Her straw hat gave a shadow to her face, and her thick and stiff eyelashes had a penetrating look. Señora Ines became the main character of the dream I would later call El Agua Es Oro (Water is Gold).
I met Señora Ines during my senior year in high school while working on a microfinance project. She was a quiet, bone-thick lady, mother of five
small kids, living in a one-room adobe brick house behind the airport. Countless times I drove past the neighborhood on the outskirts of Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third-largest city, but it wasn’t until I spent afternoons in the drenching sun with the breeze that heightened the fumes of brick kilns that I truly realized what was here.
By meeting Señora Ines I quickly realized how the poverty trap limited her potential. However, I felt the urge to first understand the complexity of the environment, community, and her day to day life before aiming to find a solution.
I formed a group in high school that was enthusiastic about helping a family start selling chicken eggs as a micro business. As the semester went on, the group’s enthusiasm did too. However, I was in direct communication with Señora Ines, so I felt accountable for supporting her work. Many hardships prevented an impactful project, including stray dogs eating the chicken we had bought to lay eggs! I was frustrated with myself since we could not create a project that would help her in the long run. Nevertheless, a year after graduating from high school and spending time abroad, I returned to the neighborhood. Señora Ines was no longer there. But the dream she had lit in me still burned.
The area is not connected to the water grid, translating into additional costs for buying water from other sources and increasing time dedicated to household chores. This reinforced feedback loop has prevented women living in peri-urban communities from unleashing their potential.
And so I took the first concrete step towards my dream of addressing poverty, water access, female empowerment, and ultimately fighting social injustice by forming El Agua Es Oro. Two years later, the dream went from a plan on paper to engaging more than 100 volunteers to impact 55 households, giving children access to clean water, hygiene, and sanitation programs. Now, we are working to provide opportunities for water access that will unleash women’s capacities.