Panama

Community Description

Community Description
Mogué is a community of 500 indigenous people in rural Panamá. It is about 10 hours travel time from Panama City, in the country´s least developed and least populated province.

There is no road access to the community. The only access is by small boat down the Pacific Coast and up the Mogué River, or a 3-hour hike by trail from the provincial capital, with a population of about 3,000 people.

Community members base their lives around the river, bathing, washing clothes and dishes, and preparing food. The community currently uses pit latrines, some very close to the river. This poses a health hazard due to the runoff into the drinking water source.

There is an increasing temptation for the villagers to start using chemical fertilizers for their crops. This also presents problems with runoff into the river and the streams which feed into the village aqueduct, its primary drinking water source.

Mogué has a 4-room schoolhouse that serves approximately 120 students. The schoolhouse has no adequate bathroom facilities, and has a very large school garden where the students plant a number of crops such as plantains, guandú, and corn.

Project Description
This project is to build a composting latrine at the school for use by the community and the school.

This will be a model project which incorporates training. The construction will be facilitated by Peace Corps Panamá´s latrine coordinator to serve as a training to 10-20 village men who have expressed a great deal of interest in learning how to build one.

The compost produced will be used in the school garden. This will serve as an instrument to teach the students the importance and utility of organic fertilizers.

Water Charity funds will be used exclusively for materials and gasoline to transport said materials. The labor and technical expertise will be provided by the community and the Peace Corps.

Those trained via the seminar and latrine construction will subsequently be capable of building dry composting latrines for personal use from either cement and cinderblock or wooden boards, and teaching the technology to others.

Project Impact
500 people will benefit from this project, including 120 students at the school.

Peace Corps Volunteer Directing Project
Samuel Packard

Comments
Promoting the use of dry composting latrines is vital for riverine cultures like the Embera who populate this area. The technology serves to preserve the fresh water supply, and also to create a source of rich organic compost for agricultural activities.

Dollar Amount of Project
$385.00

Donations Collected to Date
$385.00

Dollar Amount Needed
$0.00 - This project has now been fully funded through the generosity of Six Senses Resorts & Spas as a part of their Clean Water Projects initiative.

We encourage others to continue to donate using the Donate button below, and we will notify Samuel of your donation. Additional funds will be used to fund the next project by the PCV and/or other projects in the country of service.

Community Description
Caisan Centro is a Latino farming community in the highlands of the province of Chiriqui, Panama. With about 200 houses, Centro is a small outlying suburb of the larger district of Renacimiento, and is often overlooked next to the bigger community when it comes to needed services. A specific case in point is the issue of water: Centro has a poorly maintained aqueduct, while surrounding communities have the resources to fund brand new aqueduct projects.

Centro’s aqueduct often breaks down because of poorly designed engineering and inferior materials. Even when fully functioning, there are parts of the community it cannot serve.

The most dire and immediate problem concerns the only elementary school in the community, Escuela Caisan Centro. It is a small two-classroom school, situated on top of a hill overlooking the province lowlands. Because of its elevation slightly higher than the aqueduct, the school cannot be served by the aqueduct and is without water.

The views from Escuela Caisan Centro are breathtaking, as is the trek up the hill carrying the buckets of water needed to mop, wash hands and dishes, and more importantly, to retrieve water for the children to drink.

The school is run by one teacher who is also the school’s principal. She is responsible for the education of 30 students ranging from first to sixth grade, which she teaches in rotation. Due to an influx of children from a newly opened orphanage in the area, the student body recently rose to over 80 students.

The lack of accessible water in the school has meant that toilets are used like latrines, only flushed on specific days where area residents allow the school to use some of their scarce and precious well water. There is much less access during the summer when area wells start to dry up before the return of the rainy season.

The bathrooms and unwashed dishes tend to attract insects and animals, which bother the students in the nearby classrooms. In addition, there is the danger of the spread of disease. A second important health risk is the inadequacy of water available for the students and their teachers after recess or lunch, as the rationed water isn’t adequate to keep students or adults adequately hydrated in this hot climate.

The Ministry of Health closes the school down periodically when it comes by for inspection and finds that the school is without water. The teacher has asked students to bring their own water bottles to school, but being children, they often forget them at home.

Project Description
This project is to build a rainwater catchment system to provide water for the school, and to purchase a large cooler that will hold drinking water, donated by area neighbors.

To build the rainwater catchment system, four-inch plastic PVC water tubes will be cut in half to make gutters for rainwater runoff from the school’s zinc roof. From the gutters, the water will be directed to a 200-gallon raised-tank through half inch PVC pipes.

In addition to the materials for constructing the gutters, project funds will go to purchase a sink for washing dishes and mopping, and for a 10-gallon cooler to hold drinking water in the classroom.

The community will provide labor and will transport the purchased materials.

Upon project completion, a Clean Water Day will be held to teach simple hygiene and sanitation to the students and their parents for proper hand washing, the risks of drinking untreated rain water, the dangers of dehydration, and the possible serious consequences from drinking water from old chemical containers.

Project Impact
This project will benefit about 85 people, including the students and staff at the school.

Peace Corps Volunteer Directing Project
Annie O'Donnell

Comments
This project will help the school and the students make positive improvements in health and hygiene, reducing disease. It also will allow the students more time in the classroom, rather than carrying water.

Dollar Amount of Project
$555.00

Donations Collected to Date
$555.00

Dollar Amount Needed
$0.00 - This project has now been fully funded through the generosity of Six Senses Resorts & Spas as a part of their Clean Water Projects initiative.

We encourage others to continue to donate using the Donate button below, and we will notify Annie of your donation. Additional funds will be used to fund the next project by the PCV and/or other projects in the country of service.

Community Description
La Honda is an 800-person community nestled in a valley in the mountains of Panama. The people are almost entirely subsistence farmers who occasionally supplement their incomes doing odd construction jobs in other parts of the country. Jobs are extremely limited and what few jobs there are involve intense manual labor at larger farms that pay only a few dollars a day.

This is not a wealthy area and many houses consist of little more than a single room with corrugated tin walls and dirt floors. The center of town consists of one church, one very small general store and the elementary school.

Many do not have the basic waste disposal system they need for their families to live healthy lives.

The elementary school in La Honda is modest, consisting of three classrooms, each containing two grades 1st-2nd, 3rd-4th, 5th-6th with about 20 students per classroom.

Project Description
This project is to build five new latrines at homes that either have no existing latrines or have latrines so poor that they need to be replaced.

The holes will be 10 feet deep and four feet on a side. Because the soil in the community is so dense, lining the walls will not be necessary for the protection of the water table.

The cover plate will be made of concrete reinforced with rebar. Each latrine will have a molded concrete seat, and will be ventilated using plastic tubing.

The walls and door be constructed of 3 x 7 corrugated zinc sheets, and the posts holding up the structure will be made from small trees.

Project funds will be used to purchase materials, including cement, toilet bowls, nails, rebar and corrugated sheet metal.

All the work will be done by members of the community.

Project Impact
20 people will benefit from this project.

Peace Corps Volunteer Directing Project
David Clarke

Comments
This is a project to help the neediest families in this community who possess few resources. It has great community support, with all of the labor provided by the recipient families and other villagers. The improved hygiene will have a significant impact on the reduction of illness and disease.

Dollar Amount of Project
$500.00

Donations Collected to Date
$500.00

Dollar Amount Needed
$0.00 - This project has now been fully funded through the generosity of Diana Canale, of Indiana, PA, USA, with the help of friends and family of Peace Corps Volunteer David Clarke.

We encourage others to continue to donate using the Donate button below, and we will notify David of your donation. Additional funds will be used to fund the next project by David and/or those of other PCVs in the country.

Community Description
Boca Del Monte is a community of about 500 people in the Comarca of Ngöbe-Bugle of Southwestern Panama. The community has a school that goes up to 8th grade, which had a 2010 enrollment of around 350 kids from Boca Del Monte and 5 other surrounding communities.

During the dry season in the community, which spans from January through May, the majority of the people and the students and teachers at the school do not receive water in their faucets. They are forced to grab buckets and fetch water from a contaminated stream located about 50 meters down and up some steep terrain.

The current aqueduct serves the community well between June and December. However, to improve the aqueduct to serve well also during the dry months, work on the aqueduct system is required.

Project Description
This project is to improve Boca Del Monte´s aqueduct system by constructing 3 small cement tanks to serve as receptacles and depressurizing agents for the water flow.

Two of the tanks will cover 2 new ¨hojas de agua¨ the community members wish to add to the current aqueduct system. The third tank will serve as a place where 3 merging tubes, from 3 separate hojas de agua, will collect, depressurize, and send off in one solo tube that eventually connects up with the main aqueduct tank.

The project will be located in a place on the outskirts of Boca Del Monte that has one of the uppermost altitudes the community. It is an estimated 200 meters from the current aqueduct and at an altitude of about 30 meters higher than the current aqueduct, which lies about 180 meters higher than the lowest point in the community.

Project funds will be used to purchase materials, including 30 sacks of cement and 30 pieces of 1.5 inch tubing. Remaining funds will go toward transportation, with the community paying for the balance. The community will also provide other supplies, such as sand and gravel for the cement mix, and tube connectors.

Under the direction of the Community Aqueduct Committee, the villagers will provide all of the labor. Various participants in previous aqueduct construction possess the necessary skills to carry out all of the tasks.

Project Impact
This project will benefit about 850 people, consisting of the community population of 500 and the school population of 350 (including students, teachers, and out-of-community volunteers who work at the school).

Peace Corps Volunteer Directing Project
Timothy Vanden Boom

Comments
This is an important project for a large population that depends on the aqueduct system. The improvements build upon an infrastructure that currently only provides for seasonal needs, and create a reliable and safe water source during the entire year.

There is widespread community support, thus ensuring the sustainability of the aqueduct. Substantial health benefits will accrue through the reduction in the consumption of unsafe water from elsewhere during the dry season.

Dollar Amount of Project
$500.00

Donations Collected to Date
$500.00

Dollar Amount Needed
$0.00 - This project has now been fully funded through the generosity of Six Senses Resorts & Spas as a part of their Clean Water Projects initiative.

We encourage others to continue to donate using the Donate button below, and we will notify Timothy of your donation. Additional funds will be used to fund the next project by the PCV and/or other projects in the country of service.

This project has been finished. To read about the conclusion of the project, CLICK HERE.