Honduras Interns Progress Report

Date: August 27th 2008

Tamara

• On Wednesday August 6th John, Tamar and Antonio visited Tamara and attended a Junta meeting in the evening.
• We discussed the current situation with Carlos, the plant operator, and discussed when the community would start the construction of his home to be placed next to the plant.

Potential Sites and New Plant

• On Thursday August 7th Tamar, Wilfredo and Antonio visited Guiamaica and Orica. We discussed possible sites for a plant in Guiamaca.
• On Tuesday the 13th, Tamar and John worked in the office with the engineer to brainstorm ideas regarding the new plant.
• On Wednesday the 14th John, Tamar and Wilfredo traveled to Talanga to look for a place to construct a plant.
• On Friday the 16th we worked on the new plant design for the Cuatro Communidades. Engineer Wilfredo Serrano drew the structural components in AutoCAD in 2D.

Television Show: "Porque Nos Importa"

• On Monday August 12th Ana Maria Villeda de Kafati met the APP Office at the Tamara plant after they visited other APP projects in the area. They filmed the plant and learned about the APP/Cornell relationship.
• On Wednesday the 14th in the afternoon we met the film crew again in Ojojona where more interviews were conducted.

Future Work

• Thurday the 15th Carol and Tamar reviewed some documentation on the computer and made some suggestions about what projects to keep working on. The Hypochlorinator Manual needs to adjusted into a pamphlet about how it operates. We also discussed using the spreadsheets to monitor Tamara and Ojojona.

Rotary Meeting

• On Saturday Aug 17th we had a meeting with representatives of Rotary where we gave them a tour of the Tamara plant and the Junta de Agua presented about the progress in their community.
• The current and future President's of the Rotary Club were present and pleased with the progress of the plant.

Trip to Mercedes

• Monday - Saturday Aug 19-23rd Antonio and Tamar worked with the APP office in Mercedes, Ocotepeque alongside Antonio Coyas, Magdaleno and Erika.
• On Tuesday and Wednesday we had formal capacitations that took place in the Mayor's building. Over 18 communities were present with over 45 people in attendance on both days.
• On Tuesday we reviewed disease pathways, the importance of chlorinating, how to calculate flow rate, measure chlorine residual and explained the basics of a hypochlorinator. In the afternoon we split into 5 different groups and had teams work on problems together. At the end of the day we reviewed the flowrate/volume/chlorine drip rate questions by having participants show their work on a whiteboard. It was empowering to see mostly women volunteer to share their work. Many people in attendance were not familiar with doing unit conversions, so ample time was spent explaining why the factors were necessary when using a 5 gallon bucket to determine flow rate.
• On Wednesday we went over the homework we handed out and had people in attendance share their answers. We then proceeded to the Limoncita water tank where we had three different groups working to calculate the flow rate and the respective chlorine dose. All three came up with about the same number verifying that they had learned the process. We installed the hypochlorinator and had people take turns measuring how many mL/min dropped. We closed the day with an evaluation, asking people to close their eyes and raise their hands to answer the questions. The results are shown on the plot below.

• On Thursday we checked on the hypochlorinator that we installed in Limoncita. We also met with participants from the capacitations in Miraflores Abajo and in Mercedes to assist in their chlorine doses.

Office Work, Website Maintenance

• On Monday - Thursday August 25 to 28th Tamar worked in the office, translating a Matching Grant for Rotary, and preparing for the Mayor's presentation we will have on Friday August 29th in Gracias, Lempira.