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2019 is underway and we have wasted no time in working with communities and growing our outreach along the coast. We opened up the month with some more chlorine charla training sessions with health workers in the hospital in Portobelo. Our efforts in Miramar have led to four charlas being done by the staff for patients. We also did a charla at the MINSA (Ministry of Health) clinic in Portobelo, which united clinic directors from other communities such as San Antonio, Cacique and La Guaira. Now we have trained health staff in five communities throughout Costa Arriba: Portobelo, Miramar, San Antonio, Cacique, and La Guaira. On January 22nd we had a meeting with the Nombre de Dios community to discuss the water problem that has plagued the town for so long. All these activities in January reflect our effort to not only unite ourselves with communities in order to help them, but to also unite the very people within the community. In the Portobelo hospital we gave a charla to the two parts of the staff in the hospital, the medical staff and the administrative staff. It was important that both sectors of the staff showed up so that the whole hospital staff would be informed and able to give the charla to patients. Because of this I had to give the charla on two different days so as not to interfere with the entire function of the hospital. In total I trained 22 staff members in the hospital. Since this is the only major hospital in the region, I am hoping that the chlorine charla will reach that many more people and teach them the importance of treating their water at home. In Miramar the nurses have been hard at work. The nine trained staff members have now given the charla to 40 patients in three charlas that have been recorded by Future Scientist. They recently asked for more pipettes and pamphlets to hand out, which indicates interest in the communities where the patients come from. We are hoping for more charla success from medical staff in Miramar, where they have been the first in receiving and implementing our Clean Water Access Initiative. When I was coordinating the charla for the MINSA clinic in Portobelo with Dr. Miranda, he mentioned that at the end of the month the directors of the other clinics would all meet. I saw this as an opportunity to kill many birds with one stone. The directors of the clinics in Cacique, La Guaira and San Antonio were going to attend a meeting in the Portobelo clinic and the plan was to train all the directors so that they gave the charlas in their respective clinics and trained their staff. Just as planned, the directors came and received the charla and I gave them all kits to begin giving the charla to their patients. This saved me a bunch of time and travel and I was able to extend our chlorine charla network four-fold in one fell swoop. In total 46 staff members have been trained to give the chlorine charla and the six health centers supplied with materials. We will be on the lookout for more clinics to connect with in order to keep spreading the chlorine charla throughout the region to ensure that people receive the education necessary to treat the water in their homes and prevent water borne disease. As we move forward I will continue collecting charla data from the clinics we already have active. I am proud that we have created a education network that is already starting to bear fruit and we are reaching more people than we ever thought possible. Education really is power. With November marking our first real move up coast, December has been a month making a few more connections, winding down, and preparing for the new year. We have begun to sow the seeds of a new chlorine charla network among the clinics and hospitals in Costa Arriba, so that the personnel can take the reins on educating the public in making their water potable. We are taking a look back on the year and what we have accomplished and looking ahead to our future participation in community development through science education. We are also preparing to be apart of a project called AGUA COLÓN collaborating with INDICASAT in water source analysis in communities in the district of Santa Isabel. In Miramar, a community in the Santa Isabel district of Costa Arriba, we conducted our first training charla for the health staff in the Miramar Ministry of Health (MINSA) clinic. It was well received by the personnel and they told me about the need for this charla in the region and the good they think it can do. I left them with pipettes and instructional pamphlets to hand out to the patients that they give the charla to, and to this date they have conducted two charlas and have reached 28 people from the region. We are hoping for much more in the future and hope that Miramar will be the first clinic in a network of clinics and hospitals who will give this charla in order to reach all of Costa Arriba. Looking back on the year we have made significant steps forward in developing community minds, water safety, and networking in the region. We did two project design charlas in both Portobelo with students and Nombre de Dios with community members. We hope to follow up this year with the students in Portobelo and community members in Nombre de Dios to further develop the solutions they came up with to test their viability in solving the respective problems they wished to tackle. In water safety we built the experimental emergency dam system for the high school in Portobelo that serves 250+ people during the school year. Our chlorine charlas have reached 100+ people in the region and is being set-up to reach more as we continue growing our network among clinics and hospitals in Costa Arriba. Apart from the medical institution network we’ve made in Costa Arriba we’ve also been networking to political leaders and businesses in the region in order to gather further support for our projects. On January 30th I am meeting with the representative of Palenque as well as several other representatives of communities in the region in order to talk about Future Scientist and what it is we do. All this groundwork we’ve laid will serve us for our endeavors this year in 2019. For 2019 I have been attached to a project called AGUA COLÓN which has the objective of analyzing the water quality of the wells and rivers in the Santa Isabel region (both primary sources of water for people). This will require me to go and get water samples on a more or less bi-weekly basis and bring them to the laboratory we have in Panama City. Since this project is concerned with the water safety of those who live in Costa Arriba, Future Scientist has paired with the project managers in order to see it through to success, all the while carrying on with our own organization specific objectives. We hope that this collaboration will bear fruit for strong working relationships with both development entities and community members alike, connecting people across this boundary and building towards the future of water safety for the region. After a successful reunion with my counter-part Aníbal Villacres in Nombre de Dios, I decided it was time to start setting our sights up coast. There is a lot of project and charla potential in the communities up coast from Portobelo, with the economic situations becoming poorer and need higher. Aníbal expressed to me his interest that I do charlas in Nombre de Dios on project development and water committee/water system organization. We were able to do a project development and design charla in Nombre de Dios on the 23rd and there was a decent showing of people to the charla. Aníbal has also told me he has connections all the way up coast to Cuango, which will be pivotal in getting our foot in the door in these communities. Bringing the design charla that we did with the high school students in Portobelo to the communities in Costa Arriba is apart of our new program called the Self-Solving Initiative. We want to empower community members with the tools and know-how to confront problems in their community and solve them in a way that encourages teamwork and forward-thinking. Since they are the ones who experience the problem they ought to know the best way to solve it, they just may need the proper methodologies to come up with the solutions constructively. So with the help of Aníbal in Nombre de Dios, we set to organizing the charla for the community. We created flyers to be passed around the town and posted on the community center wall and other key areas around the community. We also promoted that there would be a lunch to provide further enticement to those on the fence about going to the charla. I have found that free food is a great motivator in these small rural towns in Panama (and I guess anywhere for that matter) and it gets people to the front door. So with planning and the news out in town, I was left to gather my supplies for the charla day. When the charla day arrived I showed up to the community center to a group of 20 or so people. I noticed that most were women and that was of no surprise since it was Friday morning and almost all the men work while the women are at home, and with the prospect of food those women didn’t have to cook lunch that day. My plan was to compact each of the charlas of the 10 that I did in Portobelo to about 30 minute segments so as to make it a day long charla. If I did multiple days I would lose the interest of my audience so I had to take advantage of the day they set aside to attend the seminar. With the community members present and everything in place, I began the seminar. It was apparent that not everyone present came to hear what I had to say. There were a handful that had simply come for the free snacks and lunch. Their participation was lacking at best. However there was also a handful of community members that remained attentive throughout, despite our ravenous hunger near the end of the seminar. Those are the moments and the people we look for when doing development work. Even if the material touches the creative and productive nerves of one person, it is a success. It takes one person to be two, and two to be four, and so on. I felt that the handful of active participants took those lessons to heart and truly wished to make a difference in their community. The problem that the participants wanted to solve was the lack of quality medical attention in their region. This is a complicated problem because it requires government action and participation in the community which is often very difficult to achieve in isolated and rural areas like the communities in Costa Arriba. Solutions they came up with were better training of Health Center staff in order to provide more types of health service to the patients of Costa Arriba, an increase in the healthcare budget in order to have more staff on hand in the health centers and clinics, and the construction of more clinics in the region to cater to the amount of patients that arrive. They proposed making petitions in order for the government to take notice to their plight and incite action. However, regardless of the difficulty of the problem and proposed solution, the participants learned the proper tools and instruction on how to take the problems in their lives and create impactful and well thought solutions. This charla is one of hopefully many to be carried out in Costa Arriba as Future Scientist moves up the coast in order to reach and teach more communities about proper WASH practices and spread the Self-Solving Initiative. All in all it was a successful seminar in Nombre de Dios with the people responding positively to the lessons and told me they left the room having learned something useful. If anything it gave them hope for change in their community and empowered them to be that change that it needs. October was a month dedicated to hygiene and science. On the 15th and 16th I celebrated Global Handwashing Day with the students at the elementary school in Portobelo. On the 19th Future Scientist brought the students to the SENACYT held science fair in Albrook Mall. On the 24th I attended a Smithsonian Institute science charla in the elementary school. On the 1st of November I went to Nombre de Dios to meet with my counterpart Aníbal to discuss projects and charlas that we could do in the community. We hope to collaborate more in Nombre de Dios and by this extend our outreach further up coast. Global Handwashing Day is a day celebrated worldwide on the basic, but most important, habit in hygiene, handwashing! I thought it was a good idea to do this charla with the elementary students since I believed them to be more responsive to the charla. They would also become my megaphones in hygiene as I believed they would spread the message at home when asked what they did at school that day. I did the charla about nine times as I went classroom to classroom talking to each grade level and group within the school. I began every charla the same. I walked in and said good morning to the students and we did an activity. I asked them to stand up and shake their fellow students’ hands and say their name and favorite food. I too walked around the room shaking hands and saying my name and favorite food, however I had applied a special gel that doesn’t show on hands unless shined with an UV light. Once everyone had shaken hands and said their favorite food they all sat down. I proceeded to show them my hands and asked them if they looked clean. They all responded that yes they did. I then took out my UV light and showed them again and asked what they thought. With faces of shock and surprise they responded with a resounding no. I then asked them to look at their own hands and tell me if they were clean or not. Some said yes and some said no. I then walked around the room and shined the light on their hands and they were all shocked to see that the gel on my hands had spread to theirs. This was their lesson in that although our hands may look clean to the naked eye, it isn’t always the case. I then wrote on the board why, when, and how we should wash our hands. They all gave me the right answers which told me they knew very well the importance of washing their hands, they just sometimes needed some reinforcement. After the quick lecture we then went to our second activity, finger painting. I made signs out of poster paper that said “We Promise to Protect Our Health” and the students had to put their handprints on the paper. We hung the posters in the classrooms as a daily reminder to the students to wash their hands, and wash them well. After they made their handprints I sent them to the bathroom with a bar of soap to wash their hands so that they were squeaky clean for the rest of the day, or until they got dirty again. That following Friday the 19th 10 high school students, Wilfredo, and I went to the SENACYT Science Fair in the Wyndham Hotel Albrook in Panama City. Students from all over Panama and from other countries in Latin America were invited to present their science projects. Projects in biology, technology, ecology, chemistry, sociology, and many other sciences were presented in the fair. We all walked around the conference room floor asking questions, receiving pamphlets, and conversing with the presenters. There were hands on presentations of astrology and virtual reality. The students, Wilfredo and I had a lot of fun and learned a lot from all the presenters. After visiting the fair for a few hours we spent a little more than an hour in Albrook. We let the kids do some shopping, check out some of their favorite stores, and we all had lunch in the food court. With full bellies and full brains we parted ways. The kids all expressed how much fun they had and how much they learned during their short time in the fair. I hope that next year we can bring a student team to present in the fair and represent Colón. On the 24th I was invited by Karina Hassell of the Smithsonian Institute to attend a science charla that they were giving to the elementary school children. The education program is called Q?rioso busito. The Smithsonian uses a van to bring science lessons to students in the metro area and Colón. On the 24th they were teaching the 4th graders about ants and the social dynamic of their colonies. The students were able to observe an ant frozen in a plastic cube with a magnifying glass, play a game as the individual roles in the colony (soldier, worker, cultivator, queen) and work together as the ants do, learn ant anatomy, learn ants role in the environment, and much more. It is a very cool program and I hope to continue to collaborate with them and connect the Q?rioso busito to more schools. As October came to a close, I made plans to go to Nombre de Dios to meet again with my counterpart Aníbal there. On the 1st I went to go visit him and discuss future projects. We had a long productive day of conversation and seeing the water storage tanks in the community that are in need of renovation. Two of the main tanks (both 58,000 cubic liters) to the whole town need a new layer of cement infuse with a water sealant to cover cracks and small holes in the tanks. After the sealant is spread on he also wanted to paint them if the money allowed. There were a pair of unconnected biosand filters that he wanted to refill and reconnect as well. And finally he wanted to replace another tank that served the community as an emergency system that has a capacity of about 13,000 liters with a new tank with a capacity of 27,000 liters of water. In organizational matters he’d like charlas done on the importance of paying for water and how the whole community must participate for the well being of the water system. He says this is a major problem in the maintenance and the advancement of the water systems. Some people don’t pay the monthly $2.00 for water and so when something is broken or stops working they sometimes don’t have enough to fix it or solve the problem. If everyone participated they’d always have enough money and then some to do the water projects Aníbal and the committee wish to do. Although I’ll be spending a lot of time in Nombre de Dios I will not neglect those in Portobelo that may need my help. We will still be working there but since we wish to expand a little we will be beginning a focus further up coast. We hope to help those who are interested in helping themselves and through science education and charlas, we will achieve it. The last few months have been busy ones for Future Scientist. Since April we have completed two major projects: constructing a dam for stream water catchment and the Design for Impact Charla Series and Competition. We constructed the dam for Jacoba Urriola Solis High School in April. In May we focused on our interaction with Nombre de Dios, another community farther up the coast we wish to extend to in the future. In June we connected the dam source to the school to finally provide it potable water as the emergency system in case the town water system doesn’t work as well as began the 11 week charla series. From June 14th to August 23rd we ran the charla series on a weekly basis with the final project competition on the 23rd of August. After the end of the charla series it was time for us to look back on all we had done the past several months, analyze our impact and approach, and regroup for more projects.
Last month the board of directors and I met to discuss all we had done and look ahead to future projects and initiatives. After our conversation, we realized we wanted to re-tailor our focus on our target audience and benefactors. For example, our website and promotional material is all in English. In the near future this will change. We are working on making the website bilingual in order to reach out to our Latin American supporters, donors, and benefactors, not to mention the communities we actively strive to help. It is only natural that we make this change as well, since we have worked so much in Latin America. I have begun writing my Facebook posts in both English and Spanish. We recently filmed video of our work and commentary from students and staff in both English and Spanish. This improvement is to connect us more intimately with the very people we are trying to help, opening the doors for their active participation and collaboration in community projects. Going off this point, we recently carried out an informal survey to gauge interest in a digital creation space for community projects. We want community members to feel like there is a creative space for their ideas to become reality when confronting problems they wish to solve in their communities. We found that the teachers were more interested in this proposition in order to have a space to share extra material for their classes and in order to bolster classes with other subjects such as sexual education, something that is lacking in Panamanian schools. There are certain impediments to this idea, such as lack of internet infrastructure in Costa Arriba and unequal access to internet among families. We’d also like to do this survey in Nombre de Dios to see if other communities would be interested in this idea. In this time of restructuring and refocusing on our why and for whom we are working we are coming up with new ideas for impact and new projects to pursue in the coming months, especially for summer when construction is easiest. If our donor community and our followers have any thoughts on suggestions, please feel free to write on the Facebook group page. All ideas are welcome as we look ahead to create a greater influence in the Costa Arriba region of Colón, Panamá. --- Reagrupándonos Los últimos meses nos han mantenido ocupados aquí en Futuro Científico. Desde abril hemos realizado dos proyectos sólidos: la toma de agua de la represa y La serie de charlas de diseño de impacto y competencia. En abril construimos la represa para el Centro Educativo Jacoba Urriola Solís. En mayo nos enfocamos en nuestra interacción con Nombre de Dios, otra comunidad más costa arriba a la que quisiéramos extender en el futuro. En junio conectamos la toma de la represa al colegio para suministrar por fin agua potable como el sistema de emergencia por si el sistema del pueblo se cierre. También comenzamos la serie de charlas de 11 semanas. Del 14 de junio al 23 de agosto realizamos la serie de charlas semanalmente con la competencia del proyecto final el 23 de agosto. Después del fin de la serie de charlas era hora que echáramos una vista hacia atrás a todo lo que habíamos hecho y que reagrupáramos. El mes pasado la junta directiva y yo tuvimos una reunión para discutir de todo lo que habíamos logrado y mirar hacia adelante a los proyectos y iniciativas futuros. Después de nuestra conversación nos dimos cuenta que queríamos reenfocarnos en nuestro audiencia y beneficiados principales. Por ejemplo, nuestra página web y materia promocional está todo en inglés. En el futuro eso se cambiará. Nosotros estamos trabajando en convertir a la página web a una página bilingüe para alcanzar a nuestros partidarios, donadores, y beneficiados latinoamericanos. Es natural que sirvamos a este demográfico también ya que hemos trabajado tanto en Latinoamérica. Yo he comenzado a escribir mis publicaciones de Facebook en ambos idiomas, el inglés y el español. Recientemente filmamos videos de nuestro trabajo y los comentarios de los estudiantes y docentes sobre nuestro trabajo. Yo hago unos comentarios en inglés y español y los puebleños comparten sus pensamientos también. Esta mejora sirve para conectarnos más íntimamente con la misma gente que estamos tratando de ayudar, abriendo las puertas para su participación y colaboración activa en los proyectos comunitarios. Siguiendo con este punto llevamos a cabo una encuesta recién para medir el interés de un espacio digital de creación de contenido para proyectos comunitarios. Nosotros queremos que los miembros de la comunidad sienta que hay un espacio creativo para que sus ideas se hagan realidad cuando se enfrentan a los problemas que quieren resolver en sus comunidades. Encontramos que a los docentes les interesaba la propuesta para que pudiesen tener un espacio para compartir contenido extra para sus clases y también para reforzar sus clases con otras materias como la educación sexual, algo que le hace falta al sistema educativo de Panamá. Hay ciertos impedimentos a esta idea, tal como la falta de infraestructura tecnológica en Costa Arriba y acceso desigual al internet entre las familias. Quisiéramos también hacer la encuesta en Nombre de Dios para ver si habría otras comunidades interesadas en la idea. En esta hora de reestructuración y reenfoque en nuestro porqué y para quién trabajamos estamos generando nuevas ideas para hacer mayor impacto y nuevos proyectos de perseguir en los meses siguientes, especialmente para el verano cuando la construcción es más fácil. Si hay ideas entre nuestra comunidad de donadores y seguidores que se sientan libres de escribírnoslas por nuestra página en Facebook. Sean bienvenidas todas las ideas mientras vemos hacia adelante para tener mayor influencia en la región de Costa Arriba, Colón, Panamá. |
