Water Access in the Context of a Health Emergency

Hi everyone! 

Even in this hard times, our work towards the communities in poverty situations in Mexico can´t be stoped. Human settlements are even more vulnerable when it comes to this kind of emergencies and people without access to an higenic environment and withour infrastructure that allows them to stay safe, suffer the most the consecuences of this pandemic.

Therefore, this past months we adapted our work model to achieve one goal: "families getting access to clean water in the context of covid-19", so they can follow the recomendations given by the World Health Organization and wash their hands frequently. The way to do this was to focus in one of our quite proven projects, the installation of rainwater collection systems for at least 480 families along the country. This adaptation considers health measures to avoid contagion and the hireing of local people to build the systems so we won´t put volunteers at risk.

So long we have delivered 55 of these systems in different communities in Monterrey, Puebla, Querétaro and Jalisco. This will impact around 300 people by gathering an average of 100 L daily per home. Also, families will spare about 5 hours per week that they were using before in getting the water they need to live. 

We know there´s still so much work to do and keep motivated and optimistic in the fullfillment of our mission. We hope to continue our productive relationship with you and know we won´t stop. 

Besides of house building we are now innovating with water access for those families who we are working with!

In Mexico, the main problem affecting the communities is the lack of access to basic services, especially lack of access to potable water. 

Most of the time the closer source of water is located more than 4km from the community, the distance that children and women walked every day carrying buckets with water. 

Lack of access to clean running water for personal hygiene, cooking, and cleaning, forces slum dwellers to use unsafe water. This increases the risk of contracting cholera, diarrhea, hepatitis, dengue, and other diseases. 

Our project: Family water access. 

We want to facilitate a solution to the lack of access to close sources of water through the construction of a water tower with a rainwater harvesting system. Also, empower the community through joint project planning and execution.