About 50 Mayan families in Guatemala will soon have running water outside their homes thanks to a team of Kenosha Water Utility engineers and local volunteers who will be building a distribution system in their village for the next two weeks.

Wisconsin students, including those in 10 Kenosha Unified schools, also will learn about the engineering used to deliver water and its proper sanitation, among other lessons, with the help of Joan Roehre, the district’s distance learning director.

The team left Friday to travel to El Adelanto. The Mayan village, with a population of 6,400, is located in the southeastern region of this Central American country.

Water for 50 families

“We will help build a tank, and that tank will service 50 families, and they will then have a tap outside the home with a sink,” Roehre said.

Mayan women are the primary water bearers, traveling several miles on foot carrying their jugs to the source, usually a spring, to retrieve water for cooking, cleaning and drinking. Mayan women, on the average, carry water back and forth to their homes four to six hours a day, she said.

“This village is among the poorest of the poor,” she said. “The women do carry the water. But with this project, the (Mayan) men are expected to help.”

Working since 2008

City water officials and volunteers have been traveling to Guatemala to set up and build water distribution systems since 2008, when the first 2,500-gallon tank and system was installed in El Adelanto. Last year, they built a similar system in Sacbochol, another Mayan village.

The project is supported by Water First International, a non-profit organization.

El Adelanto is 7,500 feet above sea level, and gravity will aid in the flow of water being distributed to the homes, Roehre said. Water cannot be forced into homes because “basically, there is no indoor plumbing,” Roehre said.

“The source we pull from when we put water in the tank are spring sources,” she said.

Video link, daily wiki

Roehre, whose technology project is being funded by a $1,400 grant from the Kenosha Rotary, said students in Kenosha, Plymouth, Hortonville and South Milwaukee will have live video access to the progress beginning next week. Students in Florida and Mexico also are joining the connection.

Roehre said students will be using Skype for video conferences intended to share with them the construction progress, abet discussions about water resources and foster collaborations and relationships with their Guatemalan counterparts.

Roehre said no district funds are being spent. She is paying for all of her lodging and travel expenses.

She and others involved in the project will be posting a daily “wiki” at http://adventure-kids-learning.wikispaces.com/ to update anyone interested in the progress. Additional information about the project’s history and a schedule of classroom conferences also is available at www.adventurekidslearning.org.

She said many of the Kenosha classes that have participated in the conferences also have wanted to help the struggling village.

She said at one connection, children wondered how they could purchase playground equipment, including soccer balls, when they learned their Mayan peers did not have them.

Next year, she said she hopes to be able to deliver needed supplies, such as those for hygiene, to people in the Mayan village.