Guatemala

The project is being carried out in Coxjac, Totonicapan, Guatemala, under the direction of Peace Corps Volunteer Casey Kittredge.

The latrines will be used by all three groups of students who use the school (elementary, middle school and a weekend middle school program) for a total of 240 students and 12 teachers. The current bathrooms have been deemed unsanitary by the Department of Health due to their proximity to the area where the atol, the morning snack, is prepared for the elementary students.

The walls will be built using filled recycled plastic bottles, covered with concrete. Project funds will be used to purchase materials, including rebar, cement, sand, gravel, wire, chicken wire, wood planks, and corrugated metal sheets.

The community will provide all manual labor during the construction of the latrines.

Planning meetings have taken place with the Mayor, the community, school personnel, and parents. The work will be coordinated by a committee that has been formed. After construction, the committee will be responsible for the ongoing maintenance.

To indicate your desire for your contribution to be allocated toward this project, please click the Donate button below.

The Escuela Oficial Rural Mixta has little access to water, consisting of a small chorro that receives water once a week for an hour. The young students currently bring water in 2-liter bottles from their homes or the local stream to school in order to sustain the water supply.

Teachers do not have water to mop their floors or to teach basic hygiene to the children. Atol, a mid-morning snack, cannot be handed out due to the lack of water. At times water must be borrowed from neighbors in order to do necessary chores.

The project is being administered by Peace Corps Volunteer Ashley Kissinger.

Water Charity is pleased to be participating with other NGOs in this project, and our funds will go for skilled labor and materials. The community and parents from the school are contributing additional labor, and will maintain the tank and pipes upon completion.

To see plans for the project, CLICK HERE.

To indicate your desire for your contribution to be allocated toward this project, please click the Donate button below.

In the municipality of Santa Apolonia, Ellen works with two rural agricultural communities, Chuaparal I—an indigenous population—and Cojulya—a primarily Ladino population. Over half of the 47 families in the two groups do not have latrines. For those that do, the latrines, which often serve for more than one family, are in poor condition and do little to aid fecal control.

The communities are plagued by chronic diarrhea and other gastrointestinal diseases. The groups have requested a community latrine project, which will benefit a combined 300 men, women, and children.

Ellen is part of the Rural Home Preventive Health project, Peace Corps Guatemala. Volunteers are partnered with local health centers in various municipalities. Each health center reports to departmental level health centers which then report to the ministry of health.

Volunteers work with health center personnel to inform the local populace about preventive health habits and then to construct needed technology.

The water table is high in both communities, and pit latrines contaminate the ground water. Thus, composting latrines are the best option for the families.

Composting latrines are above ground and do not contaminate the water table. The movable seat sits on top of one side of a large cement box that is separated into two compartments. One side is used at a time, throwing ash or other dry matter after each use (to aid in decomposition) until it is full. The side is then sealed with a cement top and after six months the fecal matter decomposes into compost. During this time the family is using the other side of the latrine and the cycle continues.

The nutrient-rich compost is then used in the fields to enhance the quality of the crops. Furthermore, the composting latrine has a life-span that is over four times that of a pit latrine. The women have also noted that these latrines alleviate the common fear of children falling into pit latrines.

The latrines require continual education. Therefore, several models will be constructed, two in a school shared by the communities and three in group member homes. The school models will aid in instructing the children how to use the latrines and the home models will allow for the families to share their experiences.

All members of the interested families will be required to attend several presentations on the importance of the latrines, how they function, and how to maintain them. After three months, the families will construct their latrines with the help of a mason.

The two women’s groups are currently forming a single legalized group in order to aid one another in bettering the health of their communities. The primary goals of the group are to further education regarding preventive health and to provide needed technology projects for the communities.

For this project, the elected representatives of the group will not only be helping with the implementation of the project, but also teaching community members about the importance of a latrine for family health. The experience of this project will enable the united women to continue education and create future projects.

The community will provide the labor and all gravel needed for construction. The municipality will provide the funding and labor for the five models. In addition, the municipality has agreed to supply sand, transport of materials, and the mason for the family latrines.

This is a terrific project, which has brought together many entities and funding sources to get the job done. Water Charity is pleased to be able to enable the proliferation of composting latrines in these communities, leading to great impact on their public health.

$0.00 - This project has been fully funded, through the generosity of Six Senses Resorts and Spas as a part of their Clean Water Projects initiative.

Any additional donations using the Donate button below will be used to fund other projects by this PCV and/or other PCVs in this country.

Melanie reports:

"The community has recently been connected to the local drainage and public water. The school has the opportunity to construct projects that will prove to be sustainable for years to come. By connecting the water system of the school to the public water system, the school would be able to count on water 100% of the time.

"The purpose of the water deposit is to allow water to be stored until the construction and paving of the highway is completed. This construction has cut the school off from water more than three days a week due to pipes being damaged. Thus the need for a water deposit remains.

"Although the school has existing toilets, they are drained into a seepage pit. The pit is nearly full due to the constant u

The school receives no water during daytime hours. Water is needed for drinking, food preparation, handwashing, and cleaning.

Each and every morning, along with their notebooks and pencils, students are required to bring with them 2-liter bottles full of water in order to sustain the school’s water supply.

Water Charity is funding a water deposit tank so students will no longer have to haul heavy bottles long distances, and will be able to learn in a healthy and sanitary environment.

Check back here to see how the project progresses. In the meantime, please make a donation which will be used specifically for the completion of this project, by clicking on the Donate button below.

If you prefer to send a check, please make it payable to Water Charity, with the designation Kristen's Water Tank Project, and send it to:

Averill Strasser, COO
Water Charity
P.O. Box 368
Crestline, CA 92325-0368

To see a progress report, click HERE.

Katie will be leaving Guatemala in April, and asked if we could fund a last project she wanted to do before she left. After reviewing her proposal, we committed to the project, within her timetable. We told her to start acquiring the materials, as the funds are on their way.

In 2008, Katie raised money to build a two-room elementary schoolhouse in the village of El Zapote. The school is currently under construction and is scheduled to be finished by the end of April. She needed the funds for the latrines and hand washing station for the school.

The project falls directly within our purview of water and sanitation. We are providing the resources that enable the completion of the school.

There are 47 families in the village of El Zapote, and 51 school-aged children who will directly benefit from this project.

Katie says: “There will be a set of 4 latrines constructed of cement block (like the schoolhouse) with simple concrete toilet seats, and a paved floor. The hand washing station will be an elevated water deposit with 8 taps, constructed of block and concrete.”

We will keep you informed on the progress of the project. If you believe that this project has merit, send us a donation. Your funds will be used to complete it, and to undertake others like it.

To read the update on Katie B’s School Project, CLICK HERE.

While traveling in Guatemala, we had a fortuitous meeting with a Peace Corp volunteer, Katie McKenna. This energetic and enthusiastic young woman reinforced our commitment to follow a strategy of working closely with Peace Corps Volunteers in the field. We let her know that we would be interested in funding any water or sanitation projects she might be able to organize before leaving her post.

Katie got back to us with a wonderful project in which she would work together with the villagers themselves and a local NGO with which she had previously partnered. In short, Water Charity decided to fund the building of latrines for the entire village of Chuisac in Chimaltenango.

The project will be done in stages, with the first 20% already in motion. We will keep everyone posted about it here, and Katie will give us occasional narrative and photographic reports from the field. Here is Katie's assessment of the situation in her village and the need for latrine construction:

Ventilated Latrines
Chuisac, Varituc is located 5km outside the town of San Martin Jilotepeque and has a community of about 140 families, the vast majority of whom do not have a latrine in an acceptable condition. The majority of the latrines do not have walls or roofs, and there are some latrines being used by two or three families, on average 8-10 (and as many as 14) people using a latrine. The health promoters in the village have noticed that in some of the houses, grade school kids are defecating in the yard. The community is concerned about its health and wants to better its sanitary conditions and rid themselves of diarrhea diseases, especially in young children (every year multiple infants are hospitalized with diarrhea), and because of this, they are interested in the construction and use of latrines. The latrine consists of a pit in the ground 5 meters deep and 85 cm in diameter, a 1 square meter cement floor with a cement seat, cinderblock walls, a laminated roof, and a PVC tube that serves as a vent in order to get rid of bad odors.

The total cost of one latrine is over 1,000 Quetzales, but the families have agreed to put up half the cost in local materials and manual labor, bringing the price of 1 latrine down to about 560 Quetzales. There are currently about 100 families in Chuisac interested in a latrine, bringing the total amount to 56,000 Quetzales or $7,500.

Water Charity is committed to seeing this whole project through to comple

Safe Passage works with the poorest at-risk children of families working in the garbage dump. They provide a comprehensive and integrated program that fosters hope, good health, educational achievement, self-sufficiency, self esteem and confidence.

With financial support from Safe Passage, each child is able to attend a local public school for the half-day term and then come to their center for educational reinforcement, caring and supervision.

The environment in and around the dump is toxic, with methane gases, rotting food, insects and vermin, and unsafe water. Entire families, including the children, are forced to work in these conditions in order to survive.

As part of the program Safe Passage provides literacy training and health education to the mothers of the children enrolled in the program. It is through this Mothers Group that we are implementing the filter project.

Unclean water worldwide is responsible for illness and death due to intestinal