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For several years, Puerto Vallarta Sur Rotary Club has worked with area Sawyer water filter representatives and non-profit Proyecto Aqua Limpia to identify communities lacking purified drinking water sources and to announce and organize water filter distributions. The water filters are financed by Rotarians around the world. The specific filters are Sawyer brand (sawyer.com) designed for ease of use in poor areas without access to clean drinking water and can last for up to ten or more years at a current quoted cost of $55 per filter, including bucket and assembly supplies. Access to clean water will not only improve area residents' health, it will also decrease health related school and work absenteeism, thus improving their economic well-being. In many of these areas, soda costs less than drinking water, thus there is a high incidence of obesity and diabetes, not to mention parasitic diseases.
It is our goal to provide the funds to Puerto Vallarta Sur Rotary for purchase of the filters and supplies and ideally, for some members of Foothills Rotary to travel to the area to participate in the filter distribution sometime in early 2024. We have provided funds for filters to be distributed in this area in 2017, 2019 and 2023 and we had volunteers from our club assist with the 2017 and 2019 distributions.
The Puerto Vallarta Sur Rotary Club will coordinate the project. Our contacts are Malcolm Laird, mjalaird@hotmail.com and Sandra Stolz, slstolz@hotmail.com, both of whom are residents of Puerto Vallarta and members of the Puerto Vallarta Sur Rotary club.
Addendum to Project Description (added after the project was signed)
Our water filter distribution partner Rotary Club, Puerto Vallarta Sur informed us that their project coordinators resigned. The club found new project coordinators, but we received a 2024 filter distributions report which revealed they had 450 left over filters, a 39% excess! And there were 508 filters carried over from 2023 into 2024. In addition, prior geographic targeted areas now appear to be well served with filters and new areas of need are not yet identified. Thus that project does not seem to be in great need for our donations, at least for now.
Instead, we are amending our District Matching Grant project to fund the completion of a project in Barrón Mexico. It is for a community health clinic water sanitation system plus hand washing stations, training for children and a cistern to serve the roughly 2,000 residents of Barrón, approximately 12 miles southeast of Mazatlan Mexico. Larry Salmen of the Rotary Club of Fort Collins approached us regarding the project and will be our local contact. This is a small part of a larger $100,000 project to construct and staff a community clinic in Barrón which has had and continues to have the full support of the Rotary Club of Mazatlan Norte. Partner Clubs are the Rotary Club of Casper Reveille and the Rotary Club of Loveland Thompson Valley. Several Fort Collins residents are also involved, including, of course, Larry Salmen who, this past February, met with multiple Mazatlan Norte Rotary Club officers and also visited the project site in Barrón. Our District Matching Grant will have the Rotary Club of Mazatlan Norte as our "on the ground" local club. They have successfully completed an earlier project with the Rotary Club of Fort Collins and are a trusted partner.
This water treatment segment is the final step in the larger Barrón clinic project. The clinic is already completed and staffed. Once the water sanitation part of this project is completed, Rotary clubs will have significantly improved the quality of life for Barton's 2,000 residents.
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