Clean Water & Sanitation

We raised the money to start a pilot project at twelve schools near the City of Santa Barbara in the western mountains of Honduras. The Rotary Club in Santa Barbara, Honduras is leading this effort in collaboration with residents of each of the villages or barios where the schools are. The Rotary Club has four teams of it members, each working with parents, teachers, and community members at each of three communities where schools are.

Community member at Tacahulapa School explains that, when it rains, the septic holding tank overflows into the schoolyard. Right now, the students do not use the current toilets.

The initial funding for the projects was raised with Rotary leadership from the communities of Creston, British Columbia, Canada and the U.S. communities of Bemidji, MN; Park Rapids, MN; Wahpaton, SD; and Ashland, WI. Rotary clubs in districts on the U.S.-Canada border matched 100% of the funds each community raised, and the international Rotary Foundation matched 150% of the communities' funds. When one considers the breadth of effort, it is clear why the Rotary Foundation calls these "Global Grant" projects. They happen only when people of many nationalities, faiths, and cultures collaborate in a shared mission.

Community members in Gualjoco dig trench for the new foundation.

The family sow next door to the El Trabajo school in Inguaya escapes to the schoolyard to join the meeting of parents, teacher, and Rotarians.

Santa Barbara Rotarian Rene Vasquez explains how bathrooms will be added adjacent to existing classrooms at Inguaya.

Zorca!

"Before we start our conversation, let's first work together in commitment."

Roxanna Turner taught me the value of this statement today. Some members of previous teams have said we should provide funds for Honduran communities to maintain their own schools rather than bringing the supplies and doing the maintenance work with them. When I mentioned this to Roxanna as we arrived, she disagreed.

Roxanna Turner is a teacher at the high school in the Ashland, Wisconsin school district. She previously worked on a grant that the Ashland Rotary Club initiated through the Duluth-Superior Community Foundation to adapt the foundation's Speak Your Peace curriculum for high school students, and the project received the foundation's Touchstone Award as an outstanding example of achievement. Rene, a Santa Barbara, Honduras Rotary Club member, brought Roxanna and me, along with painting supplies, to Zorca while the others in our group purchased additional supplies for our day's work. When we arrived, a beautiful rainbow appeared in the sky above us.

View behind the Zorca school.

Zorca (14.85183°N, 88.35183°W) is a small village in the mountains west of the small city of Arada. As Rene parked his truck on the side of the road, two women wearing pink pull-overs waved to us from the school atop a stairway to the road. Then a man and a boy came down to help us carrry the six-gallon buckets of paint, our ladder, and painting supplies up to the school. When we climbed the stairway, we saw several more men and women in the the two classrooms moving the desks, shelves, and tables to the center and scraping the walls to prepare them to be painted. A new kindergarten building had just been constructed next to the elementary school, and more parents were sweeping to prepare the concrete walls for their first coats of paint. We learned that everyone in the community was eagerly getting the schools ready for the beginning of the school year next week.

As we carried buckets and boxes up the stairs, I told Roxanna what some previous participants on these Rotary mission trips said about providing funds to these communities for maintenance rather than traveling to Honduras to help them do maintenance work.

"Not necessarily," she replied. "It is very important for me as a teacher to make my classroom an attractive space for learning. The work being done here takes that effort to a whole new level."  Along with the parents and teachers, we picked up brushes, rollers, and trays filled with fresh paint and went to work.

As I painted trim around the windows on the front of the school, I overheard Roxanna talking with school boys around the corner as she worked a roller on a long pole. I do not speak Spanish, but their questions and answers of each other were interspersed with laughter as a shy, young father quietly worked alongside.

Teachers paint the window grates (from left: Roxanna Turner,
Erlin Izaguirre, and Yara Enamorado).

As the day progressed, I came to realize that this project provided a means for Roxanna and that father to build an understanding of each other without the tension of an interview process. The school kids' natural curiousity provided a means for learning about each other as the basic need to prepare the school for the new year was served. By the end of the day, we not only completed an important project in the little, mountain village of Zorca, but we also learned about each other and made new friends.

Being Called?

There is an interesting story in the Old Testament Book of Samuel where Samuel, a boy helping an elderly priest, is awakened at night by a voice calling his name. Because the only other person around is the man down the hall, Samuel runs to see what the old priest wants. The old man is irritated because he did not call the boy and tells the boy to go back to bed. When the situation repeats two more times, the priest realizes that Samuel IS being called, not for work but for LIFE, and Samuel's life changes forever. The lesson I take from this story is that our true calling often is not obvious to us.

I thought of this story on Saturday night when we attended the Santa Barbara Rotaract Club meeting. Allison Radke, a youth minister who is part of our group and who is fluent in Spanish, served as interpretor. Rotaract members are people ranging from college age to less than thirty years old. This club inlcudes college students, an auto mechanic, attorneys, teachers, government administrators and others. As the meeting was about to start, Allison said in English "I just had an idea." Then she asked a question in Spanish that she told us was "How many people here use Whatsapp?" Almost all the Rotaractors raised their hands. After a brief explanation, the club members said that they would help us to effect our hope to establish internet communications between elementary kids in Las Brisas del Pinal and kids in the Chequamegon Bay area. When Allison explained the frustration that the teachers in Las Brisas had trying to project a Facebook video through their LCD projector, the Rotaractors pulled out their LCD projector and said "Here's how you do this . . .We will help." They responded immediately to our call for help. When my wife Becky quietly asked me, "who in the Ashland area is going to work with this vibrant group of young professionals," I replied, "They have not yet been called."

Earlier on Saturday morning, I wondered if I was hearing "a call" or just another solicitation when the leaders of the Santa Barbara Rotary Club met with our small group. They explained that the international Rotary Foundation and UNICEF (the United Nations International Child and Education Fund) had selected Honduras as one of five countries in the world for a pilot project promoting clean water and sanitary practices to reduce widespread diarrheal illness in children and communities and to help girls to stay in school past sixth grade. The local Rotarians asked if we would be the international sponsors for their projecct for the Department of Santa Barbara (about the area of Ashland and Bayfield counties in Wisconsin). The minimum contribution for us to be a sponsor is $30,000, including a matching contribution from the Rotary Foundation. In any case, we would need to raise at least $10,000 in order to be a WASH-in-Schools sponsor.

It seems like a risky proposition. The Santa Barbara Rotarians said that the project for Honduras is organized by their Rotary District to include all the Rotary Clubs in Honduras. The pilot project for the Department of Santa Barbara involves selecting at least five schools, and requires installing any necessary infrastructire, curriulum adoption, teacher training, and implementation within one year. The project requires before and after testing for measureable improvements and documentation that the pilot projects will continue after the international funding runs out.

Steve Rith-Najarian is a physician on our LARA team who is a national leader in helping Native Americans reduce the incidence of diabetes-related illness on reservations. He said there is no doubt about the serious need to improve access to clean water and to adopt better sanitation in schools and communities, but to expect a measurable change by the end of 2018 is unrealistic. I agreed that the project expectations are unrealistic, but it is appropriate to start small in these ambitious initiatives so that future projects can improve on the lessons learned from the preliminary projects. After all, there are many more than five countries plagued by contaminated water supplies and diarrheal illness.

Allison Radke facilitated a conversation about the project with the kindergarten teachers in Las Brisas del Pinal. This barrio on the outskirts of Santa Barbara has experienced rapid growth as families from small mountain villages come to the city in hopes of finding employment. These teachers know how little most children and their families understand the need for sanitary practices. They told us that there is no question about the huge scope of the problem, but added "You have to start somewhere, and Honduras is a good place to start." They said that the parents association in Las Brisas has become well aware of the problem, and they make sure that the bathrooms at the kindergarten are well supplied with soap and toilet paper. Even so, water runs into the community water supply only two days per week, and they have to ration use so that their stored supply does not run out.

Is a request of this scope just another of many solicitations for a hopeless cause, or is this our calling to take small, deliberate steps to improve children's and communities' access to clean water and adequate sanitation? Is it just coincidence that we are faced with a decision on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day? Can our small steps lead to a change of the scope of Rotary's commitment decades ago to eliminate polio from the world? Some of our group tired of the long discussion we had after dinner to determine whether we can commit to be a sponsor. One member said, "I just want to do the work. I can't deal with writing proposals or deciding who is responsible for documenting how every penny is spent. There is a great need. Let's not hesitate to do something about it." Even so, he recognized that someone needs to design projects, write proposals, and track progress. He said, "I want to help, but not with the bureaucracy.

In the end, we decided that we will raise $35,000, which we hope we can achieve by raising $10,000 from clubs and our communities and multiply with matching contributions from our Rotary District and the Rotary Foundation. Even if we cannot get matching contributions, $35,000 may not be enough for five separate, pilot projects. All of our clubs in the northern USA take pride in our abundant, clean water. People in the poor communities in Honduras did not consciously decide to contaminate their water supplies any more than the people of Ashland and Barksdale chose to contaminate theirs. Finding sustainable solutions to provide clean water "has to start somewhere."

Seeking Sustainable Projects

Our work in Honduras was reduced by a day because our flight from Duluth to Chicago was cancelled when a wet snow and fog prevented landings. Instead, we drove an icy highway to Minneapolis and flew directly from there to Houston. When we arrived in Santa Barbara, the local Rotarians were eager to put us to work on the project in Aridita that we planned last year: installing a roof on an expanded multipurpose building in the mountain community of Aridita (14.98037°, -88.30410°) northwest of Santa Barbara in the municipality (like counties in the USA) of Nuevo Celiac. Members of the community and the parents' assocation already had installed new cconcrete block walls and new metal beams when we arrived to assist in putting on new sheets of metal on the roof.

There always are interesting "synchronicities" on mission trips. The same day we arrived in San Pedro Sula, two missionaries supported by the United Church of Christ's One Great Hour of Sharing also were returning from a trip to Panama and Columbia. Don and Maryjane Westra are natives of Fergus Falls, MN who have been working to make a vocational school program more sustainable in Yoro, Honduras. In rural Honduras, fifty perent of the population lives in extreme poverty. Access to education beyond the elementary grades is very limited, and, therefore, most people lack the skills required for good-paying jobs. Last year one of the Santa Barbara Rotarians asked our group to assist with improving a vocational school in Santa Barbara, and the Westra's have the knowledge and experience to help us understand what approaches might be successful.

Another Santa Barbara Rotarian met with us during our first evening in the city and asked our group to be a partner in attracting funding from the Rotary Foundation to implement a multi-faceted program to improve rural sanitation and to reduce water-borne disease by enhancing sanitary facilities and practices in area schools. We also came this year with the intention to develop a program of enhanced communications between children in the community of Las Brisas del Pinal (14.94582°, -88.23488°) and children in the Chequamegon Bay area. When we attended the Santa Barbara Rotary Club meeting on Friday evening, a young woman, who is president of the Santa Barbara Rotaract club (young professionals engaged in community service), said that their club would like to collaborate with us in developing this project.

There is no shortage of important projects where help is needed. One person who is a great help in all these endeavors this year is Allison Radke, the youth minister at the United Presbyterian-Congregational Church in Ashland. Allison's fluency in Spanish and good humor have made her a hit with every group we encounter and a real benefit in our communications.

Building Bridges Through The Internet

One of Rotary's four main objectives is "the advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional people united in the ideal of service." This goal underlies more than twenty years of collaboration between the north country Rotary clubs and the Santa Barbara Rotary Club. The perspective of Rotarians from the north is that the professionals in the Santa Barbara Rotary Club are much more capable than we to identify critical needs in their home territory. Our tasks in the north are to help people in our area to develop a compassionate understanding of our connections to Honduras and to determine which of the critical needs we are best able to serve.

The Internet and digital technology are effecting dramatic changes in the ways we collaborate. Traditionally, communications between Santa Barbara and the north needed to occur face-to-face. Even then, we could understand a need only by sending an advance team of northerners along with local Rotarians to a place to prepare a plan of action. Now people in remote villages have cell phones with cameras and email -- even when there is not electrical utility service in the village. Before the north country Rotarians arrive, it is possible to have satellite images of a project site and instant photos of the inside of buildings and the conditions of the local population. Even better, communications no longer need to be limited to the annual mission trip.

I know only a few words of Spanish. This year I could send an email from Honduras to my wife Becky in Wisconsin (who is fluent in Spanish) and ask her to let the teachers in a village down the road know that i will bring them some instructional equipment at 8:30 A.M. the next day. The teachers sent Becky photos of the donation event before I returned to my hotel. There is nothing better than face-to-face communication, but today's technology allows us to stay in touch year-round.

Before Steve and i came to Santa Barbara, Becky sent an email to the teachers in that village (Colonia Las Brisas del Pinal; N14.94619, W088.23431), where we built a two-room kindergarten two years ago. A number of people from the United Presbyterian-Congregational Church in Ashland, Wisconsin assisted Rotary in building that kindergarten. Becky has stayed in touch with those teachers ever since, especially with Lily May Oliver-Urbina. Becky asked Lily May if her students needed notebooks, pencils, and crayons that our church had collected for me to take to Honduras. Lily May replied that the school really needed a digital projector so that whole classrooms of students could see a computer screen.

Our church provided me with a projector to give to the school. Our hope is that communications among the people in our communities no longer need be limited to annual trips. Kids in Honduras can watch kids up north sail-skiing on an ice-covered lake, and kids in Ashland can watch barefoot kids in Honduras adeptly passing soccer balls in the shadow of verdant mountain peaks.

When I was in elementary school, my teachers arranged for me to write "pen pals" at far-away schools. That entire process has been replaced by Facebook pages and instant messages. It is even more important in this age of instant messages that people have a more sensitive understanding of other people's cultures. We hope that, by sharing this technology, we can build digital bridges between our communities to enhance international understanding united in the ideal of service.

Serving Needs, Assessing Needs

On Friday we went to another small village in the mountains: El Guineal (N15.15172, W088.28310) in the municipalidad of Trinidad (like an unincorporated village in a rural town in Wisconsin). As we did on Thursday, we helped the villagers to replace a leaky roof on their school with a new one, and we painted the concrete block structure inside and out. In this season of Lent, there is a certain value in simply picking up a broom or a paintbrush and working alongside a new acquaintance on a community project. This practice reflects Rotary's Motto "Service Above Self." Even though neither of us speaks a common language, we each share a common sense that we are doing something that, in a small way, will enhance the educational experience of a child.

Does a classroom that is a little brighter and no longer has paint peeling from the concrete block walls make a math lesson more engaging? The teacher standing in front of 45 students in this tiny mountain village tells us that the quality of the classroom affects the quality of learning. So we quietly scrape, sweep, and paint side-by-sde. Neither of us is earning a wage today. We smile at each other and hope that we will help in a small way to enhance opportunties for another generation. Our sweat mixes with the paint in this remote village where families grow and pick cofffee for their livelihoods. The discipline of quietly serving a need without asking questions calms my soul.

The view from El Guineal.

But as I track my progress to check whether today's project will be complete when it is time to pack up the tools and head back to Santa Barbara, I start to ask questions. Why am I painting a little schoolhouse on a Honduran mountainside? There is a part of me that wants to know about my daily cup of coffee. If I drink coffee, shouldn't I know something about what goes into getting it to my cup? I take pleasure in knowing the Tetzner family and their farm from which I buy my milk. It seems appropriate that I should learn about the people who provide me with coffee beans. Do these coffee farmers have a similar sense about the people who consume their produce as the Tetzners do about me? It is clear that there are far fewer community resources available for the education of the coffee farmers' children than there are for the Tetzner kids. Is that fair? How much of the market price of coffee goes back to the coffee farmers who produce it?

The mayor of Nuevo Celilac and the community
of La Aradita show us their old center.

When we returned to Santa Barbara at the end of the day, several people made a point of crossing paths with Steve and me. It is good that Steve speaks some Spanish because I would have no idea what to say, even if they succeeded in getting me to understand what they were asking us. Two teachers from one of the Santa Barbara technical schools asked us to take a tour of their facility. It, too, has leaky roofs and inadequate instructional equipment. Then a teacher from the nearby city of Ilama (N15.05882, W088.23267) told us that there are not enough desks for all the students at her school. Then the owner of a coffee farm told us that the community near his farm needs a kindergarten. He said that his family would like to cost-share with us in building a structure. On Friday evening, we joined the meeting of the Santa Barbara Rotarians. They asked us to go to the village of La Aradita (N14.98037, W088.30410) on Saturday morning and meet with the Mayor of the municipalidad of Neuvo Celilac and the village people to discuss what it would take to rebuild their one-room community center, which currently has a ceramic tile roof that leaks badly and which they say is now too small for their needs.

How should we Rotarians and community members in the north country respond to all these needs? We hear some political leaders say "build a bigger wall on the border and send all these needy people away. Their needs should not be our worry." The fact is that the militarization of the US/Mexico border actually has INCREASED the number of undocumented workers in the US since the late 1980's. US tax dollars now fund a $74 billion private prison industry that employs 800,000 people and locks up migrants, most of who are not violent criminals. The US Border Patrol employs an additional 21,000 workers, and 63,000 undoumented people are imprisoned while awaiting trial. Each person held in detention costs US taxpayers $55,000 per year. It appears to be in the USA's own interest to consider the needs of the people who live south of the border. What needs of the people who grow and pick my coffee, bananas, and palms and who sew my clothes might be served in a way that enhances their lives in their own country?

All the requests that the Santa Barbara people laid before us are legitimate needs, but the needs are greater than the limited resources that the Latin America Rotary Aid (LARA) program has. At the end of the afternoon, LARA held its annual meeting at our hotel. The participants agreed that we need to set priorities. Somehow, we should look for synergies among projects, and we should explore if there are matching grants that might expand the amount of resources available for a project. That will be part of our homework as we plan next year's service. One LARA member asked if we could enhance the welding program and the wood shop program at the technical college and provide funds for the students to make desks for the students at Ilama. Another asked if we could obtain matching grants through the Rotary Foundation's Vocational Training Team program. The Rotary Foundation will not provide funds to repair leaky roofs, however. We have lots of questions to answer before we can assure donors that their funds will best serve the needs this area faces.

A Very Long Day - Monte Cristo

We worked in a remote mountain village -- Monte Cristo (N 15.12654, W088.301259). We travelled for about 10k on a winding, narrow dirt road up and down hillsides. The community people were already at work when we arrived. The old roof was off, and men were welding metal braces to the angle-iron rafters. 45 school kids were crammed into a tiny school room. We passed out school supplies and then started to work. I'll give more details later.

When we returned to Santa Barbara, two men were waiting to ask Steve and me to go on a tour of one of the public high schools "collegio technico" in Santa Barbara. It was late when we returned, and I fell into bed. I will have to download photos and write more details after the work in El Guineal today and the Santa Barbara Rotary meeting tonight.