Clean Water Access

Chief Impact Officer & Coffee Buyer, Enrique returns to Nicaragua with Coffee Director, Brady. The visit was mainly focused on the existing partnership and how to best support their needs after COVID. Later this year and into 2023, Enrique plans on revisiting and work on the continued project efforts.

Because of COVID restrictions, we have been unable to visit Nicaragua but have been in contact with our partners at origin throughout the pandemic. Everyone’s focus has been to keep each other safe and look forward to the day when we can visit all the farm workers and their families. 

Our hope is by the end of the year, we can pick up where we left off and can continue our important work there. 

Enrique returns to Nicaragua along with District Manager, Alex to check up on projects. Santa Isabel Water Project is near complete. Three more wells have been restored and are providing water to more families. There is money left over in the budget and our partners are looking for more wells to restore by August 2019. Enrique will return in September to confirm the completion of project.

Enrique travels to Finca Santa Isabel to help the Lovos identify the next set of wells to be covered. We are still in the process of figuring out which communities still need access to clean water.

We return to Totogalpa. The third well, El Hornito, was abandoned and unusable for the past 15 years. Families had to walk further from their own communities and ask for water supply from others, leaving them with the last bit of muddy water. A new infrastructure is constructed and a new pump installed. Ten families now have access to clean water. The fourth well, La Chilca, was once a hole covered with branches and the main water supply for 30 families. 15 of these families were able to use water from a functional well further away, while the other 15 continued to consume water from the contaminated and exposed well. A new infrastructure was constructed and a new pump was installed. The 15 families now have access to clean water supply. The fifth well, Quebrada Grande, belongs to 11 families. These include Isabel Lopez, who offers classes in reading, writing, and basic math for our farm workers and their children. A functional well was already in place, but the steep and exhausting daily trek for these families was difficult. A permanent hose and water barrel will be installed to provide easier access to clean water at the top of the mountain, near their homes. Now with phase 1 of our project complete, Think Coffee and the Lovos will work together to find the next project which will benefit the farm workers, their families, and their communities.

We begin covering wells in five specific communities. The first, El Llano, is home to a former NGO well that has rusted over and hardly functions. It's set behind a fence, and has an obviously abandoned clothes-washing station by its side. There are 35 families set to benefit from this well. We organize with the community leader here, Balvino, to put the families into shifts (16 in the morning, 15 in the afternoon) of getting water so that everyone has access. The second well, in El Zapote, has been abandoned for the last 8 years. We arrive to clean up the inside and run the rope to get it functional. The well now produces about a gallon in 30 seconds. The average family uses one gallon/person/day for consumption. This well is set to benefit 10 families. In the coming months, we will begin to work on closing three more wells for Jaime's workers' communities, providing water to several hundred people.

The Lovos begin surveying several communities from which their harvest workers come. We find five places with insufficient access to clean water - many wells are either abandoned, too far away, or dirty and insufficient to drink from.