Capturing Rainwater is One Thing, Making it Last is Another

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Photo: Álvaro Gutiérrez, Water Monitoring Corrdinator at Caminos de Agua taking a water sample from a beneficiary's rainwater cistern. Monitoring and Evaluating Our Impact A Key Pillar for Protecting Our Extended Community’s Health A rainwater harvesting system, when properly used and maintained, can provide a family with a lifetime of clean water access. To ensure that people achieve this ultimate benefit over the long-term, we conduct regular visits throughout the watershed, striving to maintain a clear understanding of the state of our technology, people's health, and the environmental and human challenges that may impact the effectiveness of the systems, as well as our educational programing, over time. Since 2015, when we first started implementing rainwater harvesting systems, we began developing and continuously improving our own internal Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Program to oversee our expanding network of rainwater systems across the region.  Over the years, we’ve built a very robust M&E System, based on internally-developed software, surveys, and technical evaluations, to assure the long-term success and sustainability of our projects. We first do initial baseline surveys with all participating families in a given project, which gives us a starting point to measure from. We then return in subsequent years to do follow-up surveys with families as well as technical evaluations of the rainwater harvesting systems. The M&E Program helps us to continuously improve our impact by measuring dozens of indicators across eight areas:  Improved access to water in terms of quality, Improved access to water in terms of quantity, Improved health, Improved understanding of regional water issues, Lowered cost of water services, Use of, and confidence in, water systems and eco-technologies, and Technical validity and durability of water systems and eco-technologies. Photo: María Felicitas in front of her rainwater harvesting cistern.  This tireless effort, which unfortunately works in the background most of the time,  allows us to continually improve our educational programs, community organizing strategies, implementation methodologies, and our Rainwater Harvesting Systems themselves, including our award-winning ceramic filter, Aguadapt, which plays a crucial role in these systems. This program enhances our impact and solutions while also, most importantly, safeguarding the health of the people we aim to support.  María Felicitas Sánchez Navarro, a beneficiary of a Rainwater Harvesting System in the community of Los Platanos – an hour and half north of San Miguel – talks about the significance of our M&E Program:   "I think it's a very good program because it ensures that we are properly maintaining our systems. It helps us know whether our water is truly safe." Photo: Omar Bárcenas, Technical Social Promoter at Caminos de Agua, making a visit to a beneficiary's house as part of the Monitoring and Evaluation Program. Before having a rainwater system, María had to spend considerable resources on purchasing garrafones (20-liter jugs of bottled water), which became increasingly costly and also left her uncertain about the water's quality. Bottled water in rural communities is often not treated for contaminants like arsenic and fluoride, and the bottled water in María’s community often tastes strongly of chlorine, creating further doubts about how it was treated and its overall safety. Now, with her rainwater system and our monitoring program, she is confident that her water is free of contaminants or chemicals that may jeopardize her family's health, and that she is using and maintaining her system correctly.  Another community member from Los Platanos, who wishes to remain anonymous, agrees with María, emphasizing how the M&E Program has helped their family understand the importance of properly maintaining their system and how they can trust the skills they’ve learned in the process to ensure their water quality: "When it rains, I not only consider how much water we can collect, but also the safety and maintenance of our systems. I have control over the water I consume, and that gives me peace of mind." Our M&E Program not only shows us what we are doing well, but also how to continuously improve. For instance, in a recent monitoring of over 150 families, we learned that while overall understanding of the regional water issues is high, there is confusion about the direct health impacts between arsenic and fluoride specifically – allowing us the opportunity to pinpoint an area of improvement for our educational materials and programs. Through our M&E Program, we have also noticed a tendency of lower overall water availability in many areas of our watershed, due to community wells becoming more and more over-extended, thus illustrating the need for even more rainwater capture in the future.  The visits conducted by Caminos have become essential for community engagement and play a pivotal role in driving constant improvements, both technical and social, of our rainwater harvesting and other programs. The implementation, use, maintenance, and monitoring of a technology become integral components of a successful system that extends beyond the technology itself. That is how we build true solutions.