A Day at CEDESA
May 19, 2016
Yesterday,
after going to Nombre de Dios with Chela and Abel, we returned to CEDESA for
additional planning of our new global grant (GG1524911) for 319 more water
harvesting cisterns in San Miguel, Dolores Hidalgo, San Diego Union and San
Luiz de la Paz. Present were Chela, Abel, Meche, Benigno, and Ceci.
We reviewed
first the progress on the new education program and the principal objectives of
that program. Meche has been working hard with Wendy Coulson to develop the
program and didactic materials to go with that. We all agreed that in a
nutshell our goals are:
1.
Have people fully understand that the reason for
cisterns is lack of an improved water source or having water that is terribly
contaminated with fluoride and arsenic.
2.
Have people fully understand that the cistern
water is free from those poisons and they should never drink water from wells.
3.
Have people understand that they can improve
their water and health even more by integrating disinfection steps to improve
the cistern water and eliminate any biological contamination.
4.
Have people learn how to self-construct their
water harvesting system and maintain it to get maximum benefit from it.
Those are
our primary objectives for this project and grant. However we also will be
using this opportunity to continue develop the communities capacity to work
together to analyze their problems and seek solutions (resources). We want to build
on this opportunity so that they can take advantage of other opportunities such
as backyard gardens, medicinal medicine, beekeeping, and other eco-technologies
such as gray water filtering and the eco-cina stoves. We want the cistern projects
to be the first step in the long process of community empowerment.
The
education program is ready now to “put to the test” in the first communities.
We are going to start in Boca de Canada (San Miguel) in two weeks and then in
Las Claveles (Dolores) after that. We will present the didactic materials in
the “final draft” format and then make adjustments before going to press and
printing enough materials to carry us through the project.
Everyone is
enthusiastic and chomping at the bit to get started. They all want to work
through the summer rainy season in order to be able to harvest at least a
little rain before the dry weather returns in the fall. CEDESA is going to work
up a draft schedule next week so we can plan out each mini-project. They are
talking about doing as many as four different communities per month. Yikes,
that is going to be a lot of work for all of us!
As we worked
through potential pitfalls and bottlenecks in this ambitious program, we
realized that we would need another technician in addition to Benigno and
Abel to be able to do the site visits in each community during the construction
process. A great solution was devised that will also allow us to continue to
develop our youth program in the process. We will select a young person in each
community where we are working to become an expert in construction and
maintenance of the systems. This person will do the project monitoring
throughout the construction process and will be reporting and consulting with
Abel and/or Benigno as the mini-project proceeds. Instead of having a once a
week visit from the technician, we will have someone there overseeing the
construction on a daily basis as each group builds cisterns at each home. Once
the project is complete we will be leaving behind “a community expert” who can
continue to monitor cisterns and even assist in repairs as needed. We already
have a budget for an albanil for the pilot week. Since each group is now
obligated to provide an albanil throughout the mini-project including the pilot
cistern week, those funds can be used as a stipend for developing our new
community expert. CEDESA will be responsible for handling the payment process.
We also reviewed
the financial resources available in the grant so that we could come up with a
simplified billing plan. When we combine our organization budget with our education
teaching budget, we have 2,400 pesos for Pre-Pilot expenses. For the Pilot
stage of the project we have $4,750 in funds available. And for post-project
monitoring and evaluation we have 900 pesos available. We budgeted for 11
mini-projects as we were developing the project but as the number of cisterns
grew the number of mini-projects is likely to be 15 to 18 … thank heavens for
our contingency budget!
CEDESA is to
be responsible for tracking certain costs/expenses each month and reporting
them to us for reimbursement. They need to record all KM driven in CEDESA
vehicles in executing the projects to be reimbursed a 3.5 pesos / KM. They also
need to keep all tickets from using public transportation so that can be
reimbursed as well up to a total of $9000 for the project. We will also be
providing an $800 peso phone allowance per month to be split up between the
various promotors and technicians.
Equipment: We need to
get the new vehicle as soon as possible. Rotary has $5,000 dollars to
contribute to that. CEDESA has 30,000 pesos set aside as well. We are going to
purchase one “very good” vehicle that will last many years into the future for
project monitoring. We are going to invest about 10,000 pesos of that money in
upgrading an existing vehicle. Even with two new vehicles in play,
transportation will still be a headache for CEDESA. The electrode in the
fluoride testing laboratory has failed and we are looking into replacing that.
Initial quotations that Meche got are expensive … about US$1,500. We had not
counted on needing this within the time frame of this grant. We will probably
reduce our “tools” budget to get this back on-line and I will try to see if we
can find outside resources to help cover this unexpected expense.
We are
working to be able to get the communities on the edges of San Diego Union and
San Luis de la Paz involved in this grant. To do so, the two “subgroups” will
have to work under UCCANG. UCCANG is responsible for carrying out several
functions … community selection, receiving solicitudes and providing monitoring
and evaluation for six months after the construction phase. Integrating them
into UCCANG does not seem to be a problem. The two subgroups are SECOPA (Servicios Comunitarios de Pozos Ademada – San
Diego Union) and CUVA (Comunidades Unidas Para La Vida y Agua – San Jose
Iturbide).
Recently a
well in the San Jose Iturbide area, in the community of La Cantera, was
discovered to have radioactivity in the water. There has been a high rate of
documented child leukemia in that town as well. Dr. Ortega of UNAM is studying
the problem to determine if this is an isolated instance of industrial
contamination or if it is going to be as a result of the ever-challenging problems
we are facing in the aquifer. There are 120 affected families and the
government is, of course, denying that there is a problem.
Submitted by:
Lee Carter