The Lima Rotary Club's request for a global grant has been approved for $251,151!
The grant which Bob Ruehl applied for was granted on August 9th. I has taken two years of development to gain approval.
This grant is Phase 2 of a process which Bob started in 2014. The grant is for Sanitation, Water, and Hygiene in the Merendon Protectorate to construct latrines..
Prior to developing the Phase 1 grant we spent 3 days talking to the people of the Merendon. (The Merendon is a protected area West NW of San Pedro Sula, Honduras.) The people all said that the ground water which they all drink was polluted, and something had to be done to change that situation. This how the latrine project grew. We experimented with different types of latrines in different situations and arrived at one that everyone approved of. The people were not organized so we had to get them to develop local governments and then to develop water boards. The water boards are necessary because we (Rotary) did not want to choose who gets a latrine and who doesn’t.
All of the issues which we pioneered 2015 have been adopted by the Rotary Foundation and are now rules which they have made mandatory for approval. These were getting the local teachers to teach hygiene, developing a follow-up group to teach the adults how to take care of their latrine. Developing a logistical group to deliver the construction materials to the job sites, building new school latrines for teachers and students, and being there for continuing questions. The first grant was for $125,000.
We received a $1,000 from Amherst and Lorain Lima contributed $20,000.
Lima has been a leader in D6600 for the last 20 years with International Grants.
Bob Ruehl