Engineer follows the science of water

 

Engineer follows the science of water

Even in high school, Isis Mejias understood that she wanted to apply her science education to altruistic causes. “I had that desire to help others, to work on human rights, and [ensure] that everybody had the things they should have access to.”

Image credit: Trish Badger

A Rotary scholar dedicates her expertise to providing an essential human need

By Geoffrey Johnson

As a girl growing up in Caracas, Isis Mejias was perplexed that she and her neighbors in the Venezuelan capital couldn’t count on having regular access to water — and that when they did have water, it could cause diarrhea or other illnesses. “I felt like I needed to understand why certain things were happening in my country,” she explains. “I was very curious about how science could help me figure out the reason.”

Mejias inherited her love of learning and her passion for science from her father, an engineer. “My dad told us stories about picking cotton to buy his first uniform to go to school, of working from a very young age to buy pencils, papers, and books,” she says. “But that was his dedication toward education, and he passed on all of those passions for studying to his children.”

As a high school student in Houston, where her family moved in 2001, Mejias focused on chemistry with an eye toward its practical and altruistic applications. “I didn’t necessarily know I was going to be studying something related to water specifically,” she says. “But I knew I had that desire to help others, to work on human rights, and [ensure] that everybody had the things they should have access to.”

At the University of Houston, Mejias followed her father’s path and earned a degree in chemical and biomolecular engineering. (“The fruit didn’t fall far from the tree,” she says.) She also began working with Engineers Without Borders, a volunteer organization that helps communities find ways to provide for basic human needs. She co-founded a chapter at the University of Houston, and after she graduated in 2008, she spent three years working with the organization on a project in Kenya, where she helped provide a reliable water distribution system to a hospital.

Isis Mejias

• Rotary global grant scholar, 2012-13
• Doctorate in environmental engineering, University of Houston, 2014
• Doctorate in sanitary and environmental engineering, University of São Paulo, 2014
• Member, Rotary E-Club of Houston, 2016-present

• While raising funds for the water treatment portion of the project, Mejias had a conversation with Bill Davis, a member of what is now the Rotary Club of Lake Houston Area. “We met at a Starbucks,” she says. “He told me about Rotary: what it was and what they did in their areas of focus. I fell in love with it.”

  Together, Mejias and Davis submitted a global grant application and secured $61,000 to support the Kenya water project with a filter and chlorination system and a battery system for backup power. That experience was part of Mejias’ ongoing education in what she calls “the power of being part of an organization like Rotary, where you can turn your dreams into action.”

  While working on the grant proposal, Davis asked Mejias about her plans. “That was a very important question,” Mejias recalls. “I was in the moment where I needed to figure out what to do with my life.” Davis told her about Rotary’s global grant scholarships, and Mejias jumped at the opportunity. Despite having only a few days to write her proposal and prepare for the interview, she secured the scholarship.

  Mejias had already been accepted into a graduate program at the University of Houston; now, working with her adviser there, she arranged to use her scholarship to simultaneously study at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, where she intended to concentrate on environmental engineering and water treatment. “I thought about the real reason I wanted to continue my education,” she says. “Whatever came out of my [doctoral] research, I realized I needed to focus my solutions on those that needed it most: people that can’t afford to pay for complex treatments of water.”

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  In February 2019, Isis Mejias worked in Kalisizo, Uganda, on a global grant-supported project devoted to water, sanitation, and hygiene.

  Courtesy of Isis Mejias

  
  

• During two years of work in the field and the laboratory, Mejias created an inexpensive biofilter that uses bacteria to remove metals from water. While in grad school, she also engaged in Rotary projects that fostered collaboration between clubs in Texas and Brazil. “The goal of the scholarship, besides the academic work, was to build lasting relationships and expand the work of Rotary,” she says.

  With PhD in hand, Mejias is now a consulting director at ERM, or Environmental Resources Management, which she describes as “the largest sustainability consultancy in the world.” She also started her own company, Global Wash, a nongovernmental organization that assists communities and groups as they implement essential water projects. “I wanted to pass along my experience in the planning, execution, and monitoring phase,” she explains. “We want to build sustainable projects that are owned and continued by the communities at large.”

  Today, Mejias is a member and past president of the Rotary E-Club of Houston, which suits her travel schedule. “The e-club opened doors for me to continue in Rotary,” she says. “We were able to do wonderful projects while I was president.”

  Chief among those was a project that enabled the diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases in Barquisimeto, Venezuela. Backed by a $36,000 global grant and working closely with the Rotary Club of Barquisimeto-Nueva Segovia, the Houston e-club established a partnership with a hospital in Barquisimeto and, especially, the Venezuelan Science Incubator (Incubadora Venezolana de la Ciencia, or IVC), an ambitious nonprofit devoted to the study of neglected tropical diseases.

  Once underway, the project garnered praise from Science magazine. “With help from The Rotary Foundation,” the prestigious journal reported in its March 2022 issue, “IVC has just opened what co-leader Isis Mejias, an environmental consultant in Houston, bills as Venezuela’s ‘first state-of-the-art molecular diagnostics lab.’ ... It will help detect pathogens responsible for everything from Chagas’ disease and leprosy to leishmaniasis, Zika, Mayaro, and malaria.”

  As if that weren’t enough, Mejias is also an ambassador for the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Rotary Action Group, and she frequently consults with clubs and districts on water projects. Her girlhood passion to put her scientific expertise at the service of humanitarian endeavors burns brighter than ever, as does her commitment to Rotary. “I don’t know what the future will bring,” Mejias says, though she does make one prediction: “I’m going to continue being a Rotarian until the day I die.”

  This story originally appeared in the March 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

Visit:-

https://www.rotary.org/en/engineer-follows-science-water

Rotary project supplying clean water to Zimbabwean villages brings wide-ranging benefits

 

Rotary project supplying clean water to Zimbabwean villages brings wide-ranging benefits

Workers dig a well in the village of Mushaki, Murehwa District, Zimbabwe]

Courtesy of Constancia Bosha

By Etelka Lehoczky

Nobody takes water for granted in Zimbabwe, least of all the residents of Musekiwa and Mushaki. Located about 160 kilometers (99 miles) from the capital of Harare, the two villages have been drastically affected by the country’s water shortage. Until recently, many residents walked five kilometers (three miles) or more to find water every day.

“They were getting some water from open wells, some from rivers,” says Trymore Tafadzwa Kabanda, a councilor for Mushaki.

By the numbers: Rotary’s water, sanitation and hygiene projects

Global grants awarded since 2019 for these projects: 1,247 grants totaling more than US$93 million

• Number of countries where clubs have used global grant funding for these projects: 95
• Largest grant: US$800,000
• Smallest grant: US$30,000

• That changed when two Rotary clubs thousands of miles apart decided to collaborate on a grant-funded project. Members of the Rotary Club of Saint Helena, California, USA, learned about the villages’ situation in 2020 from a guest speaker whose wife had grown up in the area. They found out about the devastating effects climate change has had on rainfall in rural Zimbabwe, where more than 90% of households depend on agriculture for their main livelihood. Zimbabwe’s rainfall patterns have become highly variable in the last two decades. The rainy season used to last from October to March; now it sometimes starts as late as December.

  “They had a horrendous water problem,” says John Muhlner, a past president of the Saint Helena club. “Women, for the most part, were walking miles every day to bring water back to their homes. Often they would go and wouldn’t find water, or maybe the water they found would be contaminated.”

  The Saint Helena Rotarians contacted the Rotary Club of Harare CBD, Harare, Zimbabwe, which conducted a community assessment. After that, the clubs raised funds and applied for a Rotary Foundation global grant. The US$82,000 project plan was to dig two wells, install solar-powered pumps and a water piping system, train residents to maintain the equipment, and conduct an educational campaign about the importance of hygiene.

  Although the project seemed straightforward, it took more than a year to complete. The first barrier was a predictable one: bureaucracy.

  “It is quite important that you approach the various government offices to get the necessary approvals before you start a project,” says Antony Matsika, a past president of the Harare club. “We had to go through four levels of approvals: the provincial development coordinator, the district development coordinator, the rural district council, and – lastly, maybe, but still important – the chief of the area. If we didn’t go through those different stakeholders, we were not going to succeed in doing the project.”

  Once work was underway, the clubs encountered a problem they didn’t anticipate: One of the wells they dug didn’t strike water.

• “In Zimbabwe, you can contract for drilling one of two ways. One is to tell the contractor where to drill, and if nothing comes out of the hole, you’re responsible for the cost of drilling somewhere else,” says Dan Balfe, a member of the Rotary Club of Santa Rosa, California, USA, who also worked on the project. “We should have contracted for a wet hole, which is to say, they would guarantee to drill a hole that had water. We learned a lesson there. As a result, we had to do another phase of fundraising.”

  Ultimately, the villages did get their water. Now the Saint Helena and Harare clubs are planning a second grant-funded project to help two more villages in the region. But there’s still a need for many more such initiatives. The World Health Organization estimates that 1.4 million people die each year because of inadequate water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities. Access to clean water affects everyone – often in surprising ways.

  “Water touches on all of Rotary’s areas of focus,” says Mary Beth Growney Selene, chair of the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Rotary Action Group. “Children are not being pulled away from school to go fetch water in a local river. Parents don’t have to spend time fetching water, so they can be more productive economically. People aren’t as susceptible to waterborne diseases. ‘It all starts with water,’ is what we say.”

  That was certainly the case in Mushaki and Musekiwa. “Now, most of the villagers don’t have to go more than a few meters to fetch water,” Kabanda says. “Also, diseases like cholera are prevented.”

  Kabanda and the Rotary members believe the new wells shielded people in Mushaki and Musekiwa from a recent outbreak of cholera, which can be caused by a bacterium in brackish river water. A hospital in the area said there hadn’t been any cases of cholera from the two villages, Matsika says.

  “Our conclusion is that it is probably because of our project – because of the supply of clean water.”

  Learn more about Rotary’s efforts in water, sanitation, and hygiene.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/value-well

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