She then called on Renee from Silicon Valley Rainbow Rotary, District 5170. They had a member who knew Patricia; during Covid they were seeking an international project; they had chartered just before Covid and didn’t have much money, including not much resources for international funding. Patricia came up with a village that, she emphasized, “paid all their taxes on time, so you knew they were responsible.” They met in a shed; and none of the villages had solid walls, solid roofing nor indoor plumbing. The club, just numbering 16 at the time, during and just after Covid raised $17,000 through mailings, Bingo games etc., and thus cane up with the $17,000. With that they created a two-room schoolhouse with solid construction, and added indoor plumbing.  

Nancy called on Mike (didn’t get the last name; video was a little weak. Mike told how they had initially been working in a little village homesteaded by indigenous communities. Since this county group had a history of paying all their taxes in full on time, and were having difficulty meeting weekly in a shed, Rainbow Rotary Silicon Valley was interested in working with them to do a school. 

The school was initially designed by him as an idea, and then the community itself decided what they wanted and got involved in designing it.

He outlined how FAMA works: one-third, one-third, one-third – and so, in this school, the government helped us with equipment, code, part of the design; and individuals worked with designing the building. And then Rotary and FAMA did the mentoring and the financial, end of it, as well as eliminating roadblocks.  That’s a major part of what one has to do when you work with communities that have no experience in doing this kind of work. Is that enough?

Questions were invited from the group, before Patricia came up. She said that when they’d heard about Rotary and a global grant, Mike started researching and looking into different projects, and they had three different projects to discuss with us. If there are questions, go ahead and ask. She welcomed Mike, speaking online, but we could hear him perfectly.

Mike said that there was no presentation title or theme he wanted to put on this, but he proposed starting with this one: “Lending a Hand Up,” or working with a health and educational network, which he would explain.

The areas he had considered for a while were health clinics where they could deal with water, sanitation, nutrition and family health. Equally, if not more, important was education: adult and family economic advancement. Meaning: preparing people to enter the workplace and encouraging children’s education. It’s an area among those in rural areas and disadvantaged communities who don’t have a chance to get started, so they end up doing work that doesn’t much benefit their families and offers no advancement at all. 

Patricia interjected: At the time, students were only going to school once a week, because the school was two hours away. And Mike continued, including him and Patricia and some volunteers. Noting that utilizing the participants and their cultural environment is critical. “We can’t just go in and tell them what to do,” he noted. If this is going to be self-sustaining, they have to be able to learn and grow, though coming from a  “base of zero.”

So it evolves, beginning with small steps. Mentoring and driving their participation is hard work. The students are not accustomed to developmental things, they are accustomed to surviving. So he threw out some initial proposals. One of the things in a rural setting is important: there are services but not handy to people. So they were looking at mobile or satellite kinds of opportunities for different communities, where they could provide regularly scheduled services. If clients had medical or health or sanitation needs, it’s difficult and they usually don’t do it. If it’s an emergency, patients can go to a community hospital, but those are far and patients only go with major injuries or illnesses. 

So, what he wanted to propose as an idea was an improvement grant, which he would explain later. What is more important to him is educational and vocational programs, and the emphasis is economic advancement.   He cited a belief in self-sustaining, or give them a hand up, the fish analogy: you don’t give a fish, you teach them how to fish. That means: if you stay, they end up depending on you; if you say you’re leaving, they get excited or greedy. On to the next slide … there was some working over the slide, and Mike wryly noted that “this happens in the villages, by the way.” If they don’t leave, he said, the next group won’t be able to get help.

He spoke of putting responsibilities on the individuals, which helps them to grow and develop.

There were specific places he wanted to talk about: with one clinic on a road on which some people had been hurt and an infant had died. We helped them rebuild the road, he said, they did all the labor; the government provided machines and code, we provided funding and mentoring. He was able to help there as he is a civil engineer. At that point they met a group of women who had been given sewing machines by the government but no fabric. The story there was the time it took for them to develop. Board members advised them as to what they needed, but they did not know how to price their product. So, Mike said, they began slowly working on how to save money to buy more fabric.  They started keeping records of how much time their tasks took, and now they keep records of accounting, of credits and debits, expenses, time, future purchases, and he noted that their treasurer has gotten very good at this.  It took time – three years – to master the accounting, of which they mastered the importance. 

He spoke of a school built along with Silicon Valley Rainbow Rotary, which he called a “blessing.”  He described how the men cleared land with machetes while the women maintained the villages. There were difficulties: they needed to make money but they lacked water or power or applicable knowledge; they set up a water system that storms destroyed, and then the government offered to help with water, and provided engineers and equipment.  Residents did the labor and “we provided the funding and helped with design.” Initially they gave lemon trees to households and the women walked a kilometer to the river while carrying water in buckets on their heads. A mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law got busy together and now they’re making as much money as their husbands do. And there are now full orchards. 

And the point is: something starts out one way and grows as we discover what they need, “and we grow as a team.” 

They started at San Rafael de los Marinos, with the clinic, and ended up with a women’s co-op, he said, and with Rainbow Rotary building the school and doing the water system. Now, he said, they’re moving north into rural areas, which is different as the residents are very disadvantaged. He also mentioned “due east of Puerto Vallarta.” 

Question: were there problems with drug lords and trafficking? The answer was no.

For Mike, he said, empowering was the primary if not sole purpose of this work. The communities were limited in planning and operating projects of any size. The residents agree with what we say, he said, and we want them to learn and take it over, to “have every benefit of doing it themselves.”

He summed up: Families live in constant crisis resulting in psychological paralysis. He saw the same when working in India and in the Middle East and Asia. This is critical to this community in Puerto Vallarta: adults aren’t able to get jobs due to lack of education and confidence, and English is a required skill for any kind of reasonable placement or advancement, and they face difficulties because “they don’t have the language.” 

There’s a big vacuum in jobs that require fixing appliances, washer/dryers, doing caulking or electrical work, which pay well but there’s no way for them to learn how to do that, he said. It’s gotten easier with circuit-boards, thanks to the Silicon Vallery. 

As far as living conditions and learning and confidence, you’ll see that, in one of the villagers especially, though family financial planning is nonexistent, as they don’t have much money and what they do have isn’t utilized well. 

He turned to some photos: showing a map of Puerto Vallarta, a county as well as a city, a large and developed area; he indicated the central area and a regional hospital. And Playa Grande, where there are schools and a nice community but no clinic and no adult education. To get to the clinic, you have to cross a swinging bridge and use the bus. 

These are the three areas on which Mike said he has been concentrating his research. To further identify where this is, he said, it’s due east of the airport and the marina where boats and cruise ships are. Again he showed pictures of the villages,  and pointed out how the areas look very poor and marginalized, and that’s Loma de (?) Media. 

He showed a closeup of Playa del Grande, and Volcanes (?) and Loma de Medio. That’s a populated area with new houses, a place for events, many grocery stores, and he pointed out some very poor areas. He also pointed out a concentrated area that is “like a shanty town,” a ravine with black, or dirty, water running through it, blackened with garbage but not sewage. It only runs in the rainy season which is summer. But it also is a pool of insects and infections, and a breeding ground for dengue (if I got that right) which is a real problem in Mexico. It’s covered with brush and trees, and the living conditions are very poor. 

He moved on to photos of beds for people who quadriplegics and disadvantaged people who can’t leave their beds. He showed a photo where the handicapped come and do repair work, some taking turns to do it and gain experience. He mentioned some who found the place and who needed food; among those who ive there are North American expats and hungry tourists, whom he has helped.

This is what it looks like, he said; pointing out slats for walls in some places,  and he showed photos of some visiting to take food to those who needed it. He also showed pictures that illustrated the water problem there,  and that showed water and garbage. He told of some who are told they can’t have houses there, so they tear them down and later rebuild them. And he showed photos of black containers in which residents store water, which does not come from the black water sources. 

He showed pictures of some shacks that are out from under brush and trees; others he could not get good pictures of. He also showed a picture of a home with dirt floors, and poorly built walls. He showed a picture he’d titled so that you wouldn’t think it was someone’s grand house – it was a multiple family dwelling. And another water tank that didn’t get filled all the time. Sometimes residents just have tarps that make their walls. 

The final pictures were of “colonias,” or neighborhoods which included schools, but there is no education for adults. And they don’t have either a (medical) clinic or easy access to one.  He also showed a photo of a school which was built with the help of two Canadians, one of whom provided weekly technical tutoring and the other, English tutoring. Teachers do have a bus that comes up to the location, he said; against the mountain but not from the county hospital; they only go there for more serious injuries such as a broken arm. 

That concluded the presentation, which was only to give some ideas of the region, Mike said. He and Patricia were open to questions.

A  comment followed on Silicon Valley Rainbow Rotary’s  perspective: the work that they are doing is in line with Rotary’s Areas of Focus in terms of education, maternal health, water and sanitation, economic betterment; from a global grant perspective she pointed out that they area aligned in terms of sustainability; it is a case where we leave them and leave the project in their hands. She pointed out the school as an example: they are flourishing and getting more money to make the school better and do more with the village. She pointed out that, Rotary plus FAMA is a great opportunity. The speaker noted that they’d be happy to partner with us. Saratoga Rotary was also interested. Patricia will be at the District Conference, where there will be a breakout session and perhaps this can inspire other Rotary clubs to work with us.

A question was asked about how do they address adult literacy? The answer was that adult literacy has not been emphasized;  they had helped them become more self-sustainable through work such as by becoming a seamstress. But, as Mike had said, they’d like to do more along these lines, because they need to learn English; whose who have visited Puerto Vallarta know that it is a tourist town. A basic issue is literacy in the primary language. Start with what they know and build on that. 

Patricia said that she and Mike had talked about a satellite learning center. , where students can “come and learn wherever they’re at.” It would be a three-way partnership, with the government, available buildings there; they’d seek an educator, computers and other educational materials. She has been an educator for more than 30 years, and education is important to her. Distances and difficulties in traveling over the terrain were also pointed out. It would  be about 60 miles, and take about an hour; you’d almost need a four-wheel drive.