Our parishioners and other volunteers, with our financial support, travel each year to remote mountain villages in the Copan region of Honduras to work side-by-side with villagers to install gravity-fed potable water systems. For many villagers, this is the first time they have had accessible, clean drinking water. We have partnered this program since 2001 with Agua Para El Pueblo, a Honduran organization headquartered in the capital city of Tegucigalpa.
If you want to get involved in any way, please contact Rob MacNamara at 610-506-1604 or RPMacNamara@aquaamerica.com.
In their own words
Since 2001 St. Thomas’ parishioners have been involved in the Honduras Water Mission. In that time, funds have been raised to support the building of 16 water systems and 2 schools in very remote mountain villages of the Copan region. We work with an in country non-governmental organization called Agua Para El Pueblo (APP). Each year, the team members travel to the new village to begin a new clean drinking water system. We work side by side with APP and the folks from the village. One of the first stops we make each year is to visit the village we worked in last year to officially inaugurate the new water system. Over the years I have seen grown men cry because they had been pleading with their local government for 23 years to get a water system built for their people. They had given up the idea of ever drinking clean water until APP and St. Thomas’ arrived in their little community. During the celebration anyone who is anyone gives a speech. The speeches are always very humble and you can feel the appreciation the village folk have for this mission. After all the speeches have been made, a little old lady comes out of the crowd. She carries an old fashioned clay pot filled with water. She then smashes it on the ground to symbolize that she and all of the other women of the village will never again have to carry dirty water to their homes.
-Rob MacNamara, Mission Team Leader