A taller (pronounced tie-yair) is a micro-business, or workshop to build water filters. It’s the other side of giving someone clean water; it’s giving people skills and jobs that improve their lives.
Our taller is in San Juan Pueblo, about 53 km west from La Ceiba. It is managed by Armando and Ornan and has two groups of seven people that work in rotation, or together if there is a lot of work. Among these 14 workers, there are both men and women doing what I consider very hard labor. These people are not lazy, they work harder than I would ever want to and only Ornan complains. They live in an area that was developed by an organization similar to Habitat for Humanity and they are mostly very poor rural workers who have poor opportunities to get ahead. So when we offered them jobs for $6 profit per filter they were working seven days a week. In fact, they have produced filters faster than we can process them. Rasa and I have been very happy with the effort they have given this project. I just hope we can give them something more than money in return.
Pure Water for the World and the La Ceiba Rotary Club are working to establish this taller as a sustainable operation. We want to create a small business that will continue to provide these people with an income after the grant money has been spent. Rasa and I are working hard to teach them how to manage their production, keep a proper account of their expenses and labor, improve the filter quality, and most importantly why it is necessary to have a filter in the first place. Judging by the lack of daily attention our first working filter gets, they don’t understand its importance yet. But this is a learning process for us all and we have six more months to iron out problems like this. By the end of the grant, we will have identified the leaders of this group and taught them the skills necessary to continue running and selling filters for a profit. Ultimately, success will depend on them.
The current grant we are working on calls for the construction of 600 filters and there will be a second grant for 1,400 more, keeping everyone working for two years or more. If these projects are successful, everyone involved would have helped to provided not only clean water to 12,000 people but also establish a business that will continue making filters for many more families. And this is what I would consider a successfully sustainable project that makes a real impact on people’s lives. Conveying this improvement, one family at a time, has been a continual challenge for me. It’s hard to capture the pride someone has when a neighbor is looking at their filter; the gratitude of a family after receiving a filter, shown by offering what little they can; or the disappointment I felt when the taller didn’t get paid enough to buy their traditional Christmas tamales.
It’s sometimes so easy to take for granted the clean, safe water we have in the US. Some people here in Honduras, like the community of Agua Helada, have never even seen a tap. This mountain village of twenty households is a 4-hour walk across six rivers and can only be accessed in the dry season by burro. That should make for some interesting logistics and pictures while delivering twenty 150lb filters. Anyone want to come and help us tame to burros in April?
Our motley crew of sand sifters
Always enough work for everyone
Teaching them how to settle the concrete in the mold
There are always kids hanging around to help out
Breaking out a filter
Only about 550 more to make
This little one always likes to help us out
Robert Kent Jr- robjkentjr@gmail.com
Wat/San/Health Consultant
www.RobRasa.com/hisblog/
Voice Mail: +1 (631) 458-1119
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