Our First Well for Public Schools; we need your help

Team NGF at the school where we installed the purification system, June 3013

We became involved in water projects in public schools shortly after we arrived in Honduras three years ago. It all began when we were preparing to host our first STM team from our home church. We had only been down here a few months and I was struggling to put something together for them to do while in-country. A week before the team arrived, everything I had planned started to unravel. My friend Paul Hosier, a missionary with BMDMI, suggested that some of my team help him install a water purification system in one of the rural schools in our area. I immediately agreed, and so began my interest in water purification and our on-going relationship with the public school system.


Not being satisfied with the purification system we were using lead me to start our own company, Inversiones Wolfe Honduras SA de CV, in order to become a distributor for Sawyer Water Filters whose product I felt was far more efficient and cost effective. I then created our own social project "Agua Limpia para las Escuelas" where our company donates Sawyer filters to public schools, gives charlas (talks) to the students on why drinking purified water is critical to a healthy life and, as time allows us, we return to talk about Christian values. Our project has received recognition by the Minister of Education and is one of the things I love best about what we do in Honduras.

Chris (left) and me with Minister of Education Marlon Escoto 

As Chris and I traveled around Honduras, speaking at public schools and working through them to bring purified water and health education to the students, one of the things we realized is that often the schools have no water source of their own. Children have to bring their own water, and usually if the school doesn't have water it's because the community doesn't have water. Seeing what many of these kids are drinking and seeing how difficult it is to provide drinking water and proper sanitation for them lead me to enlarge our vision for what we do in public schools to include drilling wells. Out of this desire, and the need for water in general here in Honduras, was born our newest company, Pozos para Todos. (Wells for Everyone)

I have identified the first school we would like to drill at. The name of the school is Enma Romero de Callejas and is located in Colonia Juan de La Cruz Avelar here in Siguatepeque. This particular barrio is very dry and has extremely limited water resources. The water the school does receive is very contaminated and should only be used for flushing toilets, which doesn't stop the kids from drinking it. The school has almost 500 students, so as you can imagine, there is rarely enough water even for sanitation.

Centro Basico Enma Romero de Callejas

This natural "pool" on the edge of the school property indicates water is here

Although contaminated, some of the kids still drink from this

Solicitud

I have already begun the permitting process needed to open a well. I have the "solicitud" from the school requesting the project and our geologist has begun the required geological study. I have asked the Ministry of Education to be involved and this coming week will meet with the patronato of the colonia asking them to provide manual labor as needed including guarding the rig at night. Hopefully, we will have the drilling permit by mid May and can begin shortly afterward.

The cost of drilling a well is substantial and although we support ourselves personally, we do need your help funding projects like this. We have some funds already available thanks to gifts from some dear friends and two churches who regularly give towards our water projects. Should we decide that a hand style pump is suitable for this well, we have a tentative commitment from a Canadian organization to provide the pump, which is a large expense item. And of course our company will cover a substantial part of the cost as our gift back to missions.

Your help in funding this project, and future ones, would be very much appreciated. If you would like to give a tax deductible gift to help bring water to the school children of Honduras, the Camino Foundation has a set up an account to receive donations specifically for our water projects. Clicking on this link will take you directly to the donate page.

Thank you so much for your generousity