Victoria, here. Back in los estados.

And just that fast, my life is changed and I'm sitting in the WaterStep office writing again. And so honored to be sharing this story with you. Thank you, reader, for investing in our story.

I love being able to say "our story" because this journey has become so much more than simply Natalie and I traveling to Panama as ambassadors. Along the way, we were joined by a number of water minded individuals who felt the calling to learn about how they could make a difference in their own country.

Our first trainees were Alejandro and Nestor, on another Saturday well spent at Quality Leadership University. Shout-out to Natalie for building a two-tank manifold model in a record 17 minutes flat!

These two men showed sincere passion by asking questions about how to begin working, how to purchase purifiers and how to get involved in community development. All great questions that refer directly to the pillars of sustainable excellence at WaterStep's foundation. And thankfully, we were able to provide answers to thanks to our own training we received. An incredible feeling to teach someone life saving information that someone taught you.

After the training, we restocked supplies and explored the city. One interesting aspect of Panamanian culture is the influence of immigrants that live in the city. You meet people from as close as Columbia to as far away as China, and some communities choose to segregate themselves to live in different parts of the city. For example Clayton, Panama is an not too far from the US embassy, and thus many Americans retire near there and you hardly hear any Spanish spoken. Not too far down the road, you enter China Town where all the signs are written in Chinese.

This picture is of an arepa, traditional Columbian type of sandwich.


This brought several ideas to mind for me, personally. On one hand, a reminder that our world is meant to be shared. On the other, that conflict between different groups of people is a natural and unfortuante. However, with WaterStep and the Panamanians we met, I believe when strangers understand a shared goal to conquer a crime against humanity, it is much easier to tear down walls of fear and unknown to actually achieve the goal.

And that's what we saw happen in Panama. Twice, in two days.

The first was in Darien, Panama. A region suggested to Americans by the U.S. Embassy to avoid unless absolutely necessary. And as WaterStep knows, safe water is absolutely necessary.

On this trip to Darien, our team consisted Niko from QLU, Xie from the Fundacion Pro Ninos de Darien, Engineers without Borders from California, and Natalie and myself.

This picture is a school located in Agua Fria, and the proud owners of an M-100. And these students were the excited and silly kids who learned about health and hygiene from three members of Engineers without Borders and myself. And lots and lots of glitter. We use glitter to represent germs and how easily they can be spread. And glitter is fun to play with!

When the training was over, the students, engineers and I moved outside for a game of fútbol. Meanwhile during training and playing, Natalie was working diligently with staff members of this school and Niko to solve a problem the school was having with their water treatment system. Apparently, within the last few days they were having a problem and were not running the system. Niko (who installed this system) and the staff members showed Natalie where they using the system and when hooked up to their transformer was not running.

A moment to reflect. Natalie, 22 year old female WaterStep ambassador discussing plumbing and engineering in Spanish with three male community members of Darien and Niko,QLU maintenance man from the city of Panama in the region of Darien, at a school with no doors or windows.

Let's talk gender equality.

Me, simultaneously teaching engineers and a class of students how trap flies and wash their hands so they don't catch something that will likely kill them.

Let's talk collaboration.

This moment was made possible by a divine being who allowed us to be there, the generous souls who provided funding, Panamanians who invited and wanted us to be there and the visionary minds of WaterStep.

Let's talk sustainability.

Back to Darien. Natalie suggests testing the cables on Niko's car battery instead of their transformer, and low and behold the M-100 jumps to life. With this discovery, we were excited to learn it was not the M-100 that was experiencing a problem, but the transformer the school was using. Luckily until they can replace their transformer, they can continue to run the M-100 off of any car battery available, showcasing the M-100's incredible sustainability and adaptability. With this experience, we also made note of this to include in our trouble-shooting guide for D-Learning, or distance learning. Much more on that to come later!

Further in to Darien is an area called Metetí we were introduced to Fundacion Pro Ninos de Darien employees whose daily tasks include experimenting with organic farming methods to learn the best ways to teach universities and communities how to grow plants that can serve the most purpose.

 Fundacion Pro Ninos de Darien guest house on the farm, complete with outdoor fans, kitchen, bathroom and monkeys as your next door neighbor!

When we returned from Darien, we had two days left in Panama to create the culmination of our journey. Which is exactly what happened. And the story I will share with you next time I blog. That's enough for now. 

The WaterStep office is almost as crazy as the jungle this week - Millenial Train, handpump repair with Boston marathon winner Wesley Korir, collaboration with Louisville School for the Blind for a mission to India, and of course, the daily grind. 

With faith and without thirst,

Victoria

Victoria here, excited to share one of the most valuable lessons I have learned thus far while in Panama.

Write your agenda in pencil, not pen.

It seems fitting in the country of one of the greatest water works known to man that we should embrace the theory of going with the flow. This has been an incredible learning experience of how to embrace the importance of human relationships and to not feel as though every minute of our day has to be planned out perfectly. Additionally, it is exciting is to see how all of our endeavors are actually falling into place to create an exciting story that we can share with the world on behalf of WaterStep in Panama.

Now for an update!

Sunday, our day off, Natalie and I had planned to go tour the canal. Fun fact: Nat's Uncle Bud was actually stationed here in Panama for a while, and we wanted to get some good pictures to show him in comparison to how the canal and city looked from when he was here. However, the price of taxis to get to the actual canal was too high, so we opted instead for seeing a different, less famous area called the "Causeway".

The Causeway is a long road leading from the city up to the canal that was actually made of the debris not used to make the Panama Canal. And speaking of debris, the city sure has a lot of it. Which was powerful to see, because it really gave us some weight behind the importance of our health and hygiene training we have taught to over 125 kids this past week.

Below is a the school that Niku, a staff member at QLU, installed an M-100! It's called la escuela primera Guillermo Patterson, in the part of the city called Mocambo. We were able to go to this school, just 25 minutes outside the city, which is located on top of a mountain, uphill of the Panama City junk yard and landfills. We met with the teachers and talked with them how they liked the M-100, if it worked well, if they understood how it worked. We discovered that the M-100 was being used very often, but there could be a greater capacity of potable water as soon as they were able to get some bigger tanks to catch rain water. Also, we saw that they were still buying bleach, and Niku is going to teach them how the chlorine by-products from the M-100 can do the same job a bottle of Clorox can... for free!

But we haven't just worked with kids! As a part of our initiative in Panama to build relationships to create an awareness of social responsibility and sustainable change, we have been spending a lot of time at Quality Leadership University to be with the students and talk with them about why we do what we do. One way we have done this is by working at the QLU annual Job Fair, where about 25 major companies, like Dell, Johnson&Johnson, Proctor&Gamble, come in to the University looking to hire students and alumni. As job seekers approaches our table, at first they would be a little dismayed at our non-profit status of looking for volunteers, but as we would continue to share our mission and philosophy, they became very engaged and ask us many questions. 

So many people can not believe that the M-100 can purify 38,000 liters in one day at full capacity! Especially when they see how small it actually is!

We are very excited for this Saturday, where we will be hosting an M-100 build to train QLU staff, students and community members how to build a two-tank system, learn about a little plumbing, and especially social responsibility and community development. We have our demo parts already to go!

 

Traveling a bit and learning more about how immediate the need for potable water and sanitation is needed in Panama, we look forward to seeing what will happen within the next few days. Nat and I have less than a week left, but we are confident in that time WaterStep will be a presence in Panama in collaboration with QLU and the Fundacion Pro Ninos de Darien that has a strong relationship to work together for Aqua Potable para Panama!

Talk about working on the weekend! Victoria and I had a great Saturday morning with 50 teenagers ages 13 to 17. Tori mentioned this event in the last post, and I want to add a little extra. We had an awesome time (after a semi-nervous morning) creating a seminar for the teenagers to learn about water and its significance.

Panama City may be just like your city (you, the reader) saying, "water is fine here, I don't get it," while others "in your/our/their backyard" are drinking unsafe water. Even in Louisville we can say this about people in parts of our own state.

Tori and I knew we would be working with the teens and that they wanted the full scope beginning with, "what is the water crisis?" to "what in the world is WaterStep and why are you here?" to "why me?"

We did it! With a little prodding, the youth became entertained when Tori and I began by speaking about the weekend. It was Satuday so we asked the class what plans they had for the evening. After hearing da variety of responses, we asked, "so you all have many different plans today - how many of you plan to drink water today?"

Slowly, they began to raise their hands as they realized drinking water was not a Saturday night "thing"but an everyday "thing": to shower, flush the toilet, wash dishes, wash our hands, etc. We presented them with one bottle of water and asked how they would choose to use that bottle of water if that was all they could access. Then, we mentioned that the limited water they had to utilize was dirty, and would make them ill...PS- this wasn't as depressing as it sounds. We were getting to know each other and our mutual admiration of Panama!

Next, Tori presented an informative, interactive activity that required 10 volunteers. With each student standing on one piece of paper, this represented the equal distribution of the world's resources that are available. But when she asked nine of the students to share one piece of paper, leaving one student with the other nine to himself, the students were surprised to realize this is how the world's resources are ACTUALLY distributed.

That means 10% of the world's population has available access to 90% of its necessary resources. Or, 90% of the world's population has to share only 10% of the world's resources.

Surprised? So were they.

After the volunteers were seated I wanted to speak to them about our WaterStep experience learning about Panamanian culture. Together we all noted that Panama has a rich history in water and how neat it was for Louisville, another international city of water, to create a friendship. From there we thought about other aspects of Panamanian culture - dancing in particular. As most of out friends know, Tori and I LOVE to dance, so this was fun for us. We asked for a volunteer to come to the aisle and teach us a dance move that they enjoy. One student reluctantly taught a move, to the class's great entertainment. We wanted to inspire the idea that with any kind of knowledge, anyone can be a teacher. So, they learned how WaterStep teaches people to wash their hands #teacher #empowerment (so they could teach others = SUSTAINABLE! #Sustainia100_me #WeTeachThat).

From there we went one step further. What if someone has knowledge and uses it to solve problems to make the world a better place? They are an AMBASSADOR!

Tori and I, among others (**shout out to Josh and Nathan**), hold the job title: WaterStep Ambassdor.

What's cool about being in a smaller country is people think about ambassadors more often. Ambassadors are a regular part of life. I walked by two embassies this morning on the 10 minute walk from our residence to the university. What a relevant role an ambassador plays here!

We split up our class of ambassadors into four groups each with their own community prompt to guide their problem-solving minds:

1) There is a community with trash on the streets and the people are often very sick. They believe it is caused by the trash and unclean conditions. 
2) There is a community where families do not have safe water to drink in their home. The water is making them sick. 
3) There is a school with a large rain catchment systems, but only one faucet to distribute water to 100 people. 
4) There is a community center that serves 400 people and the water there is dirty.

Each scenario was followed by the question, "what are the problems and how can we use our knowledge to help these communities?"

The students offered some great ideas, a lot of very applicable ones (especially once we asked them to think about solving the issue with little or no funding). They suggested organizing groups to pick up trash, creating handmade filters, asking for donations to expand infrastructure, and using some type of water purifying system.We loooved these responses! They were really thinking! Annnnnnnnddd, for all you #DistanceLearning fans out there - 3/4 of the groups use SMARTPHONES to help them with their answers and show pictures/diagrams to the class! Virtual connection is on the rise (and virtual training with D-Learning at WaterStep).

We them showed the class different ways WaterStep teaches people to combat such issues too: using fly traps to catch the germ-spreading varments that love hanging around trash, boiling water and filtering it through a t-shirt, building tippy-taps to create handwashing stations using very few resources, and using an M-100 chlorine generator that runs on easily found salt and a car battery to make safe up to 10,000 gallons (38,000 liters) of water in a day. WaterStep has great solutions - and these teens seemed to get it!

 

           Simple fly trap                                       Effective tippy tap

Then of course (**shout out to M2, Katie, and Mark "the boss man" Hogg**) we did a social media pitch because, these days, what better way is there to keep up with your water ambassadors?!


All in all, Saturday was a great and empowering day.

Tori and I spent the rest of the afternoon networking and planning events for Quality Leadership University. That night we even were invited to hang out with our lead connector at QLU, Stephanie - a fellow Sigma Kappa (1 <3 1 -->), and her friend Eric. We went to a "economically rationed" Panamanian seafood restaurant, one of their favorites. We were able to get more acquainted with the culture and livihood of the population here.

What a day..shoooo-weeeeee!

Love and aqua potable,

Natalie

If you are reading this, thank you for checking back in with us. In this year sanctioned by the United Nations as the "Year of Water Collaboration" what we are realizing more each day here in Panama is how vital it is to be actively connected with organizations of all kinds in order to save lives with safe water.

Let's talk cultural shock for a moment. We knew upon arriving in Panama that there would be moments when we would not be able to anticipate social encounters. But the way Panamanians like to do meetings is right up our ally. The following story is not exaggerated. 

Lunch time Thursday, our first full day in Panama, we find ourselves chatting with Quality Leadership University staff at a little local Panamanian restaurant complete with frozen mango Popsicles (try them with a little salt sprinkled on top, and you'll be glad you did.)  At our street table, we are sharing travel stories and ketchup when the men at the table next to us lean over to interrupt a story to ask what is WaterStep and why is it on our shirts? Half an hour later, we have shared our pitch to save the lives with safe water with who we now know is a QLU neighbor and retired military officer of 25 years and he has an appointment set up for us with his friend, the Subdirector of ONPAR. ONPAR being the Oficina Nacional para la Atención de Refugiados, which is a branch of the national government. Which brings us to Friday morning...Alberto, QLU neighbor/retired military/networking machine meets us at the McDonald's outside the ONPAR office, breezes us by lines of people waiting for the secretary to set an appointment and introduces us to ONPAR.

One thing we love about WaterStep is how easy it has made our job of sharing its technology and passion of empowering people with training and technology with others. How can someone not be interested in a tiny, robust and sustainable machine that purifies 10,000 gallons of water in a day, is fully functional in under two hours of assembly and runs on a handful of salt and a car battery? Especially when it is so logically partnered with educational curriculum of health and hygiene, and THEN you throw hand pump repair into the mix! All this to say, it was a very productive meeting and we are excited to continue conversations with this organization on how we can embrace this year of water collaboration. 

After our meeting, our good friend and QLU staff member Melvis drove us to the Centro de Panama where we met the very smart kids at Apojusan to learn about some fun health and hygiene strategies, like how to wash our hands and make fly traps! One interesting colloquialism we learned here is they do not use Senor or Senora, they simply call anyone who has not yet retired or under 65 "el joven" or "la joven". Good news for all you Mr.s and Mrs.s out there not wanting to feel old!

After a productive day we were starving and headed to the causesway of Panama to eat seafood, listen to a little live Panamanian music and realize how blessed we truly are to be here in Panama and share WaterStep around the world. 

Today, Saturday, we were back at it and spent an hour and half with about 50 teens at QLU to have a conversation about the world water crisis and social responsibility. What an amazing group of teens. We truly believe they are going to add some serious fuel to the movement of agua potable para Panama. We were very impressed at the solutions they developed when presented with initiatives of how to address unsafe water right here in Panama. We are so excited to continue to work with them and develop plans of actions from their ideas.

So where are we now? What's next? Glad you asked! We have developed the foundations for some important partners of water collaboration, and so far we have trained over 80 youth and adults in health and hygiene, water awareness and  water ambassador leadership. Not a bad three days. Next week, we will be hosting the first ever M-100 chlorine generator build at QLU, leading more youth workshops, testing our D-Learning module, building more partnerships and seeking out new initiatives to infuse Panama with WaterStep technology and training. Coffee will be an absolute must. 

Stay tuned for more stories to come!

Without thirst and with faith,

Victoria and Natalie

Despues de mucha preparacion...

...hemos llegado a Panama!

It is so exciting to be on the WaterStep team this day as we begin our journey in Panama. We are honored to be joining other WaterStep teams in the field: representatives in Costa Rica, Honduras, Kenya, and Ghana! What a great summer. In June WaterStep won it's first international award as 1 of the world's 100 most sustainable and impacting solutions in the world of 2013. If you haven't read about this award check out the WaterStep blog for details - this is a season of WaterStep energy that you don't want to miss!

Today was driven by the energy of academic excellence, coffee, and the message of #aguapotable.

Victoria and I have embarked on a journey with two incredible partners: Quality Leadership University (QLU), an academic partner of the University of Louisville, and the Fundacion Pro Ninos de Darien (hopefully I will figure out how to type accent marks on here later).

We arrived at QLU Thursday morning excited to see the campus and meet our hospitable friends. We were shown the upstairs hallways and then found ourselves in front of an international business class full of students wondering who we were. Tori and I smiled and began talking about WaterStep: what we do, why we're in Panama, and the importance of #safewater in places as far as Africa and as near as the region of Darien. The class was engaged and asked many questions. I was delighted to talk about WaterStep's water purifier, the M-100, and its high capacity while only requiring a handful of salt and a common car battery to work .

Tori presented our distance learning program, D-Learning, to the class. This is our virtual training program that helps WaterStep's asset of training connect with people all over the world through technology. Thanks to Ivy Technical Corporate College, WaterStep has a health and hygiene online program that we are testing here at QLU! Honestly, everyone looks at us like we're nuts when we introduce virtual training - like we're going to brainwash them or use holograms. It's much simpler than that - I'd say we add the holograms later though. For the university students here we will call our virtual learning event: "The Social Responsibility Virtual Workshop"...sounds like something you would want to go to, right?? We can't wait to try out all that our virtual training program has to offer.

The classes we visited were so awesome today! Thank you all for asking questions and helping us learn about and look for solutions to water issues in the world! It's where sustainable development begins!

Tori and I are learning that in Panama City, Panama many people don't realize there is a water crisis in the world. It is a perspective that the whole world is fighting - we don't know what is going on in our own backyard. Even 20 and 30 minutes outside of Panama City there are communities without safe water. This week, we are opening the doors to WaterStep/Panamanian collaboration to delve into the water crisis that is facing our neighbors.

The students, staff, and faculty have already done so much to welcome WaterStep into the city! Thanks to international study abroad coordinator/school nurse/Sigma Kappa sister Stephanie Lievano we have a wicked itinerary developing! Thanks to President Oscar Leon at QLU, we have a great voice in the community and in collaboration with other organizations in Panama!

After a packed day of presentations, an authentic Panamanian meal, walking the streets of the city, and speaking loads of Spanish we are excited for another day of a unique WaterStep trip.

I have worked for WaterStep for quite some time now, so I recognize that our stay in Panama is outside of our norm. We are here not only seeking opportunities to install water systems, but also to network and open doors in Panama. It feels strange to be on a WaterStep trip in the city, but we are excited to pave more ways WaterStep can impact the world - one being the empowerment of a people who can maintain momentum around water projects in their own countries. We are excited about the opportunities to explore regions that are more rural; however, the most undeniably essential aspect of this trip is to create initiative. #Panama will be better because of the passion and dedication of its own people, with WaterStep as a unique partner along the way.

Keep up with WaterStep and all the other happenings: http://waterstep.org/blog/

#aguapotable


Hasta pronto!

¡Vamos a Panamá!

Calling for last minute donations!

Click here if you would like to donate money for safe water in Panamá!

WaterStep Ambassadors Natalie Hymer and Victoria Shover are leaving for Panama this Wednesday, July 24, 2013, to expand WaterStep's business relations, conduct training, and ensure the quality of life for communities in rural Panama! Your financial support will have a direct impact on their success, and we encourage you to make a last minute donation. Thank you for your continual support to save lives with safe water! "