Microbusiness in Africa funded by an ADU water purification system in Guatemala?!?!?

I am sitting here in my room at 11:30pm, basking in another glorious day of work for Healing Waters in Guatemala.

The day started at 8:30 am when I met up with the group again from Northern Arizona University. They were headed to the airport, but had a stop planned at one of our Healing Waters International/Aguas de Unidad systems so they could see our work in action after hearing about what we do last night over dinner. We caravaned to the water system in San Lucas and spent about 30 minutes touring the system and talking with the pastor at the church where the system is co-located.

Photo of group from Northern Arizona University in front of the Healing Waters/Aguas de Unidad system in San Lucas

For those of you that don't know the Healing Waters model, we install a small scale water purification plant in a church in a poor community. We then train and empower the church to run the water plant as a micro-business. They charge a very small fee for the water, that is accessible to the poorest in the communities, but it is enough to make the water system self-sustaining and create a job in the community. At the end of the month, if the water system has a net revenue, half of it goes to the Aguas de Unidad office in the country where the water system is operated to help off-set our operational costs, and the other half the church is required to reinvest in community service. Typically a church will pick local community service projects that are in the community where the church is located.

While we were visiting the San Lucas system today, we learned that the church there had taken the net revenue from the water purification system and used it to help support some micro-loans in Kenya Africa. Imagine a poor church in a poor community with a vision to serve even poorer communities in Africa through micro-loans to start small businesses. What an amazing testament to both the Healing Waters model and this church with an incredible vision! I cannot wait to share more about this exciting story as I learn more about it.

The group from NAU left, and Juan, Mario and I went a few block away to a tortilleria and a small store that sells chile rellenos. Imagine a delcious, home-made chile relleno that is wrapped up in fresh, hot corn tortilla. DELICIOUS! I took a few photos of the women making the corn tortillas for you to see below.

After that we drove about 45 minutes to a small orphanage that has requested a water project from Healing Waters International. This orphanage serves about 30 children and is up on a hillside overlooking a village. We discovered that another non-profit had previously installed a water system at the orphanage, but no one had done any maintenance or cartridge replacements on the system for at least four years. The series of photos below shows the dirty cartridge we removed and replaced and some other parts of a broken filter.

This is a perfect example of a well-intentioned non-profit who recognized the need for safe drinking water at the orphanage and tried to deal with it, but did not take sustainability in to account and did not effectively train and equip the local community to clean and replace the cartridges, or provide any recurring funds for maintenance and replacement parts. Sadly, if you install a water filter and then don't clean/replace the filter catridges on a regular basis, the water that comes out of the filter is actually even worse off, because the old cartridge can create a colony for nasty bacteria and can actually concentrate toxins and biological contaminants in the water rather than remove them.

So we replaced the filter cartridge and cleaned the whole system. It felt good to be in the field actually doing some direct practice work and Mario and Juan are amazing guys to work with!

After visiting the orphanage we headed back to the Aguas de Unidad office in Guatemala where I got caught up on e-mail and did some other work.

At 5:00pm, Mario and I headed in to Anitigua to meet with Ron Gunter of Florida Baptist Children's Homes. We are hoping to enter in to a strategic partnership with this organization. They are the ones that introduced us to the orphanage we had visited earlier in the day. We shared our findings with them relative to the orphanage and the water system that was already installed there. We explained to them that with the addition of one or two more filters and some routine maintenance, the filter that we found at the orphanage would work great. We agreed to continue working together to find a safe drinking water solution for the orphanage and surrounding community and Mario and Ron will be working together in the future.

Our meeting there ended at 6:30, and I returned to the hotel and relaxed for an hour before leaving for dinner with Mario, and a fun evening on the town in Antigua.

Now I am exhausted and ready for bed. Another phenomenal day in Guatemala, and the group from Wellshire Presbyterian Church in Denver arrives tomorrow. I will post updates and posts from that trip each night, so stay tuned!