Installations

In the second week of April, after months of preparation and frustration, we finally, finally reached the point where we were ready to install filters. Next came the awkward task of going to the 9 families who had worked with us back in November and December (and thus had technically earned their filter long ago, since our philosophy is that people have to help to make their filter to get one, so that they have more appreciation for it) and trying to explain what had gone wrong.

Luckily, for the most part, they were quite understanding... most of them even volunteered to help us wash the gravel and sand for their filters. A few were a bit frustrated with us, but that is to be expected, I suppose.

We decided to get the 9 installations done as soon as possible, because we were running short on time in this trip, and wanted to expand the project to the entire town before we left the country(as opposed to the church community were we originally started working).

We ended up doing 9 installations in 4 days, which was crazy considering we had never done one before. It was a bit of a mistake, as we ended up needing to rush to keep up to the schedule, and we all ended the week quite exhausted from working 11 hour days...

In the end we got it all done with relatively few problems, while learning a great deal about how to create a reasonable work schedule so that we do not end up rushing the installations and burning us out. Something that will serve the organization well as we try to expand the original project.

We recently completed follow-up visits to the original 9 families, and much to our satisfaction, they are using their filters without any problems, and seem very receptive to the hygiene training that our employees give them.

It finally seems that our work down here is starting to show results.

Photo: Fermina - the proud owner of the first filter that we installed in Bolivia. Only 6.75 months after we arrived in the country! Her family 'only' had to wait another 5 months after they had been told they'd receive the filter by our previous boss.