Help us reach our goal!
About This Match Campaign
This match campaign has been possible thanks to the generous support of our main supporter for this campaign, Jennifer Murphy. For each dollar you donate, our sponsor will match your donation up to $10,000.
Since the beginning, our Water Monitoring (WM) has been essential for understanding the complex nature of the water situation in San Miguel de Allende and the Upper Río Laja Watershed, where almost 700,000 people live and obtain their drinking water. Through our water monitoring efforts, we’ve tested hundreds of wells and water sources and begun to quantify the extent to which our water is contaminated with inorganic chemicals – namely with arsenic and fluoride. These contaminants are extremely toxic and detrimental to human health.
Oftentimes the most vulnerable, including young children, are exceedingly affected by water scarcity and contamination. Monitoring water quality and understanding the ever-changing water conditions is essential for reversing its impact.
At Caminos de Agua, we are looking to transform the WM into a self-sustaining and continuously expanding initiative. Your donation will help us in creating the initial funds required to have a full time professional who is 100% dedicated to growing our water monitoring efforts. Among other things, we are focusing on increasing water monitoring throughout the region, developing more cost effective procedures for water analysis, increasing educational engagement, and growing our private water quality testing services.
By giving to this campaign you will not only contribute to expanding our technical capacities, but you will also have a transcendental impact in people’s lives. The Upper Río Laja Watershed is experiencing a severe water crisis and any ounce of help counts.
A Few Words From Our Sponsor
For me, and as I suspect for many others, the last two years have been filled with periods of hopelessness about the challenges that the global community has and will continue to face. At the same time, I continuously notice in new ways how I have inherent privilege in my everyday life and how I can use this privilege to create positive change, even in communities thousands of miles away.
As the pandemic continues to change our lives, it is disproportionately impacting marginalized communities the most. Additionally, while many parts of the world have started waking up to systemic racism and oppression, these systems continue to destroy lives and strip opportunity from those who start the game of life at a disadvantage. The full scale of these issues is overwhelming to me and at times can leave me feeling hopeless. Helping others is thus not only a moral conviction but a way to create hope for myself and others at a time of great challenges.
Being an engineer in the water industry, I know that my day-to-day efforts help provide safe drinking water and protect the natural resources that make Pacific Northwest communities wonderful. However, most of my day-to-day work is located in well-off communities that have abundant access to water. Starting this match was a way to amplify my passion for working in water and leverage my financial privilege beyond my immediate community.
Allie, a friend and Caminos de Agua’s Director of Water Technology, mentioned the organization’s vision for the water monitoring position and this inspired me to support the organization. In the future, this position will become self-sustaining, and will be able to provide free water monitoring services to hundreds of underserved communities via funds raised from private testing services. This made it a no-brainer for me to support. Funding the match for this position is a small way to repurpose my privilege and make a lasting impact. Please, consider joining me in creating hope and a lasting impact in our sister watershed, the Upper Río Laja. No support is small when it comes to helping our most vulnerable.
“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
― Lilla Watson.
What Will Your Money Do?
Your donation will fund the Water Monitoring (WM) coordinator position and the associated equipment and laboratory analysis costs. The WM coordinator will develop and strengthen the following initiatives:
Our knowledge of water issues in our area through investigation and research.
Free community water quality sampling and analysis.
Urban water quality monitoring in the San Miguel de Allende area.
Laboratory analysis (for fluoride, pH, arsenic, bacteria, and others).
Education and awareness about our water situation and water quality results.
Community workshops on water monitoring.
University and institutional collaborations.
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What is Water Monitoring?
Caminos de Agua has always relied heavily on the monitoring of water quality to determine the extent of the water crisis in our region. As such, it all began when in 2011, a group of organized citizens approached the organization looking for help in sampling their water and determining its contamination levels. Eventually these results were presented to the general public and the government at a public people’s tribunal showing the nature of the crisis in detail. These efforts were essential for the acknowledgement and declaration of an environmental and health crisis in this region by the local and national authorities – a crisis that was previously ignored by everyone but the affected communities.
Our region is made up of seven municipalities and thousands of small communities depending on the Upper Río Laja Watershed for their water. Almost 700,000 people live in it and are exposed to water with high levels of arsenic and fluoride. The long term exposure to these chemicals have dire consequences on human health, creating problems such as dental and crippling skeletal fluorosis, kidney disease, multiple types of cancer, cognitive and learning impairments in children, among other issues. At the same time, the water table is getting lower and lower, meaning that there’s a water shortage and an increasing number of people who only have access to water for one or two days a week.
Because of these reasons, monitoring the water situation is essential to implementing effective change. Accordingly, we’ve begun to incorporate additional indices into our monitoring program, including scarcity, historical water access, cost, and community water conflicts; developing a more complete understanding of regional water issues.
At the same time, we’ve partnered with universities in Mexico and abroad, as well as with other academic and non-academic technical organizations, volunteers, NGOs, and a multitude of grassroots organizations in tackling these issues. In this respect, collaboration and openness is essential to us. The water quality data we collect is shared openly with those affected and with the greater general public. Likewise we share our data with the National Water Quality Inventory (INCA in Spanish), and our water quality test results are made available through our interactive map (see below) for their inspection. We provide public datasets and all of our records are available for public inspection upon request.
Our Water Monitoring Partners
