How do you Combat Coronavirus without Water?

For virtually all of us, washing our hands with soap and clean water, one of the main defenses against the coronavirus, is a critical action we don’t think twice about. But for tens of thousands who rely upon the Alta Rio Laja aquifer in the highlands of Guanajuato, Mexico for their drinking water, that straightforward act isn’t so simple. That’s because their water supply has completely dried up, and for many more, it’s common to only receive water for a few hours a week.

In Caminos de Agua, we are often working in multiple rural communities at a time to help create access to clean water, so when the pandemic began, we knew so many in our region with limited water resources would be at greater risk. Despite already being at capacity as an organization, it only took us a few days to switch gears and begin creating special emergency programs to help communities facing this sudden additional health risk with such huge consequences.

We began by making video workshops focusing on practical ways for communities with limited water resources to combat the pandemic. We developed workshops on things like how to make hand sanitizer out of ingredients found in most homes, how to easily build an emergency rainwater collection system to increase water availability, and, perhaps the most useful video, how to build a homemade “tippy-tap” handwashing station, which is foot-operated and allows 30 people to effectively wash their hands with just one gallon of water.

We used Facebook, WhatsApp, and cell phone networks to get these tools out to local communities, and we then received financial help from the municipal government of San Miguel de Allende to print our manuals, workbooks, and other materials as well as create USBs loaded with our video workshops and other useful information. To maximize our reach, we provided these packets of materials, as well as training on how to use them, to other area NGOs working closely with at-risk communities. View our resources here.

This program not only made an important impact last spring, but it is also still in use right now as we continue to partner with, and train, local NGOs and other groups as the second wave of the virus surges.

We have transformed our work dramatically during the age of coronavirus. With the water crisis in our region getting worse faster than we can put solutions in place, stopping our work during the pandemic just wasn’t an option.

We have had to continue our work with less in-person visits and find ways to provide supervision and education virtually. When we need to be onsite, our staff is always masked, outdoors, and has ample sanitizer on hand. Instead of having large centralized trainings and educational sessions, we now have more localized smaller events, often repeated to various groups, to prevent the virus from spreading.

In addition to our pre-planned workload, we have also made it a priority to work with more communities who have little to no water at all. In fact, thanks to supporters like you, we just finished a large-scale project in the community of El Fraile. We were able to build 25 large-scale rainwater harvesting systems with this community whose well went dry and literally collapsed in on itself more than a year ago – leaving the residents without any water access just as coronavirus was arriving.

None of this has felt like a choice to us, and we are extremely proud that we made the decisions we did. But it created significant additional expenses this year for our already scrappy organization where finances are always stretched to the max.

If you are one of the many people who wait to figure out your yearly giving until now, or if you have the wherewithal to make another donation this year, please consider making a meaningful gift to Caminos de Agua today. Your generosity will help us create access to clean drinking water for literally hundreds of communities whose health is being seriously threatened because their water is becoming more scarce or increasingly contaminated. To give now just click on the donate button below.