hacienda de Pena Blanca came to request that we help them. This
is one of the poorest communities in our region and they have no water
whatsoever. For many months of the year, they have to take burros miles away to
collect water and return it to their community. The representatives of Pena
Blanca appealed to us to come visit them and see for ourselves the difficulties
they are facing. We will do that and we will support their efforts to obtain a
constant water source by encouraging them to become active participants in
COCIRA and earning their position in our list of those who have the gravest
needs. Their story was a heart wrenching one.
The Meeting Leader of the day (with the
soft coaching from Saul) formed three work teams to work together to complete
their cisterns. They decided to build a pilot cistern next week at the home of
Dona Beatriz. Members from all of the work teams will be there Monday to Friday
to build this cistern under the technical guidance of a CEDESA promoter. Rotary
will be visiting each day to document the progress and observe the process.
Once the pilot cistern is finished, the work groups will build the final
fifteen cisterns to complete this project.
It was greatly gratifying to see the
process take place and watch as life changing resources are being brought to
these communities through Rotary.
