Potable water for 400 in rural Mexico

Dear GlobalGiving Supporters,

As the year winds down, we’re excited to close out this project and start a new campaign that is more in line with our goals and current work! Our “One Million Liters” campaign will aim to build 85 large-scale rainwater harvesting systems and install 250 filter systems throughout 2018—giving more than 1,000 people a lifetime of access to safe and healthy drinking water.

While we did not bring in many donations through GlobalGiving this last quarter, we still implemented some great rainwater harvesting projects through other partners. In September, we were invited to a massive community party with United Communities for Life and Water (CUVA-PAS)—a coalition of 21 communities in the most impacted region of our watershed—to celebrate the 64^th rainwater harvesting system we have built together! You can read more about the festivities here.

We held a week-long, university-accredited course with Western Washington University. The course intimately blended theoretical and practical hands-on learning. Lectures focused on water politics in Mexico, development work’s impact on local communities, development of community-led solutions, and technical topics such as water contaminants and rainwater harvesting systems. The students spent several days in a rural community with one of our local partners and participated in the build of a rainwater harvesting system that they funded.

Most recently, we began collaborating with Casita Linda, another local organization. Casita Linda helps families in the region, making less than USD $275/month, build their own homes. Their newest home design incorporates Caminos de Agua’s rainwater harvesting collection and treatment systems. Our team lead a workshop at the local elementary school in the community of Palo Colorado just last month (October, 2017), where Casita Linda families learned about reginal water issues, helped build a 12,000-liter cistern, and installed five ceramic water filters that will serve the school with safe and healthy drinking water for years to come. Additionally, six families in Palo Colorado will receive their own rainwater harvesting systems on their new homes in the coming months. Learn more about this budding new partnership here.

Spanning over nearly three years and involving dozens of partners—including GlobalGiving supporters like yourself—this has been a long and exciting campaign! Since the launch of this campaign at the end of 2014, we have:

1. Built 124 rainwater harvesting systems in 42 communities, representing over 1.7 million liters of rainwater storage. Global Giving directly supported 49 of those systems, or nearly 60% more than we promised due to the massive contribution by the local communities themselves who provided nearly all of the labor for the systems.
2. In community homes and schools, we installed 225 ceramic water filters—with a combined capacity to treat 9.8 million liters of water over their lifetime.

On behalf of the Caminos de Agua team, we are grateful for all of your support to help get this very needed rainwater harvesting project off the ground! We have become much more efficient and helped support community processes along the way, but the need is only getting worse. That is why we have decided to start a new campaign, which more accurately reflects the current state of our organization and the growing need for safe and healthy water in our region. So as we say goodbye for now, please keep your eyes peeled for our new campaign starting up immediately, and help us get to one million liters in 2018!

Thank you again for all of your support.

Saludos,
Dylan and the Caminos de Agua Team