We have been lucky to recently join efforts with the Philadelphia Global Water Initiative (PGWI).  A bit about PGWI, from their website:

The Philadelphia Global Water Initiative (PGWI) is a group of interested organizations and individuals committed to helping to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals for water/sanitation throughout the world. It includes among its members the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Water Department, Water for People, Aqua America, Pennoni Associates, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Uhl, Baron, Rana and Associates, the United Nations Association – Greater Philadelphia Chapter, Meta Quality of Life Improvement Foundation, Traveling Mercies, Keiyo Soy Ministries, the Delaware River Basin Commission, and Rotary District 7450. 

In August, fellow board member Jerica Youngken and I attended our first PGWI meeting where we introduced Water for Waslala and met representatives from numerous Philadelphia-based organizations that are working on issues and projects related to water. Recently, PGWI published their annual report: Philadelphia Heroes in the Global Fight for Clean Water and Sanitation. It is inspiring to read about so many organizations in the Philadelphia area who are working to ensure access to clean drinking water and sanitation around the world. Water for Waslala is featured on pages 28-29 of the report.

We look forward to working with PGWI in the future. Stay tuned for more details about our involvement in their annual conference, Measures of Success: Performance Indicators for Drinking Water Projects in the Developing World, in April, 2012 at the University of Pennsylvania.

A tornado?!

Bueeeeeeeeeeeno… a tornado occurring in the roller-coaster topography of Waslala does indeed seem freakish, but having such an interruption occur at the culmination of a project that’s experienced many setbacks (such as having the cable from a suspended crossing stolen late one night) didn’t feel that anomalous. Early the following morning, I traveled to the community, and sure enough the evidence suggested that a tornado had indeed passed through, with trees uprooted and chunks of roofs missing within only a narrow corridor. I found Don Serapio, who would later be hosting the inauguration festivities in his home, along with his family, continuing to clear fallen trees (whilst salvaging the relatively easy pickins’ for much needed firewood that essentially all Waslala campo families utilize for cooking). The inauguration, at Don Serapio’s insistence, proceeded as planned.

I begin with this story to highlight the resilience (and resourcefulness) of the Waslalan people, and to bring to light some of the odd weather events and frequent uprooting of trees that  indirectly point to some global environmental issues that cannot be ignored as we try to implement water supply projects in Waslala. If the wet season has been dry this past year in Waslala, the dry season has been, well, parched (in a still more green and lush than, say, Nevada, sort of a way), with reports of water sources yielding their lowest output in memory. In the present focal community, El Guabo, the system’s dry season source flow had decreased from the previous year. In Piedras Blancas, another WfW-supported community, a river reportedly dried up completely for the first time. All the viejos say that “it don’t rain like it ‘usta.’”

While I can’t show rainfall trends in the area over the past how-ever-many years, I would like to share some figures widely cited online regarding another phenomenon that has likely contributed to diminishing water supplies: deforestation. On a national level, Nicaragua has lost some 50% of its forest cover since 1950, with 21% disappearing between 1990 and 2005 alone. In 1998, a presidential decree outlawed the logging of some precious woods for five years, including cedar and mahogany.

In Waslala, people recall as far back as the 1970s the extensive logging of precious lumber, with truckloads of logs often leaving at night. The process let up a little during the war-torn 1980s, but started up again in full force in the 1990s. Today, the logging industry doesn’t affect Waslala as drastically as other parts of Nicaragua. However, the clearing of woodlands for cattle pasture is a process that’s developed in its place in subsequent years.

Reforestation activity during water committees' workshop

Efforts are being made at both the national and municipal levels to confront the issue. Sections of Waslala lie within BOSAWAS (in the mountains above Santa Maria Kubali, another WfW community that happens to have an abundant water supply), the largest nature reserve in Central America, and presumably third largest in the world. The mayor’s office facilitates a municipal environmental committee that is composed of representatives from different institutions (including the Pastoral del Agua).   Together they’re working on a municipality-wide reforestation plan.

El Guabo's Modesta and Lupe working with Virginia and university students to prepare temporary tree nursery

Water for Waslala recognizes the long-term risks that deforestation poses to the sustainability of community water supplies in Waslala, and is beginning to incorporate reforestation as a necessary component in the implementation of water supply projects. We’re now beginning to ask communities to develop reforestation plans as a prerequisite for considering the community for water system construction.  Our project facilitator/promoter Virginia is helping communities with both existing and potential future water systems start to elaborate these plans. Reforestation was among the principal areas of focus during our first Waslala-wide water committee capacity-building workshop in April.

Finally, to commence the real nitty-gritty work of reforestation, we’ve been collaborating with a group of agro-forestry students from the University of the Autonomous Regions and Caribbean Coast’s satellite campus in Waslala to reforest the area surrounding El Guabo’s water source. Along with community members, they built a temporary nursery in the hills outside of the community, where they prepared 500 seedlings, now ready to be planted in the near future. Sustainable water systems cannot be constructed from just PVC and concrete – they also require unharvested lumber.

In my last post, I covered the basics of Impact Evaluation 101 (the need for a “treatment” and “control” group) and said I was looking forward to seeing the results of the follow-up survey from El Varillal #2. Now, the results have come in! Not only that, but we are using those findings to inform our next round of monitoring and evaluation for our system in El Guabo, which has an unprecedented 30 beneficiary households. Clearly there is a lot to discuss on the evaluation front!

First, let’s talk about the results we saw in El Varillal. In this community, we have about six beneficiary households (those who have a tapstand at their house), 20 households with children in school, and 48 households total. We are seeing positive results on the health front – most beneficiary households have children under the age of 3, and those households report fewer instances of children having diarrhea in the past month (53% reported instances of diarrhea in the last month prior to system construction, versus 12% now). We also know that households report washing their hands twice as often as they were before, which is potentially due to the health and hygiene workshops led by Virginia in the community.

Our findings on time savings and school attendance were more difficult to tease out of the survey results. In terms of time savings, most beneficiaries were previously getting water from sources 2-5 minutes away from their home, though those minutes added up over the course of multiple visits to the site each day. Some beneficiaries did travel over 10 minutes, and even as far as 30 minutes, to gather water for their households. We are currently measuring school attendance by asking families how many times their children have missed school in the last three months due to stomach illnesses, and we did not see any significant change in this metric – most families continue to report that their children do not miss any school because of diarrhea or other stomach illnesses.

Given these results, we are planning to update our system evaluation process to measure our health, time, and education impacts more accurately:

• Use focus groups in each community prior to the survey to test out questions we plan to ask each household. Focus groups will be a critical step in ensuring that families understand the questions that are being asked of them and are able to answer them accurately.
• Include health behavior changes in our assessment of health impacts. It should be no surprise that drinking cleaner water positively affects individual health outcomes. Perhaps even more important is whether Water for Waslala, through the health and hygiene workshops we conduct in each community, is effectively changing people’s behavior so that they are taking steps to prevent sicknesses. These behavioral changes include more frequent hand-washing, more frequent hydration, bathing, and washing linens and dishes.
• Experiment with different ways of measuring time savings. Families in Waslala often don’t carry cell phones or even watches, so their concept of “30 minutes” might just not be the same as ours. Therefore, we can experiment with different ways of measuring how families spend their time before vs. after system construction: by asking them to fill out a daily pictorial diary of the activities they do for one day, asking them to allocate yesterday’s time among different activities, or even just asking whether they feel they spend less, more, or the same amount of time on certain activities.
• Look at more objective measures of school attendance. Most community teachers keep attendance sheets which enable them to keep track of how many times children miss school. We are looking into matching these to beneficiary households to get a measure of school attendance that avoids the difficulty to parents of having to recall how often their children miss school. We can then double-check these attendance figures with household reports on the reasons that children missed school.
• Capture other changes that could impact health, time, and education outcomes. It’s important that we continue to consider other factors that may impact our outcomes of interest but that might have nothing to do with the system construction. For example, in El Guabo (the next community we will do a follow-up survey in), many of the beneficiary households live on the main community road. This locale may make it easier for their children to get to school and might also mean they don’t have to travel as far for water as other families. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind the impact of living on the main road when we look at the additional impact of water systems.

Water flowing from the El Guabo tap stand

As hard as I try, I can’t seem to remember the first time I heard about Water for Waslala.  Without realizing, WfW seeped quietly into my life as a student at Villanova as I participated annually in the Walk for Water and put Waslala on my list of places I hoped to get to.  Now, in my role as the Service Break Coordinator at Villanova University, I often cite WfW as an example of students taking action after returning home from a Service Break Experience.  After all, it is my hope that students will do exactly what the founders of WfW did: Identify a need and figure out how they can become part of the solution.

So, after several years of hearing and telling the story of WfW, coupled with my new role as the Advisor to the Student group on VU’s campus, it seemed that it was time for me to experience Waslala firsthand!  In July, I traveled with four friends (including board members Jerica and Brian) to visit Waslala.  Upon arriving in Waslala, we were welcomed by members of the parish and had the opportunity to learn from Iain and various community members about exactly what the impact of WfW is the surrounding communities.  While I felt very familiar with the WfW US operations, l had the opportunity to learn much more about how water systems become a reality for the people in Waslala.

There were many moments from this trip that I will keep with me for quite some time.  These include witnessing the first drops of water pour from a tap in El Guabo, meeting volunteers from around the world who are working in different ministries in Waslala, meeting in person for the first time individuals whose names I have heard for years, and even hiking through the jungle to buy cookies from a local family!

One highlight of the trip was an overnight stay in the community Santa Maria Kubali.  While in the Santa Maria Kubali, we had the opportunity to meet with the community’s water committee.  This group of men (and one woman!) work to make sure that the implementation of a water system is possible and meets the community’s needs.  In essence, it is the water committee’s responsibility to make sure the system is maintained and functioning in its desired manner.  They collect dues from individuals that are recipients of the water system, decide where tap stands should be, and help represent the general needs of the community.  This structure is a true example of the Catholic Social Teaching principle of subsidiarity; that any organization must allow the individuals the right to accomplish what they are able.  An intervention when not necessary is a disturbance of the desire to work for the common good.  WfW is doing exactly this; they are in partnership with those in Waslala.

There were many highlights during our week in Waslala.  However, nothing topped the opportunity to be in conversation with individuals who have been empowered to make such an important change in their community.

This week, Water for Waslala turns 7! It’s hard to believe that nine years have passed since my first trip to Waslala, the place where I celebrated my own 20th birthday. I’m so proud of what Water for Waslala has accomplished over the last seven years, but am also humbled by the amount of work left to be done before our mission is complete.

Despite the relatively few posts on our blog over the last few months, much has been happening that I’d like to begin to share in this post, and expand on in future ones:

• Annual Board of Directors Planning Meeting: Back in April, our Board of Directors met for our annual strategic planning weekend. We spent seven hours of our Saturday discussing every facet of our operations, from our current fundraising approach to the ways in which we measure the effectiveness and sustainability of our water systems.

The Board of Directors enjoying a home-cooked dinner during the Annual WfW Planning Weekend (not pictured: Jordan Ermilio)

One interesting discussion centered on the pace of our efforts in Waslala. As the chart below shows, if we continue at our “business as usual” pace of raising $65K and building three water systems per year, it will take us another 81 years and $5.5 million to complete our mission. This is simply unacceptable: we have to scale our work so that we can complete our mission of providing all 50,000 Waslalans with clean water within the next 10-20 years.

To do so, we discussed ways to 1) Raise more money each year, and 2) Reduce the time and cost needed to provide clean water per beneficiary. Some ideas included: hiring a part-time development director to broaden our donor network, distributing household filters in some neighborhoods (more on this below), and building multiple water systems at the same time using innovative construction management methods.

• 13th water system complete: WfW has much to celebrate with the completion of our 13th water system this past month, in the village of El Guabo Jicaral. Iain Hunt, our Waslalan project manager, replaced concrete with ferrocement and stone for our storage tank and spring intake, saving us $10,000 in construction costs. Also, El Guabo is the first community to create formal statutes governing water system maintenance protocols, water tariff fees, and tariff collection and enforcement processes. This should help improve maintenance fund collection, which has proven difficult in our past systems, and therefore ensure that the community will have the money needed to complete future system repairs. See Iain’s blog posts (complete with photos of construction) here.

Members of El Guabo digging the trench for their water system in March of 2011.

• New WfW advisory committees being formed: We’ve decided to form an additional advisory group of water sector experts from top universities and NGOs. This group will help us improve our work on the ground and overcome some of our major challenges (such as collecting adequate monthly tariffs from beneficiaries). We’re also forming a separate advisory committee of leaders to help us grow our network in the US and raise more cash. We’ve got a spreadsheet full of great candidates and we’re running down the list as we speak!

One of the pilot participants with the receptacle for the ceramic filter that will be deployed in 66 households. Biosand filters will be deployed in 19 additional households.

• Household filters pilot project:

Following up on the annual planning meeting discussion, we’re beginning a pilot project to distribute filters to households who don’t have access to a water system. We’ve selected a group of 85 Waslalans to receive either a ceramic Potters for Peace or biosand Hydraid filter. Each recipient will be trained on how to use the filter, then will use it to treat water at home from their usual sources (most likely contaminated streams nearby). Our goal for this pilot is to test the user-friendliness and filtration effectiveness of the filters, and gauge Waslalans’ willingness to pay for them.

Our hope is that one or both of these technologies will be effective at removing contaminants and well-liked by the pilot participants. Since both technologies are cheaper and faster to implement than gravity-fed water systems, they could be an effective, scalable solution for Waslalans living in more remote parts of the region.

• First results of our water system impact evaluation process are in!: Two years ago, we set up a new process for measuring key health, education and economic performance indicators for our beneficiaries before and after receiving a water system. We’ve now completed our first impact evaluation, for the community of El Varillal. We found some very encouraging results, as well as some areas for improvement in the ways we ask certain questions or measure certain factors, such as health. We’ll be completing a similar evaluation for El Guabo in January, and will be rolling out a new and improved process for our next set of projects in 2012.

———

Thanks for supporting us over these last seven years, and we look forward to your continued support over the years to come as well! Remember that at the end of the day, we’re accomplishing something really powerful together – we’re empowering thousands of people to create a new life for themselves, one filled with access to the clean water they deserve.

So what’s so special about this thing? Well, one of its most exciting properties to Water for Waslala donors and beneficiary communities alike, is that it requires a fraction of the materials required for the ubiquitous poured concrete tanks most commonly used in Waslala. That means less stuff to haul to sometimes difficult-to-reach locations, and of course reduced construction costs (on the order of about 50%). Construction of a ferrocement tank is also participatory, requiring many hands, giving a community a greater sense of ownership. Ferrocement fun fact: the technique was first used in the construction of boats back in the 1800s.

So what is a ferrocement tank? As one might extrapolate from the name, the essential elements are iron and concrete (or more correctly, mortar). You can think of it as a rebar and chicken wire skeleton to which several layers of motar flesh are applied. Other ingredients include a sealer (liquid concrete additive to prevent leakage) and mucho cariño (love). Ferrocement walls should be no more than 6-7cm thick, causing some serious raising of eyebrows and shaking of heads when mentioned to many a mason unfamiliar with the technique. As the cliché goes, you gotta see it (or build it with your own hands) to believe it.

I first took then chance on ferrocement while working on a community water system in the Dominican Republic. The current director of Peace Corps’ appropriate technology sector in the country (and an influential mentor of mine) had recently arrived from Bolivia, where he had years of experience in ferrocement construction, mostly for rainwater catchment systems. The community where I lived and worked was selected as the test site for a pilot ferrocement tank/ ferrocement construction training for Peace Corps volunteers and their community partners. From there it spread like peanut butter and jelly. Local government offices began to seek out and employ our masons to build their own ferrocement tanks. And here in Waslala, I can foresee the same phenomenon taking off, with the mayor’s office (albeit independent of our own efforts) planning on incorporating ferrocement in upcoming projects. Ferrocement: it’s the coolest invention since the smart phone (note: author doesn’t really know what a smart phone is).

I’ll let the following photos walk you through the ferrocement tank construction process:

Preparing plumbing and rebar to pour the floor (Day 1)

Denis and Juan finishing the floor (Day 1)

Tying chicken wire to soldered rebar grid to serve as wall skeleton (Day 1)

Standing up the skeleton (Day 2)

Tarp tied around outside of skeleton to serve as temporary form to apply first layer of mortar inside tank (Day 2)

Denis applying first layer of mortar (Day 2)

Continuing with first layer of mortar (Day 2)

First layer of mortar revealed after tarp has been removed (Day 3)

Application of final inside finishing layer, outside layer having been completed bay before (Day 4)

Construction of temporary log structure to hold up false floor (Day 5)

Tying rebar and chicken wire for roof (Day 5)

Finishing the roof (Day 5)

The final product, freshly painted to match the colors of the Nicaraguan flag

That’s three cups of coffee with Don Chico, the proverbial “pop” of one of Waslala’s mom-and-pop hardware stores, who, if they don’t have what you need, will find a way to get it (if you have a little patience).

Don Chico has long been one of Water for Waslala’s behind-the-scenes partners supporting our work on the ground, catering to all our whims and letting us rack up some hefty tabs. A typical visit to Don Chico’s hardware store goes something like this… I walk in and receive a hearty greeting for Don Chico, his wife Elizabeth, or one of their sons – whoever happens to be at the front desk.

They smile, sigh and offer me a seat, knowing that what I need isn’t going be so simple as picking up a pound of nails. If I’m planning on making a big purchase and have a long list of items, Don Chico comes out from the back (if he’s not already at the desk), and we slowly review each item one-by-one as he simultaneously attends to other customers with more ordinary requests. No visit is complete without sharing a cup of coffee and a conversation about life, the universe and everything with Don Chico.

Making a major purchase here requires at least three cups of coffee.

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been making the final large purchase for the El Guabo project – all supplies needed to string up a couple of suspended stream crossings, build a ferrocement tank, and install household tap stands. You have your first cup of coffee as you try to get the latest prices of the items you need, not as straightforward as one might imagine when you’re looking for items the store has never carried before.

The second cup of coffee comes when you make the purchase, when you hand over the final list of materials along with a check covering 50% of the cost so that the store’s truck can head out on its expedition to Managua’s Carreterra Norte and Mercado Mayoreo, where if you can’t find it, there’s a good chance it’s not available in Nicaragua.

Denis Taleno and the El Guabo crew string up a suspended crossing

But there’s more to the transaction.

Returning from its most recent journey, the store’s truck broke down between Matagalpa and Waslala. Bueeeeeeeeeeeeeno…

Don Chico managed to get almost everything (as well as the store’s restock supplies) to Waslala by hiring one of the many trucks that haul milk daily from Waslala to the capital and that would return empty if not for these odd jobs. But to get everything from Waslala to El Guabo required some creativity, a few headaches, and definitely a third cup of coffee. We coordinated with the truck drivers to haul some of the more immediately essential items to keep the work flow going for a day or two.  (Side note: Many of these trucks are 30+ years old.  The trucks also serve as informal public transportation of both people and agricultural products in many parts of Waslala). Over the next couple of weeks, other supplies arrived squeezed amongst speakers, guitars, and musicians in the back of the parish’s pickup on its way to celebrate mass in a community further down the road or, as needed on a number of occasions, clinging to my shoulder as I clung to the back of a motorcycle.

As the rainy season moves in, satiating thirsty corn and bean crops (but also bringing washed out roads and prolonged power outages), we’re going have to get even more creative to keep work going.

But if this work were easy, it wouldn’t be very solidario. Time for another cup of coffee.

Wil and I hiking through coffee fields in Waslala

By Nora Pillard, Water for Waslala Vice President

Two weeks ago, my husband, Wil Reynolds, and I were able to travel to Waslala.  For me, this was the longest period of time — two years! — that I had been away from Waslala since I took my first trip in 2002.

We only had a few days in Waslala, but we were able to visit El Guabo, where water system construction is currently underway.  When we arrived in the morning, community members were already hard at work.  On the day of our visit, there were more than ten community members digging trench line (including two women).

It was a blazing hot day and I could barely manage to stand in the sun for a few minutes at the time.  The community members had been digging the trench line since 6 am and would continue digging until 1 pm before heading home to eat lunch and cool off.  As community members worked, a woman from a nearby house came out to offer us chairs in the shade and fresh cut watermelon.

Members of El Guabo digging the trench where the pipes will eventually be laid.

In El Guabo, the community members have been digging the trench line for nine weeks! The community has organized itself into three separate groups and each group commits to spend two days per week working on the system until completion.  If a community member misses a work day for sickness or any other reason, they make up a day with one of the other work groups.

After they finished digging for the day, we were able to chat for a few minutes before everyone headed home.  When we asked a few folks how many days they had spent working on the trench line, they could each answer quickly- 25 days, 23 days, etc.  It is hard to imagine spending 25 days committed to grueling manual labor for no pay.  El Guabo community members have dedicated themselves to this work for access to drinking water and the well-being of the community as a whole.

During our visit to El Guabo, we were able to observe not only the organization and commitment of the community members, but also the work of our Water for Waslala team.  I left Waslala with great confidence and excitement about our team on the ground!

Iain Hunt, our project manager, brings with him great experience and new perspectives and ideas to push us in new directions and keep us learning as an organization.  After only four months in Waslala, I saw Iain totally immersed in our work. It was clear that he had quickly established relationships with our local partners and many community members.

The Waslala team: Denis, Virginia, Iain, and Nora

It was evident that Virginia, our director of community outreach, had facilitated Iain’s adjustment and immersion in Waslala.  It was wonderful to observe Virginia interacting with community members- she knew every person’s name and it was clear that she has developed close relationships and trust with people both in town and in the rural communities.  It was impossible to walk through town without stopping every few steps as someone called Virginia’s name and came running to chat with her.

I feel so lucky to work with such amazing individuals as we continue to push ourselves to continually learn and improve our work!  We could not have better people to represent the work of Water for Waslala!

Last, but certainly not least, it was so great to see old friends, catch up over a slice of pizza and a beer, and laugh as we rehashed old stories from past trips.

If you visit campus on a given day, you’ll have the option of attending any one of a series of presentations by CEOs and founders of various startups, medium and large-scale enterprises to hear how they developed their business model and scaled their business. Many of these executives are MIT alums themselves. Needless to say, it’s a really exciting place to be.

Naturally, all this thinking about business models and scalability enters my thinking about WfW’s long term strategy. Have we created the best business model for WfW? How do we scale our efforts in order to provide more people with drinking water at a faster pace?

Here are some thoughts on these questions. Scalability assumes that you’ve got a product that can be easily replicable to different types of consumers. Facebook is the easy example: every user gets the same online template with which he/she can build a profile, and very little attention needs to be paid to each individual user once the template is in place. However, my sense is that implementing public works projects such as potable water systems for very different groups of communities is very hard to scale quickly. In my view, much attention needs to be paid to the idiosyncracies of each community’s geography, hydrology, economic situation, and politics in order to make sure each project is actually successful. This, of course, makes scalability very difficult for us.

One could ask: what about alternative approaches to bringing people clean water besides the capital-intensive approach of pouring concrete and laying pipe? There are certainly many products that have come to market that attempt to purify water cheaply for individuals and families, such as the now-famous lifestraw or the popular clay filters. While these are amazing innovations, and have the potential to significantly improve people’s health, they do not bring the benefit of relieving women and children of the time-consuming burden of fetching water, which is time that could otherwise be spent on studying or economic activities.

One strategy for scalability that we haven’t yet considered is a hybrid model. In such a model, WfW would continue to build gravity-fed water systems that bring clean water directly to schools and households. However, such systems always exclude families that live too far away from the water system or that live above the altitude of the spring from benefiting. For these families, WfW might consider purchasing clay or biosand filters to improve their health outcomes. WfW could also consider purchasing large plastic rainwater collection bins so that these families only need to fetch water during the three months of the dry season, thus increasing the scope of benefits to remote households.

Look for WfW to begin piloting some household treatment projects in several communities this summer. We’re excited about the potential for using these technologies to scale up and achieve our core mission faster: helping Waslalans access the clean H2O they need.

Recently, during Holy Week, I found some time to visit my work compañera, Virginia, at her farm. While there, I cozied up in the spring heat next to the wood fire and busied my typically clumsy hands.

I helped Virginia make a special kind of tortilla that weekend– one that incorporates cassava into the masa (dough) as well the standard ground corn. The art of mixing a good batch of concrete actually isn’t that different from the art of mixing a good tortilla masa, but here in Waslala it’s rare that you find somebody who masters both of these jobs. In El Guabo, however, you’ll find two (actually three when Virginia comes to visit) exceptional women, Modesta and Lupe , who have literally been in the trenches from day one, advancing the community water project one pipe length at a time (as well as mixing concrete and echando tortillas).

Modesta and Lupe

Virginia recently spent some time with this pair of women, accompanying them to a quiet spot next to the river where they could have an interview in a private setting. Virginia asked them about their experiences working side-by-side with men in a region where hard, manual work is still culturally considered a man’s job.

Lupe, Modesta and Virginia gluing pipes

Both responded that the experience has been “tranquila,” but that each has been thankful to have the other compañera there to accompany them. When asked about their role among the women of the community, Modesta responded, “Well, my role has always been to wash coffee, plant bananas, work in the fields”, and then added that there are a lot of women who stay in the house. Lupe talked about how when she was little she always stayed in the house with her mother, but that when she was about fifteen she “cut her fingernails and went out to do a man’s work.” She continued, “I give thanks to God because I know now that I can do anything.”

Modesta is also the treasurer of the community water committee, and as such the only woman who’s part of the executive board. This is, unfortunately, the norm.

Of the communities that already have water systems, only 50% have women as members of their water boards, and of those with female representation, this representation is no more than one member, and never in the positions of president or vice president. At a recent capacity building workshop for water committees put on by the Pastoral del Agua (more on this in an upcoming blog post), only 5 of the 37 participants were female.

Modesta, Lupe and Virginia hard at work in El Guabo

Thus, despite the fantastic example of Modesta and Lupe, we still have a long way to go in terms of ensuring that women have their seat at the stakeholders’ table, especially considering the greater stake that women have in these community water projects. After all, the responsibility of fetching water from sometimes faraway locations falls disproportionally on the very shoulders of women. And it’s women who are typically the primary family caregivers, attending to children who get sick from drinking dirty water.