Water Seminar

Cheap: All said and done, $1.30 per person per day for breakfast and lunch.  Participants contributed firewood for cooking. [Funded by SPA grant]

Eco-friendly: Bring your own plate, spoon, and cup.

Local: Located in the school.  Everyone walks up to an hour from their houses to arrive.

Bored or absorbed?

Adults here love seminars.  And pretty certificates.  I grant the popularity of seminars partially to the fact that most adults weren’t able to receive as much schooling as they would have liked.  So 1 ½ year into my time here in the community, I decided to host my first formal seminar.  The advantage of waiting is that I have helped out facilitating at 4 other water seminars and countless other seminars mostly within the Comarca, so I noticed what works and what doesn’t work.  For example, it is acceptable to start late on the first day but after that it should really start almost on time.

Seven different community water groups were invited to attend.  The seminar consisted of two sessions of two days, with a two week break between the sessions.  Inviting 7 water groups consisted of walking around to the surrounding communities and talking with the water presidents, and then reminding them a few times and requiring written commitment of attendance.  

General session topics included: Making a Community Map, Contaminants in your aqueduct, Water and your Health, a Successful Water Committee, Managing the Treasurer’s Account.  Technical topics included: How to measure water flow, Cleaning the Tank.  Hands-on sessions included: An aqueduct model made of buckets and hoses; thermoforming PVC pipe using hot oil to make connector pieces.  

All ages were welcome.

Hosting a seminar was intense.  For each day of the seminar I recruited 2 volunteer cooks, some of who showed up.  Most days the volunteer cooks had to ask participants to help out as water haulers from the spring source a 5 minute walk away, because the aqueduct was not working properly – how fitting to host an aqueduct management seminar!  My community’s water committee president really made me proud because he stepped up to cook when one of the recruited cooks didn’t show up, and also made announcements every day telling people to show up on time and bring firewood.  

A much needed break. Check out how these men can sport a bag.

Hosting a seminar didn’t stop once the seminar finished for the day at 3 pm because I was also hosting other volunteers in my house to help facilitate the sessions.  Actually, one of the best parts of the seminar was hosting 2 groups of 4-5 volunteers, some of whom would rarely have another chance to visit a community in the Comarca because they live in another region.  We ate novel items brought from outside such as celery and peppers, and drank wine from a box.  It was exquisite.

The aqueduct model using a bucket and tubes.

Certificates

So what did you do during your 2 years in Panama?  I helped host a cheap, eco-friendly, local water committee seminar!  Here in rural Panama the maintenance of the system lies in the hands of volunteer community members, so training them in how to take care of and improve the system is just as important as the actual tubes and tanks themselves.