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Your Gift Will Do Twice the Good – Literally
This month, and throughout the month of March, all donations to Caminos de Agua will be matched – up to USD $10,000. That means our generous sponsors – Chip and Lucy Swab and Bob and Peggy Krist – will double your gift, allowing you to Do Twice the Good and us to do twice as much critically needed work.
To better understand the impact the generosity of supporters like you creates, we’d like you to meet some of the families and communities Caminos de Agua partners with to create clean drinking water solutions in their environments – up close and personal. So, we hope you will take a few minutes to travel with us, less than 20 minutes from the center of San Miguel, to Los Ricos – a small community that has been struggling with the debilitating impacts of water scarcity and contamination for years. Due to the overexploitation of our aquifer – namely from the agricultural-export industry – wells must be drilled deeper and deeper where the water is naturally contaminated with excessive levels of arsenic and fluoride. This has left Los Ricos, and many of the other 2,800 rural and urban communities throughout our watershed region, to cope with severe health threats.
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From Clean Water to MORE Water, the Women of Los Ricos Organize to Expand Water Access to their Neighbors
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Photo: children from the community of Los Ricos inside a mock-up Rainwater Harvesting System.
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The community of Los Ricos de Arriba (Los Ricos) is located on the banks of the Laja River – a water source that once flowed year-round but is now seasonal and all but empty for most of the year. More than 40 families located on the upper part of the community lack consistent access to clean water as the community well, located in the lower part of the community, doesn't reach all the residents higher up. This water also happens to be heavily contaminated with arsenic and fluoride, chemicals that are extremely detrimental to human health when consumed regularly. As one mother from Los Ricos stated:
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"The water is sick because it comes from very deep. It is causing illnesses in us, slowly, over time."
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Unfortunately, chronic exposure to arsenic and fluoride in drinking water can cause kidney disease, bone deformation, skin lesions, cognitive development and learning disabilities in children, several types of cancer, and dental fluorosis – the permanent, irreversible brown staining of the teeth all too common in Los Ricos and throughout the region.
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To mitigate these issues, last year, our first Groundwater Treatment System (GTS), a technological innovation developed in-house by the Caminos de Agua Tech Team, was installed in the community of Los Ricos to conduct a “live test” of this unique system that removes arsenic and fluoride from the community well. Today, that system is almost completely operated by a group of women from Los Ricos, providing safe, clean drinking water to many families in the community.
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“We had many years without safe drinking water, while taking care of the GTS is hard work, it’s changed the reality of my family and community.”
María del Rosario, from the community of Los Ricos
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Now with a safe drinking water source available, María del Rosario and the other women in Los Ricos continued working with Caminos de Agua to figure out how they could add even more water access for all uses. Together, we designed a rainwater harvesting project and, with the help of the Alstom Foundation and supporters like you, this new initiative got off the ground at the beginning of this year. Today, families are working closely with Caminos de Agua to build the first 15 large-scale rainwater harvesting systems in Los Ricos. Combined with GTS for drinking water, the rainwater systems will help the families have much more consistent access to water for all their needs, year-round, becoming less dependent on a diminishing and contaminated well and a seasonal river.
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In February, to launch this new phase of the project, the women of Los Ricos, after working with Caminos for well over a year, took the reigns to design and lead an educational program for the new families participating in the project. The women organized into four teams, with each presenting on a specific topic related to water, no longer requiring support from Caminos de Agua staff. Each team developed their own materials, using the workbook "Our Water, Our Basin: Rainwater as a Solution," developed by Caminos de Agua, as a reference. The teams also did additional research on their own and presented to their neighbors, many hearing about these issues for the first time, on the regional water context, water contaminates, the impacts, and solutions.
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Your Can Help Us Expand this Work Twice as Fast
We want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have continued to make our critically needed work a reality. At Caminos, we're a small, but resourceful team. And, this year, following a record breaking 2021, we are aiming to again expand our ability to implement more solutions than ever before, always more efficiently, and in partnership with communities like Los Ricos who are most impacted by the severe water quality and scarcity challenges plaguing our region. In fact, Los Ricos is only one of upwards of 30 communities we will be working in this year to help install new water solutions. With your support during our Match Campaign this month, you can help get us there quicker, and every dollar or peso you give today will be immediately doubled by our generous sponsors. Please click on the button below and make your commitment today.
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Copyright © 2022 Caminos de Agua, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because of your interest in Caminos de Agua.
Our mailing address is:
Caminos de Agua
José María Correa 23A
Colonia Santa Cecilia
San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato 37727
Mexico
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