LA VILLA de SAN FRANCISCO, HONDURAS
Funded November 17, 2022
Every year, a non-profit named Honduras Hope Mission in Pittsburgh, PA organizes a medical mission trip to the Ville de San Francisco area of Honduras. A large group of doctors and dentists from Pittsburgh team up with medical professionals from Honduras to provide medical and dental clinics for Villa de San Francisco and nearby towns. The #1 medical issue that arose again and again was disease due to contaminated water.
In order to reduce the suffering as well as load on the medical team, Honduras Hope Mission focused on a solution to the underlying dirty water problem. Since surface water is readily available in this area of Honduras, the team partnered with an in-country water filter producer to build family water filters to turn the dirty surface water that families in the area were drinking into potable water. Each water filter can provide clean water for a family of four for two years.
In 2011, when Ingomar Living Waters was formed, Honduras Hope Mission reached out to Ingomar Living Waters to sustainably fund water filters every year in order to cut down on waterborne disease in the area surrounding Villa de San Francisco. Through the years, Ingomar Living Waters has funded 4,000 water filters. This year, 2022, Ingomar Living Waters is funding 500 water filters for $25 each ($12,500). These filters will be delivered as part of the January 2023 medical/dental missionary trip to Honduras.
The filters we use are low-tech, compared to other, more complicated systems, that would be prone to breaking down. Cleaning and repairing the filters are the responsibility of the individual families. At the time of distribution, we instruct the families in how to clean and maintain the filters, so as to prolong their effectiveness. Replacement parts, if needed, are available from a local individual who resides in La Villa, and who is supplied with parts by the manufacturer, Aqua de Barro. Instructions are also attached to each filter, stating how to care for them, and whom to contact if the filter is damaged. There are no repair costs incurred by Honduras Hope Mission. Because the filters produce clean water for two years, they need to be regularly replaced on this schedule.
As mentioned previously, these filters dramatically reduce the gastrointestinal illnesses that plague this area of Honduras. Gastrointestinal illnesses have declined significantly (up to 90 percent.) Adults are missing less work and children less school. Families have learned to take bottled water from their homes to work and school. In addition, by hosting the Honduras Hope Mission medical clinics, the churches that serve as hosts are provided an opportunity to share the love of Christ with those in their communities in a very tangible way, by distributing the filters, and also by sharing the gospel verbally with individuals who come to the clinics.
We thank the many contributors at Ingomar Living Waters’ annual Turning Wine Into Water event for being so generous in providing water filters to help reduce waterborne disease in the areas surrounding Villa de San Francisco. We raised enough money towards water filters to provide 500 filters this year. Through your generosity, we are able to provide ongoing clean water to around 4,000 people in Honduras. You are amazing! And thank you Honduras Hope Mission for all your work coordinating and overseeing the assembly and distribution of water filters.
COMPLETED APRIL 4, 2023
Honduras Hope Mission/Ingomar Living Waters Summary 4.4.2023
This year, in addition to the 500 filters provided by the grant from Ingomar Living Waters, the HHM Board also voted to acquire an additional 500 filters, using another $12,500 that had been raised at several Walk 4 Water events in 2021 and 2022. This action was taken in order to try to reach a greater number of people than we were able to do in the past, since we had been unable to send a North American team to Honduras in the two preceding years due to the pandemic, and economic conditions in Honduras have deteriorated over that time. Between 4,000 and 5,000 people received water filters as a result.
The filters were manufactured in the filter plant owned and operated by two brothers, Maximo and Guillermo Salgado, in Sabanagrande, Honduras, which is about a one hour drive south of Tegucigalpa, the capital. Below is a photo, taken in December 2022, of some of the ceramic filters being dried in the sun.
After the filters are dried they are packed in boxes, and packed for shipment, along with the plastic buckets that will house the filters. See below.
All of the filter components were loaded on a truck and shipped by truck to the Hope Center, owned by the Honduras Hope Mission in La Villa de San Francisco, Honduras (about two and one-half hours northeast of Sabanagrande).
The filters were stored there until the week preceding arrival of the team from North America.
Then a group of the Hope Families, who are supported by HHM, was gathered to assemble the components, in preparation for distribution during the medical clinics the following week.
Each day during the week of clinics, the filters would then be distributed to families, not only in the town of La Villa de San Francisco,
but also in other rural communities – Suyapa, Suyate, Guancaste, Miravalle and el Bufalo. Some of the recipients are shown below.
