Primera promoción :    de 1996 a 1999

Profesor :    1er año : Susana (N.Z) (3 meses), Gilles Corcos (1 mes) y Charlie (1 mes)

2ndo año : Joshua Biemberg 

Alumnos :
    - Jaime Alonso Rodríguez
    - Esteban Cantillano Sevilla
    - Oreste Torres Jarquín

- Juan Romero

- Reynaldo Diaz

- Juan Carlos González (no terminó)

- Juan Ramon Zamora (no terminó)

- Harvin Alonso (no terminó)

Segunda promoción :    de julio 2000 a agosto 2002

Profesor :     Mathieu LeCorre (18 meses) / Katherine & Hugo Forces (6 meses)
Alumnos :
    - Tomas Matamoros Vega
    - Xiomara Obando Garcia
    - Leonel Paez Garcia
    - Sara Espinoza
    - Harvin Alonso Rodríguez
    - Migdalia Herrera
 

Tercera promoción :        de febrero 2003 a enero 2005

Profesor :     Jim Stacey (24 meses)
Alumnos :
    - Julio Gómez Martínez
    - Sandra Cruz Huete
    - Ruth Martínez Martínez
    - Bladimir Cruz Huete
    - Carlos González Mendoza
    - Edin Taleno Amador
   read more »

The ETAP (Escuela Técnica de Agua Potable in Spanish, or Potable Water Technical School) is a cornerstone of APLV's sustainability program.  APLV Nicaragua trains its own water technicians, turning out a new class of eight or so local experts every two years or so. These technicians come from rural, agricultural areas all over Nicaragua. They grew up in the very villages that they'll be developing water systems for, and lived the life of the communities where they serve.

The ETAP started with a class of five students in the mid-1990's (see the history of the ETAP), and is typically a program of slightly more than two years. APLV advertises through the municipalities and NGOs all over Nicaragua to attract the cream of the crop of graduating high school seniors. Applicants must be high school graduates, be from rural areas, and have scarce financial resources. Eight students are accepted into each two-year program.

We were delighted to be able to spend an afternoon with the current class of 7 students who are just finishing up their program and wanted to share a little bit about them. They've spent just over two years studying and will complete their classwork in March, 2012, after which they'll spend a few months in the field working on APLV projects.

The six young men and one woman told much the same story of how they arrived at the school. Each was from a rural, agricultural area and finished high school successfully, but had few options to go forward with education because there was no money available. Each had the skills to manage cattle or raise beans, knew how to use a horse to do whatever was needed, and was completely ready for a life of agriculture, near the family, in a fairly sheltered and yet challenging world, but wanted to do something more. They had to send the school a letter of application, and then, having passed that round in the selection process, had to travel all the way to Rio Blanco for the entrance examination. For most, this was the most significant travel of their lives. And of course, once they were accepted, it meant coming to Rio Blanco and living in the dormitory accommodations of the school for two years. Can you imagine being the single woman in that dormitory? She says it was one of the primary challenges.

The academic rigor is striking - These students attend class from 8-12am and 2-5pm five days each week, for more than two years.  The school's intent is all about mastery, not just exposure to the material, and they study social organization, mathematics (through trigonometry, calculus, and many water-oriented specialties), computer use, surveying, health, environmental topics, physics, hydraulics, and quite a selection of other topics. The end goal, of course, is to be able to design and lead implementation of a water project in a rural community. They have to be able to use Autocad and specialty water design software alongside the more mundane Microsoft Word and Excel, have to be understand how to organize a community to construct a water project and how to write reports about it.
 read more »

We had the pleasure of sitting down with two graduates of the ETAP (The Potable Water Technical School, or Escuela Técnica de Agua Potable) yesterday. Pablo Gomez Martinez, 31,  and José Mendoza López, 28, graduated from the rigorous program in 2008, in the fourth graduating class. 

Yesterday we visited El Carrizal, Matguás. It's quite a lot closer to Rio Blanco than the previous visits we did, but we still spent a couple of hours getting there, partly on the terrible "paved" road out of Rio Blanco, and then on a rough dirt road. 

On Wednesday January 4, 2012, we visited the neighboring communities of San Isidro and El Carmen, which are a very long ways down a dirt road from the town of Matiguas in the Department of Matagalpa.

San Isidro, El Carmen, and Quirragua are three projects that share the same water source, which is up on a far hilside from San Isidro and El Carmen. Quirragua is much closer to the water source, but much more difficult to reach. San Isidro and El Carmen share the same water delivery line, but have separate water tanks and distribution networks. Neither community has electricity, although a few houses have a little bit of electricity gathered from solar panels.  read more »

For the last five years, every new APLV project has deployed water meters for every "puesto" - every water tap for every house.

Although it increases the initial cost of the project, the return on investment is impressive.

• Water waste stops immediately. There are no more faucets left running.
• Conflict about water usage between the water committee and community members is resolved because the meter does the job.
• The treasury of the water committee grows, to better handle maintenance tasks.

Every month the committee member with the job of reading meters visits each household to read the meter, determines the usage for the month, and collects the payment due.

Most communities use a flat monthly rate of 30 Nicaraguan Cordobas (about US$1.30) for the first 15 cubic meters (4000 US Gallons, or 15,000 liters) of water and 5 Cordobas for every cubic meter beyond that. Except for larger households, or when they have lots of company, the base rate works out fine for most households. Everybody recognizes that it's way below the true cost (and value) of the water, but it's a fair contribution allowing the committee to build up the treasury for future maintenance.