This is the story of María Gómez Ramírez, a Colombian activist who has become a role model in her community by leading initiatives to protect local ecosystems and restore clean water resources.
"These workshops make us better as human beings"
María Gómez Ramírez is a community leader with more than 15 years of experience in her village of La Lejía in the municipality of Andes. Organising community workshops on water conservation is an important part of her work, as drinking water in her community is getting increasingly scarce.
Contaminated water
Unfortunately, one major problem has become increasingly apparent: the outdated aqueduct, responsible for most of the drinking water, was not working properly. The water often came out with a lot of mud. The children in particular regularly suffered from parasites when they drank this contaminated water.
People began to point out the paradox: "We talk about saving water, but we have to leave the tap running for a long time for the mud to decrease and boiling costs us a lot of money and time."
Environmental citizenship
As part of the Environmental Committee of Andes, María heard about the innovative 'Salvaguarda' project. This project, initiated by the Colombian NGO Conciudadanía in partnership with horizont3000, aims to strengthen proactive environmental citizenship by supporting community-led initiatives.
María and her colleagues decided to take part in 'Salvaguarda'.
Community water management
The residents of María's community quickly teamed up with the experts from Conciudadanía and were now able to make improvements to the aqueduct. Key parts such as grids and new tanks were installed. In addition, each household was introduced to low maintenance filters.
To make these changes sustainable, Conciudadanía initiated trainings to strengthen processes of community water management in order to conserve the local watershed.
"We organise activities where we can be like researchers and analyse things ourselves"
116 families benefit from the improved aqueduct. Everybody can drink clean water directly from the filters now. Not only have illnesses been reduced, but time and gas/wood for cooking have also been saved.
In order to maintain the infrastructure and promote environmental citizenship, an collectively formed Aqueduct Board now organises regular activities. All this has contributed to improving the quality of life of the community.