Friday, June 26, 2015

Closing Ceremony Vivienda de Abajo

Yesterday we celebrated the completion of 10 cisterns in Vivienda de Abajo. Nine cisterns were in family homes and one was at the secondary school. This is the last cistern that we plan to build in a public space until we have a program in place to ensure maintenance and proper use. The development process for building a “public” cistern that must be maintained by a group or committee is very different than the process of building privately owned cisterns.

Attending were 15 families from Vivienda that are still participating in COCIRA. These persons are involved in other CEDESA promoted projects such as backyard gardening, health clinics & home health training, and bee keeping. Overall there were about 40 persons in attendance and a wonderful lunch (especially wonderful green mole) was served. 

New members to COCIRA seeking Rotary resources were in attendance from Nombre de Dios, San Lorenzo, Boca de Canada and Ex-Hacienda de Pena Blanca.

Chela, Mayra, Saul and Mago were representing CEDESA. Lee Carter was there from Rotary San Miguel Midday. As this was Saul’s last official day as a CEDESA promotor, he cut the inaugural ribbon.

It is interesting to see how some projects go better than others, but I still am not sure how to predict a project’s outcome. This project is one of the best we have had during this grant. All of the cisterns are well constructed, connected and in good service. On the other hand, we still need to go back and do remedial work on about one-half of the cisterns in Banda. I will be talking with CEDESA about sending a technical representative to Banda in the next several weeks to finish up that project so that we finish there with 100% of the collection systems functional and collecting the summer rains. We have determined that having a good and responsible albanil (experienced construction worker) as a part of the work group is very important.


Submitted by Lee Carter, Rotary San Miguel Midday
























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