I have chosen as my hero a gentleman named Reynaldo Diaz. The problem that needs heroic action that he has chosen to address is the lack of access to safe drinking water for so many people around the world.
"Every year there are 1.7 million deaths, mainly children under the age of five, due to diarrhea caused by unsafe water. The U.N.’s Millennium Development Goal is to halve the number of people unable to reach or afford safe drinking water by the year 2015. Achieving this would require that at least 125,000 people be connected to safe water supplies each day before the 2015 target." (
http://bit.ly/26nQJ9)
As we learned in our first EVOKE quest, every hero has an origin story. Reynaldo's includes a man by the name of Ron Rivera. I had the priviledge of meeting and discussing work on a project with Ron and he immediately struck me as a kind and gentle man. But he was a man on a mission. And his mission was to develop sustainable and replicable water filter projects in places where safe water did not exist. He carried this mission out through an organization called Potters for Peace. Sadly, while helping develop a filter factory in Nigeria in 2008, Ron died from malaria.
(Read his New York Times obituary).
At this point, Reynaldo had been working with Ron for some time. As it was reported at a farewell event for Ron in Nicaragua, where he had lived for years, Ron's
"brothers, cousin, friends and wife all spoke, as did several students and potters. Reynaldo Díaz, who had accompanied Ron to universities in the United States and Europe (and who will hopefully continue Ron’s work, spreading the word about the Filtron around the world), said this, his voice occasionally breaking:
'I know if Ron were here, he would be uncomfortable because we’re talking so much about him, and because he’s lost an entire week without managing to get the filter technology to some new place during these days since he left us. I know it, but I need to talk about him… I’ve been a fan of Ron’s as long ago as I can remember. He combined a great sense of humor with immense tolerance, which was an impressive mix for a boy. Ron started telling me about the Filtron while I was studying at university, and when I needed to do an internship with a nonprofit organization as part of the requirements for a scholarship, Ron took me under his wing.
To start off, he put me to work at the filter factory in Managua. After the first day of work, I was cursing the Filtron and he was on the verge of firing me. But that day he told me how he had felt years earlier when they’d put a gun in his hands in Bolivia. ‘Times have changed, Reynaldo,’ he told me, ‘but it’s the same injustices, and we need a revolution.’ He said it with so much passion that I stayed to work with him. Until today.'" (
http://bit.ly/9qROoG )
Even while Ron was still alive Reynaldo had shown his commitment to carrying out the work in the long term. Working with his longtime partner, Kaira Wagoner, he started a business called Claysure. They raised their own funding and worked on both independent projects and as consultants and partners with Potters for Peace. In 2009, for example,
"PFP filter tech’s Kaira Wagoner and Reynaldo Diaz were in Africa during May and June. They worked on the start-up of a filter production facility in Somaliland, advised at a new shop in Zimbabwe and then completed feasibilty studies in Rwanda and Mozambique." (
http://bit.ly/26nQJ9)
I think it is important to explain in a bit more detail how the model being used by Potters for Peace and Claysure works:
"Since 1998, Potters for Peace has been assisting in the production worldwide of a low-tech, low-cost, colloidal silver-enhanced ceramic water purifier (CWP). Field experience and clinical test results have shown this filter to effectively eliminate approximately 99.88% of most water born disease agents....
Potters for Peace does not operate filter making facilities or sell filters but trains others to do so. Potters for Peace recieves no financial benefit in the form of a percentage of filter sales or in any other manner from the filter producers, the workshops are independent businesses owned by organizations or individuals....
The projects are designed to provide profitable and sustainable employment, the local retail price of a CWP being set so as to maintain its accessibility to the poor and also provide a decent wage for the workers.
Education, health training and follow-up are critical to the successful introduction of the CWP into rural communities. Potters for Peace has developed materials in several languages; brochures, decals and a manual of procedures which can be provided to the local partner for this work." (
http://pottersforpeace.org/)
So, I have chosen Reynaldo Diaz because, in spite of seeing his mentor die doing this work, he continues it on, carrying both the work, and the philosophy behind it, into the next generation. I believe that this is certainly heroic.
I am following Reynoldo on Facebook and have attempted to contact him there. I have no idea where in the world he might be, but if I hear from him or learn more I will post it here.
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