Project Description:
Chicorral is a rural community with approximately 230 people, located in the highlands of Guatemala. People live in extreme poverty and survive largely off subsistence agriculture. There is currently only one main source of portable water in the community: a spring at the bottom of a steep, 100 meter deep ravine. Children spend their recesses climbing down the ravine to fill their empty soda bottles and the women spend more than ½ hour each trip to retrieve household water. Even so, Individuals are not believed to get the widely recommended 15 liters per person per day. We plan to implement a solar powered water pump and filtration system to bring water directly to the community.
Project Stage:
Implemetation
Recent Work:
Summer 2011: Over the summer, the team's partner university, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, traveled to Chicorral to help the team obtain important information about tariff collection and new construction in the community. So far, Guatemala has resolved the first two issues and is currently working on addressing the electrical comments and should have those submitted within the next few weeks. The team is simultaneously revising the Health and Safety report and plans to submit it within the next few weeks too.
Spring 2011: In Spring 2011, the Guatemala team submitted the 525 Pre-Implementation Report to EWB USA and made an Assessment trip to Chicorral. The project was presented to TAC in April and was put on hold due to issues with water quality, structural integrity of the solar panel mounting structures and roof, and solar and electrical design.
Future work: The students and the professionals are aiming to complete the first building phase in January 2012.
Team Meetings:
Thursday @8pm, Barton 117
Project Leaders 2011-2012
Peter Yang'12
Biomedical Engineering
Project Lead: pyang11@jhu.edu
Fabio Palacio'12
International Relations
Project Lead: fabio.e.palacio@gmail.com
Project Leaders:
Peter Yang: pyang11@jhu.edu
Fabio Palacio: fabio.e.palacio@gmail.com