District Governor

Debbie Hale
Debbie Hale

Debbie is a member of the Rotary Club of Salinas Steinbeck, and is serving as our District Governor for the Rotary year 2023-2024.

Water, Water Everywhere
But Not a Clean Drop to Drink

Buenos dias! As I write this article I’m sitting on the patio in the Hotel Posada in Cobàn Guatemala, water bottle by my side, enjoying the pleasant evening.  A bottle of water also sits on the sink for me to use when brushing my teeth.  I haven’t eaten a salad for a week because we have been warned not to eat raw vegetables, or fruit that hasn’t been peeled, because they may have been rinsed in contaminated tap water.  Most of us in the United States take for granted the ability to turn on the tap to get a glass of clean water to drink whenever we want. Here “don’t drink the water” is not a myth, it’s a real threat.  A third of our group has experienced mild to severe gastrointestinal distress – and one even had to go to the hospital to be rehydrated.

Today we visited a water purification system installed by our District 5230 team a few years ago at the nearby Centro Don Bosco, a school for boys.  This system, drawing from the local river, provides enough clean water for their 1,000 students, plus another 2,000 people living in the surrounding neighborhood.  The administrators told us that before the system was installed, nearly 200 students got intestinal illnesses each year.  In 2023, only one student got sick (from eating food at another location). This Rotary project has made a real difference in the health and wellness of over 3,000 people.

The brains behind this water project is Jesus Garcia (see photo, left), a member of the Rotary Club of Lemoore.  Jesus is a photographer by trade, but after taking a one-week training course, he and his wife, along with another Rotary couple from Ecuador, partnered with Living Water World Missions to design and build their first water system in Guatemala. That was in 2005.  Since then, their team has built 10 water systems in rural Guatemala, including the one at Don Bosco.

The systems cost about $10,000 each, a substantial amount for a poor community, but financially affordable for our Rotary clubs.  These projects were built thanks to generous donations from the Rotary Clubs of Hanford, Lemoore and others, as the plaque in my photo shows.  Every project is accompanied by training in sanitation and system maintenance.  Community members are brought in to help source products and problem-solve.

Why do Rotarians build so many water projects?  Because clean water is vital to the medical and economic health of a community.  Without a reliable supply of clean water, children get sick and often die.  Often, poor families must buy clean water – money that could be better spent on education, food, or housing.  Village by village, school by school, our Rotary water projects have improved the lives of thousands of people in Central America and Africa.  It was an honor to meet some of those beneficiaries in Guatemala.

As Rotarians, we are always looking to expand our impact.  An important part of our international partnerships involves asking community leaders what they need, and where they need it.  A clean, reliable water system is often on the list. As such, we will be looking into how we can use Rotary Foundation funds to build more clean water and sanitation projects in Guatemala and other locations around the world.

Last month, I read a story about a small farming town whose residents have been living off of bottled water for many years. That town is Tooleville, California in Tulare County, one of the four counties in our own Rotary District 5230.  A grant from the state of CA, and a many years-long discussion between Tooleville and the neighboring town, will finally culminate in clean water being supplied to the residents of this tiny town. Why has this taken so long?! Sometimes money isn’t the answer, the answer is collaboration. As community leaders, Rotarians can help foster partnerships that create solutions.   If you know people in this community, or in Exeter, where the water will be pumped from, reach out and help.

As the Mayan locals say in Quechi, “B’aan tiox (thank you)” for Creating Hope in the World by supporting clean water projects! – Not just in other countries, but also in our own backyard.

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