The first #CompassionING Bike Ride across the US ended November 2018, but we are still moving forward with the Water for Living Project in Costa Rica. Early in January 2019, we decided to partner with Isla Urban, a Mexico-based NGO specializing in rainwater catchment systems (RWCS), as our main consultants and providers of the RWCS for the schools in Drake Bay.

While we still don’t a specific date of when the systems will be installed in the schools, we are confident that they will be ready to run by the end of the summer. We are also looking into partnering with another local organization who would provide UV-filters to the families, as news from last week has demand that we expedite family home solutions due to increased levels of contamination and higher rates of sickness than previously known.

Trista Goforth shared with us a note from one of our local supporters in Drake Bay who was taken to the hospital due to a sickness believed to come for the tap water provide by the community:

In 2017, Drake Bay had a meeting with President Luis Guillermo Solíz, to discuss many of our urgent topics, one of the topics being water. It was during this event that someone told him that Drake's water did not need treatment and that the water was very clean…

I am writing this to you because it is not one person who is in danger, it is the whole population of Drake Bay...these days I have not been able to work because I must be a father to my son and take care of him.

I only communicate this because I do not want the population to get sicker and not be able to take care of themselves. We also want to be sure the tourism that visits us and is our livelihood does not stop coming to Drake Bay.

This recent update from Trista concludes that the condition in Drake Bay, Costa Rica is more critical than believed. We are initiating new research and working on developing phase 2 in order provide much need support and solutions for the community who are getting chronically ill from extremely contaminated groundwater resources.

As we finalize the logistics and shipment of the rainwater catchment systems in the coming weeks, we will send out new updates on the expected plan and detail descriptions of how the community has unified in support of this local program. We are all one.