Looking Ahead: What We’ll Achieve Together in 2024
Last week, we reviewed with you our accomplishments in 2023 (see our email from last week in case you missed it!). This week we're excited to share our major goals and actions planned for 2024 as we continue on our commitment to mitigate the growing water crisis in our region. Your support has also been crucial, and we're excited to have you by our side as we strive to reach further and make an even greater impact in 2024. Let’s take a look to see where we plan to focus our energy.
Expanding Our Reach through Clean Water Access
Photo: Saúl Juárez, Community Implementation Coordinator with Caminos, explaining to community members the layout of the new GTS at the community of Alonso Yañez.
This year, we are expanding our initiatives to maximize our reach to people in need. This includes increasing clean water access by implementing our pioneering Groundwater Treatment System (GTS) Program aggressively. GTS is an internally- developed, first-of-its-kind, treatment plant that removes arsenic and fluoride (two incredibly difficult to remove contaminants), as well as biological pathogens and other risks, at the entire community scale. We are currently finishing the installation of our first massive-scale GTS in the rural village of Alonso Yáñez. This GTS will provide on-going clean drinking water access to the entire community of more than 270 families. As an important part of our long-term strategy to scale and replicate GTS, the community will become the owners and operators of this system – making GTS a truly sustainable solution. In addition to the GTS in “Alonso,” we will be installing another one in a similarly-sized community by year’s end.
As important as GTS is for our future, rainwater harvesting remains another critical tool to continue expanding clean water access, which is why we will also be constructing a staggering 350 large-scale Rainwater Harvesting Systems with accompanying filtration this year in partnership with the INANA, AC, the Municipal Government of San Diego de la Unión, and, most importantly, with our grassroots collaborators CUVAPAS, SECOPA, and the San Cayetano Community Center.
But, we’re not stopping there with rainwater. This year, we’re excited to announce our new partnership with Tikkun Eco Center and Salvemos al Río Laja, AC in creating an integrated reforestation and retention pond program, which will make millions of liters of rainwater available for use at the entire community scale.
Photo: Dr. Farías of the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico talks with members of the community of Alonso Yáñez regarding the collaborative health study launching in early 2024.
Next month, we will be launching a public health study in collaboration with researchers from the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico, Columbia University in New York, and the University of Colorado. Working closely with the community of Alonso Yáñez (where we are currently installing our first large-scale Groundwater Treatment System mentioned above), this groundbreaking study will measure biomarkers for kidney damage in 70 children, ages 7-11, who are exposed to fluoride levels more than 5 times the allowable limit, and, we hypothesize, illustrate a positive impact on their health after switching to a clean water source. You can learn more about the importance of this study by clicking here.
Additionally, we will be implementing an in-depth water quality study of 31 community wells in collaboration with the Municipal Government of San Diego de la Unión. This study is not only crucial to our continuing understanding of the increasing levels of arsenic and fluoride – two contaminants that plague our regional drinking water supplies and lead to a host of chronic health conditions – but it also adds legitimacy to the issues by having the support from local government who will also help disseminate the results to those who are exposed.
A New Generation of Community Leaders & Educators
Photo: Organizers of the Water School Program – belonging to the different grassroots organization alongside Caminos – come together for a team bonding retreat.
Perhaps most exciting, this year we will inaugurate our new “Water School,” a continuation of the “Water Learning Communities'' we implemented in collaboration with INANA, AC over the past three years (learn more about the Water Learning Communities Program by clicking here). The “Water School” will weave together an expansive network of expert instructors from organizations like INANA, Salvemos al Río Laja, GAIA, CUVAPAS, SECOPA, the San Cayetano Community Center, Tikkun Eco Centro, our team at Caminos de Agua, and many more, over the next three years. Together, we will train 30 young community organizers from throughout our watershed on diverse topics such rainwater harvesting and filtration technologies, reforestation, community communication, composting toilets, community-scale retention ponds, watershed management, and more – to begin building a new generation of community leaders dedicated to protecting our local resources.
Along with the launch of the Water School, our educational programs will continue to be at the forefront of what we do in 2024 and beyond, which include technical workshops, community building initiatives and educational programs, public talks, and even new courses in urban San Miguel in both English and Spanish. So stay tuned!
A Very Special Thanks
While last week we specifically wanted to thank all of the individuals who support this work, today we want to take a moment to highlight some of the most important institutions who are making 2023-2024 our most impactful years to date. We are sincerely grateful to:
The Jonathan D. Krist Foundation, whose support was fundamental in getting our work off the ground in our formative years. At the end of 2023, the Foundation made an extraordinary donation to Caminos that will be critical in helping us grow into our next phase of impact.
The Community Church of San Miguel and House of Welcome, A.C. who are also long-time supporters of our work, and, in 2023, made a remarkable donation to seed the scaling of our groundbreaking Groundwater Treatment System (GTS) Program, which, in turn, leveraged many other actors to join in to help us grow the program even more in 2024 and beyond.
The Municipal Government of San Diego de la Unión, who has invested substantially in expanding clean water access through our Rainwater Harvesting Program in dozens of communities in our watershed suffering from severe water scarcity and contamination– illustrating the deep impact we can achieve together when government and nonprofits find common ground.
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Miguel who continued to support the improvement of our education materials last year, which will have deep implications for our educational programming in 2024.
And, of course, The Gonzalo Río Arronte Foundation who, after months of negotiation, approved the most ambitious project in our organization’s history. The three-year project, starting this year and running to the end of 2026, encompasses, in part, much of what we just presented to you today.
While much of what has been highlighted here is part of the larger three-year project with Gonzalo Río Arronte Foundation, the fact remains that the Foundation only provides a maximum of 50% of the funding for these initiatives. We literally cannot do any of this work without the support of other institutions and, especially, individuals like you who make up upwards of 35% of our annual programming budget.
So, we are hoping we can depend on you, once again to come through for us as we strive to reach even further than ever before in 2024. Your involvement, whether through donations, sharing our mission, or engaging with our initiatives, makes a critical difference.
Thank you for being an essential part of our journey. Together, with your help, we can continue delivering badly-needed results and build on our successes.