When my girlfriend, Katie, first came to her site in the city of Loja in southern Ecuador she was assigned to work in a small town just outside the city named Zhucos (pronounced shucos). After working there a couple of weeks she decided that Zhucos would be a good place to do some surveys that the Peace Corps requires us to do in our first couple of months in site. These tools are basically just a long list of questions to help us identify areas within our communities where we may be able to help. As Katie went from house to house asking the same questions she found that the people of Zhucos were all expressing the same thing, the need for a source of healthy drinking water. 
Fast forward a year, Katie’s family in the US are all part of the Great Bridge Presbyterian Church of Chesapeake, VA who was starting to participate in the “Living Waters” program. “Living Waters” is a non-profit group that supplies the necessary filtration systems to churches who wish to do potable water projects in third world countries and the circumstances couldn’t have been better for the church, Katie and Zhucos. So Katie went to work, first testing their water which turned out to be filled with bacterias and then she began to set up everything for the project which included ordering about 300 plastic bottles, organizing the town to have participants come help and learn, and figuring out where we were going to put the filtration system. It was a long drawn out process but things all came together at the last minute (as they always do here in Ecuador) just as the installation team from Great Bridge arrived.
The installation team was composed of the two Sam’s, Sam Howard (Katie’s Dad) and Sam Chalk whose responsibility it was to set up the system and make sure it ran properly.
The other Great Bridge team members were Karen Gibson and Traci Chamberlain Bagley who worked alongside Katie in educating the women and children about the importance of clean drinking water and in how to clean the re-usable bottles. 
My friend and fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, Jason Kreisselman and I were able to help the two Sam’s as helpers and as translators to the locals who also assisted in the installation process.
The system consisted of the water running through three initial filters to catch any sediment in the water then passing through the “ozonator” where ozone was mixed with the water for the ultimate step in the cleansing process. The water then went to this huge storage tank where it was stored until required by the community. We were very lucky to have some great hard working Ecuadorians helping us which enabled the system to be completed, including the construction of an enclosure around the system for security, in only two days.
After the system was installed and all of classes were over we celebrated the completion of the project with a small fiesta complete with bubbles, candy and our new, clean water. The community came down from their houses all over the hillsides just to try their new water and to express their appreciation. The “Living Waters” team of Great Bridge Presbyterian Church should be very proud of the great job they did preparing for and delivering clean drinking water to this small community and from a Peace Corps Volunteer’s standpoint it was very fulfilling to be a part of something so great and I will definitely look upon this project as one of the highlights of my time here in Ecuador.
Fast forward a year, Katie’s family in the US are all part of the Great Bridge Presbyterian Church of Chesapeake, VA who was starting to participate in the “Living Waters” program. “Living Waters” is a non-profit group that supplies the necessary filtration systems to churches who wish to do potable water projects in third world countries and the circumstances couldn’t have been better for the church, Katie and Zhucos. So Katie went to work, first testing their water which turned out to be filled with bacterias and then she began to set up everything for the project which included ordering about 300 plastic bottles, organizing the town to have participants come help and learn, and figuring out where we were going to put the filtration system. It was a long drawn out process but things all came together at the last minute (as they always do here in Ecuador) just as the installation team from Great Bridge arrived.
The installation team was composed of the two Sam’s, Sam Howard (Katie’s Dad) and Sam Chalk whose responsibility it was to set up the system and make sure it ran properly.
The other Great Bridge team members were Karen Gibson and Traci Chamberlain Bagley who worked alongside Katie in educating the women and children about the importance of clean drinking water and in how to clean the re-usable bottles. My friend and fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, Jason Kreisselman and I were able to help the two Sam’s as helpers and as translators to the locals who also assisted in the installation process.The system consisted of the water running through three initial filters to catch any sediment in the water then passing through the “ozonator” where ozone was mixed with the water for the ultimate step in the cleansing process. The water then went to this huge storage tank where it was stored until required by the community. We were very lucky to have some great hard working Ecuadorians helping us which enabled the system to be completed, including the construction of an enclosure around the system for security, in only two days.
After the system was installed and all of classes were over we celebrated the completion of the project with a small fiesta complete with bubbles, candy and our new, clean water. The community came down from their houses all over the hillsides just to try their new water and to express their appreciation. The “Living Waters” team of Great Bridge Presbyterian Church should be very proud of the great job they did preparing for and delivering clean drinking water to this small community and from a Peace Corps Volunteer’s standpoint it was very fulfilling to be a part of something so great and I will definitely look upon this project as one of the highlights of my time here in Ecuador.
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