Rotary Community Heroes of Hope
Introducing "Rotary Community Heroes of Hope" - a podcast dedicated to showcasing the profound impact of Rotary in District 5330 and beyond. Join us as we explore the remarkable stories of rotary heroes and initiatives that are transforming communities and creating hope around the world.
Rotary Community Heroes of Hope
Green Schools, Clean Water: Rotary's Impact in Cozumel
A chance vacation encounter transformed into a life-changing initiative for thousands of students in Cozumel, Mexico. When Matt McElroy, President-Elect of Indio Sunrise Rotary, attended a Rotary meeting during his family vacation, he witnessed firsthand the stark reality facing island schoolchildren – no access to clean drinking water. This revelation sparked what would become an extraordinary cross-border Rotary partnership.
The Green Schools Project tackles multiple critical challenges through a brilliantly simple solution: harvesting abundant tropical rainfall from school building domes, filtering it for drinking, and using additional collected water for on-site gardens. The initiative addresses the alarming fact that bottled water costs more than gasoline on the island, pushing many children toward unhealthy sugary alternatives and contributing to Mexico's highest-in-the-world childhood obesity rates.
Isaac Galvez, a 38-year Rotarian from Club Rotario de Cozumel, shares how this project evolved from teaching backyard vegetable growing into a comprehensive sustainability program. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when tourism – the island's economic lifeblood – completely halted, these gardens became crucial to community survival. Rotary-supported community kitchens served over 1.2 million meals during this crisis, underscoring the vital importance of local food production and clean water access.
Beyond providing safe drinking water, the Green Schools initiative incorporates student-managed composting systems, native fruit tree cultivation, and vegetable gardens that serve as living laboratories for science education. Students proudly plant trees with thoughts of future generations who will enjoy their fruits – a powerful lesson in environmental stewardship and long-term thinking.
What began with support from Rotary partners in Texas has expanded through district-to-district partnerships and global grants. The Indio Sunrise Rotary Club is now hosting a fundraiser on November 1st at the Coachella Valley History Museum to support expanding the project to additional schools. Their goal is to eventually reach all 15 schools on Cozumel, transforming thousands of young lives through clean water access and hands-on sustainability education.
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Hello and welcome to the Community. Heroes of Hope, a podcast where we shine a light on the remarkable individuals and projects in Rotary District 5330 that bring hope and change to our local and global communities. I am Judy Zelfikar, your co-host and the current District Governor of Rotary District 5330.
Speaker 2:And I'm Niren McLean, the Rotary District Governor-Elect, and I'm Niren McLean, the Rotary District Governor-Elect. Together, we're diving deep into the heart of the community service, showcasing the impact of dedication and collaboration in addressing some of the most pressing challenges our communities face.
Speaker 1:Each episode, we'll tell stories of incredible people making a difference, innovating solutions and inspiring others to take action.
Speaker 2:We'll also be giving you a behind-the-scenes look at the projects that are transforming their lives, and we'll discuss how you, too, can get involved, contribute and be part of the positive change. Whether you're a seasoned Rotarian or just looking to give back, this podcast is for you.
Speaker 1:So join us as we explore the journeys, challenges and successes of people like you who have stepped up to make a difference. Let's celebrate the spirit of community and the power of hope together.
Speaker 2:Don't forget to subscribe to the Community Heroes of Hope on your favorite podcast platform. Stay with us on this journey of inspiration and let's spread the message of hope further than ever.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in. Let's get started, Niren. We love to go around the world with some of the projects that we do with our Rotary Clubs here in District 5330 and I'm very excited we're going to Cozumel today.
Speaker 2:Which is very exciting. Love Mexico and very excited to hear about this project and how we are having an impact in that community.
Speaker 1:So we have Matthew and Isaac with us today. Matt, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your club and this project?
Speaker 3:Yes, so I'm Matt McElroy here. I'm the president-elect for the Indio Sunrise Rotary Club and the club. The project that our club is currently passionate about and working on, is in partnership with Club Rotario de Cozumel and we have Isaac here with us today, and it is a full green school project. So essentially they're and I'll let Isaac explain more but really what the project is doing is bringing clean drinking water to the schools on the island, and it's in two parts, so it's collecting rainwater, harvesting the rainwater and filtering it for a couple of main purposes One, to provide the students and the faculty clean drinking water, which they do not currently have, and allowing them to use the clean water for irrigation, which is giving them an opportunity to have a cultivation and horticulture program as well conservation and horticulture program as well, awesome.
Speaker 4:Well, maybe Isaac, can you introduce yourself and tell us why you started this project on and in Cozumel. I'll be more than glad. Thank you all for being here, for caring about our community. Well, I am in Rotary for the last 38 years, so I've been around a little bit. I started pushing to teach.
Speaker 4:Since we live on an island and, depending on transportation for providing food and all that, I started this program of teaching the students how to cultivate green vegetables. So that's how we started some 12 years ago. People really didn't get into it much. We got some volunteers. We wanted the house ladies to learn how to grow vegetables in the backyard. So we started with this program of one square meter for food and we did capacitate some 500 of them, but not all of them follow up. They suspend it, they do it, they often go back. So we have this facility in which we train and teach people. We bring kindergarten kids and high school kids, boy Scouts, and we have noticed how close they get into the land, into the soil and the vegetables. It's not the same that going to the supermarket and buying tomatoes that are grown a thousand, two thousand miles away from here and all the problems he gets you know, all the carbon track they leave the cost of it and depending on importation to be able to subsist. So we were in that until the pandemic came.
Speaker 4:Until the pandemic came, we had some money from Rotary to do a greenhouse plantation in a school, but they stopped the school because of the pandemic. So we associated with this parish and we started the program and it was so successful because, being on an island, we have no tourism. We depend on tourism for 95%. All of a sudden there was no planes and no cruise ships, no business open. It was there and we are talking 85,000 people population. So it created this need of having food. We got supplies to the markets, to the supermarkets. Only supermarkets, hospitals and pharmacies were open. It was very sad. I'm not going to get much into it, but it was. It changed the island's people way of thinking. So we were growing vegetables. We opened a community kitchen Actually the Rotary Club participated in four or five of them. We took care of one in particular and there were nine kitchens. Well, the one we took care of with the parish. We collected donations one chicken here, one whatever and we poured it all in the one same pile and we served 1,206,000 rations during the pandemic.
Speaker 1:Congratulations.
Speaker 4:The lines were 800, 700 people every day, all kind of different levels, economic and cultural levels. We were all making a line because there was no salaries, no income, no business at all. So after that experience it just blew up. You know, I have these friends from Texas and the district sponsored one school because the schools have no drinking water and along with that we have obesity. We are number one obesity in childhood, which is leading us to be number one in adults in adult obesity. So we're going to get the first place instead of you, but it's nothing we are proud of.
Speaker 4:So in this significant meaning health, drinking water, food availability and the retaking or reborning of the knowledge of how to grow vegetables only vegetables in the backyard of the knowledge of how to grow vegetables only vegetables in the backyard. So we finally got through that and we got sponsored to do one green school project. This high school has 1,200 students and they go 1,200 in the morning and I think 600 in the evening in the other shift. So we're talking almost 2,000 students that have no water. Water has become more expensive than gasoline, which is absurd, so instead they buy Coca-Colas. Sorry to mention names, but those are.
Speaker 1:And that definitely doesn't help the diabetes issue.
Speaker 4:It is poison for students. You know we need to have a healthy childhood and so that's how it started. So we got this support from Texas, district 10. And then we did a district found, district to district, which easier our things because we could use the money easily. Then we got into a global grant with District 5180 in Oregon 5180 in Oregon. And that's when I met, when we met in the club, you know, and we had the visit and he got interested. I'm talking about you, sir, thank you very much, and you're the one that has been pushing this. So we have two options.
Speaker 4:The fully green school contemplates composting, so we create the facility to produce compost. That has been working very fine in there. Children save their organic debris from home and bring them to the school. We planted 130, some trees from the area, fruit trees, and it was very, very inspiring to see the kids 13, 14-year-old kids, you know very enthusiastic about wondering the future. These mango I planted when I have children. I will be very proud that I planted these in my school. So that led us to the next step. So we are growing vegetables, we have someone that is teaching them and the physics, the biology, the botanic teachers, all those science that are in the school program found a very fertile land in which to work, so the chemistry teacher is very fascinated with it because she can take chemistry out of growing vegetables.
Speaker 4:We needed the water, because the chlorine water in here is awful. It kills every stomach and it kills even the plants. And it's very short. You know we get problems with that when we live in the tropics and the tropics bring a lot of rain, so our philosophy is to respect the aquifer. Now, beyond the water, we need to let it rest. We do not want to use the water from the city. It has too much chlorine, but we got plenty of rain.
Speaker 4:So what is the solution? We designed and found this company that does a very simple way by osmosis, very inexpensive filtering systems. We collect the water from a dome. The government built domes in every school, so they have volleyball and basketball courts underneath, so it's perfect for collection. So we collect water from the rain and one part is dedicated and filtered for drinking and the other one is for the services and irrigation, and we have succeeded so much. I got scenes, pictures, videos and that I could. I'm preparing a presentation so I had to stop it since we postponed it, but I'm going to bring a video that shows the one example that is already on wheels. You will be proud to be part of this.
Speaker 1:I'm going to jump in and just interrupt you here for just a second. Matt, tell us again how you got connected with this program how you got connected with this program.
Speaker 3:Yes, so, yeah, so, um, so actually my family was was vacationing on the Island and went to, uh a, the Rotary meeting on the Island, where we met a number of the Rotarians there and learned about what Rotary is involved in on the island and what projects were they working on. It was a kind of a, it was a Rotary moment for myself. It was my first. My first opportunity to visit a club in another country and to really see firsthand the reach that Rotary has see firsthand the reach that Rotary has and you know, get to experience the different projects that Rotary is involved in throughout the world.
Speaker 3:And when I got an opportunity to walk through some of these schools with the fellow Rotarians there on the island and see firsthand what they're involved in and what they're working towards achieving, I brought I, you know, I the. The. What impacted me the most was the clean water program and I just it's something that I take for granted, obviously, living where I do Right, water just is a thing that I don't spend a lot of time thinking about. And when I saw firsthand the amount of students that didn't have access to clean drinking water, it really just touched me to clean drinking water. It really just touched me. So, you know, they were kind enough to really show me more and give me an opportunity to walk the schools, to meet the faculty, to meet the students.
Speaker 3:And I brought this home to my club here in Indio, california, who really got behind it, and we've been in regular communication with the club in cozumel and have been working on a fundraising event to bring about where the awareness of the project, to raise funds for the project. And then also we have chosen a and then also we have chosen a local nonprofit here in the Coachella Valley Desert, compost, who does a lot here locally in composting. They have a number of programs that they offer locally in the schools here for the students in regards to composting, and because composting was a part of the project here in Cozumel, we wanted to highlight what they're doing here locally with their composting programs for students. So we're also raising a little bit of funds to support those programs locally as well.
Speaker 2:You know, matt, one of the things I think is critical is what you said. You were vacationing on the island and you attended a Rotary meeting. I think that all Rotarians and my hat is off to you, because all Rotarians need to, I think keep thinking that Rotary is all the time right, even when you're on vacation. I've done that as well and I've gone to wonderful meetings in other countries while vacationing. So because your rotary hat was on all the time, you were able to get exposed to a wonderful opportunity where you could have an impact. So my head is off to you there. The question I have is at least one of the questions I have is for Isaac. The water that you collect from the domes over the schools, does that go into a cistern? Is it going to 55-gallon drums? How are you collecting it? Did you dig a cistern that would collect everything and from that you pump into other areas?
Speaker 4:We have two different cases. The school we chose and accepted to do the program, they did have a cistern. So what we do is collect the water and take it into the cistern, but that would be only the water for drinking. We have tanks 10,000 liters I don't know that should be. I don't know 10,000 liter tanks that collect the water for irrigation in the growing beds and the trees. So we have the two different options. In that school the dump, it's perfect to collect the water, but not every school has a cistern. In the cases they do not have a cistern, we are collecting it into big, huge tanks.
Speaker 1:Okay, Go ahead. I was just going to say this hits so many parts of what we do in Rotary, Like you were saying, the fact that when you're a Rotarian, you're part of a community that's literally around the world and you can go to any Rotary club anywhere in the world. And obviously, Matt, you did that while you were on vacation, which is amazing. And the second part is it hits some of the areas of service with child and maternal health. It hits our environmental section, so quite a lot is water and sanitation is really packed into this particular project. So where do you go from here?
Speaker 2:Matt, what's the game plan? What are you looking to do? What do you need?
Speaker 3:Currently, our club is going to begin working on a new global grant for the project to support a couple of schools that we would like to bring the clean drinking water to and, in addition, our club is putting on a fundraising event that will be happening here at the Coachella Valley History Museum on Saturday, November 1st, so that is the new date for the fundraiser.
Speaker 3:It is going to be a wonderful opportunity to bring awareness to the project. Like Isaac had stated, I believe he will be traveling from the islands and will be attending the event. He's going to bring some videos that we will have playing in an auditorium for people to learn more and to visually see the project, and you know we're going to be. It's going to be a wonderful evening and you know it's it's. I think it's an opportunity for the community to really see what Rotary is all about, and not only the impact that Rotary has locally here in our communities, but really what Rotary is doing around the world. Because I'm asked that so many times when people want to know what Rotary is and they could see the things that we're doing in our community, but many times they're not aware of what Rotary is doing as a whole around the world.
Speaker 1:So, Matt, tell us how people can find out more about it, about the fundraiser on November 1st and just about this project in general.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 3:So we are going to be putting out some information hopefully that we will have some support from the district that we can have it on the district events page.
Speaker 3:So District 5330 has their own website that you could go to and look at the various events that are happening throughout the district. We will make sure that that information is readily available on there readily available on there. We are visiting our neighboring clubs out here and making sure that all the Rotarians locally are doing their part to spread the word throughout the community and hopefully we will have a couple of neighboring clubs that will be coming alongside us to really work towards ensuring that this fundraiser and that the project itself is a success we are working to putting together. We have another Rotarian here locally by the name of David Hammer, who's part of the E-Club, the E-Club of World Peace, who has been generous enough to support or to provide a seven-night stay on the island for our raffle, and he does have a property there on the island that he is making available at a very, very affordable rate for those that would like to travel to the island to stay there, to take part in the project and to visit the schools.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So does the Indio Club have. Do you have a website that you can also have information on?
Speaker 3:That is a great question. We do While you look that up.
Speaker 1:I'll let everybody know it's district5330.org is where you'll be able to find information as soon as we get it up on that site. That's also where the podcast will be. And then, Isaac, is there a website for your project down in Cozumel? Can you give that to us?
Speaker 4:Yes, I can get it to you. You can get all the information and we keep posting it all the actions that we do. We are a small club but very active and I'm positive and sure that you will enjoy our doing, because we really work a lot Sounds like it.
Speaker 4:And the community. The Rotary in Casa Mel is big in the sense of we have their trust. They really rely on us, they believe in us and they trust us. They love Rotary, but we have never grown more than 25 somehow. But people collaborate and our richness is like Matt said you know all these Rotarians that come and pay us a visit? Said you know all these Rotarians that come and pay us a visit. While we talk about and discuss what we do, I mean we create a good impression and they do want to get involved. That's why I am in charge of international services for many years and that's how I have linked our club to other clubs. Now we have one district grant applied. We are working on the second one and the third one is almost to be authorized. That's three schools. So with this project we've met. We are aiming to two more schools, so that would be the fifth and sixth school. We are 15 schools and that's amazing our goal.
Speaker 4:our goal is to provide drinking water we're in all of them but also this issue of collecting the making compost. Save that we do have a landfill that is already filled, so they want to cut more jungle to make it larger, and I talked to the mayor and said we need to capacitate the population not to create more trash. We should stop trashing Instead. We have to teach them not to trash instead of building another landfill. So that's the issue. That's why it's so important. We have made some surveys and 50 or more than 50% of our waste is organic.
Speaker 1:It is amazing what your club, the small clubs, are amazing and what they can get done and how much impact that you can have and how much it is that we're able to connect from all over the world. So, matt, did you find that website? I?
Speaker 3:did so. You can go to indiosunriserotaryorg and you can find out more information there. There's a link that will take you to, or you can go directly to, indiosunriserotaryticketspicecom, and that is the page specifically for the event, where you can read about the event and you can buy your tickets there.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. Well, thank you both for joining us today. Any final thoughts? Nyron?
Speaker 2:Well, I think, as you were saying, the small clubs are really the dynamos, I think, in Rotary, and small but mighty, and so it's very exciting. And again, matt, kudos to you for being Rotarian 100% of the time, including on vacation, because the unique opportunities you're able to bring to our district and expand the district to the rest of the world, I think is fabulous.
Speaker 1:And Isaac, we're going to come visit you when we come to Cozumel.
Speaker 4:Absolutely, Please please, please, we'll be more than glad and you'll be surprised. I promise you we are really working on it. We are installing the filters in one school, we are planting trees in the other school. So what I want to make sure you guys understand is that we are aiming to both district to district and grant the grants is because the foundation aims to these WASH programs, and WASH programs do not contemplate anything but the water, from obtaining it to distributing it. But that would leave aside the teaching of growing the composting thing and the planting trees, and we really want to include that in the Green School project.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 4:We need to really be specific on it. One budget should be submitted to the foundation and the other one. We managed to do it district to district, so we are a little bit more free, because we do have to contemplate expenses like pumps, utensils, tools, seeds and soil, the teaching itself, and that does not come in the WASH program. Do I explain it myself?
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you for that Well.
Speaker 1:Thank you both for coming out today. We appreciate it Again. This podcast will be up on our district website, district5330.org, and you'll also be able to view it on or listen to it on your various podcast channels as well.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Judy, Thank you. Nyrod and thank you to District 5330.
Speaker 4:Thank you very much to all of you. Thank you, Matt.
Speaker 2:Thank you, you're awesome. Thank you very much to all of you, Thank you. Matt, thank you, you're awesome. Thank you, have a great day.
Speaker 1:Thank you. So that wraps up this episode of Heroes of Hope. We are so happy that we have an audience out there listening. We want you to subscribe, share and tell your friends about the Rotary Community Heroes of Hope, because that's how we get the word out about the impact we're having in this world.