In Nicaragua, where the ONE DROP Foundation is carrying out its first project, incessant rains have transformed the dry land into a sea of mud. Roads and bridges have to be rebuilt, and many crops have been lost. Such extraordinary precipitation has not spared project beneficiaries, men and women who today are putting their shoulders back to the wheel.

Over the past year, Paul Laporte made three trips to Honduras to analyze the needs of the local population and to reflect on technical solutions that could be proposed by the ONE DROP Foundation. While there is no magic formula for fighting poverty and providing access to water, the ONE DROP team intends to build on the success of PECAN to meet the specific needs of the Honduran communities as much as possible.

To help celebrate the launch of its position paper entitled “Water: a Treasure to Conserve and Manage Sustainably for Quebec’s Development,” the Jeune Chambre de commerce de Montréal (Young Chamber of Commerce of Montreal) invited Michel Lamoureux, Executive Director of the ONE DROP Foundation, to present an overview of the Foundation’s activities. For ONE DROP, it was a unique opportunity to share our vision with North America’s largest network of young businesspeople.

Over a billion people do not have access to clean, safe water. Faced with this intolerable situation, world leaders tell us we do not have the resources to meet the challenge and, in the Millennium Declaration, undertook to ensure that only half those people will have access to water by 2015.

At the ONE DROP Foundation’s launch on October 29, 2007, Guy Laliberté spoke about his dream of mobilizing as many people as possible to ensure that everyone has access to safe water, now and in the future. Already, His Serene Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco, Oxfam International Executive Director Jeremy Hobbs, and Royal Bank of Canada President and CEO Gordon Nixon have signed partnerships with the Foundation.

Focusing on “The Global Water Crisis,” the 2007 Humanitarian Award of the United Nations Association of New York recognizes enterprises and organizations working to find solutions to water problems around the world. Guy Laliberté is being recognized for the creation of the ONE DROP Foundation and his deep commitment to the implementation of sustainable projects giving access to water.

In November 2005, the ONE DROP Foundation launched, in partnership with Oxfam-Québec, a pilot project in Nicaragua to help improve the living condition of disadvantaged rural populations through better access to water and improved agricultural practices.

The seeds are in the ground, and so are the irrigation pipes. With the start of the rainy season, Darling and his family have been able to resume their farming work. Drop by drop, the PECAN rainwater reservoir is filling up, a promise of better times ahead.

It took eight pairs of arms and hours of sweaty toil to turn the Carmen Cruz family land into a garden: moving the biggest rocks, plowing soil that had never really been worked, and then sowing. But already the land has begun to bear fruit. The life of the family is gradually being transformed.

Everywhere on earth, farmers depend on the sky for good harvests. No water, no crops—period. It’s a universal law that hits small farmers in northern Nicaragua very hard. In the Estelí Department, environmental conditions seem to conspire against survival.

Twice a week, the theatre troupe put together by the PECAN project stages an original work written for an audience of small farmers from the Estelí region. The writing takes the audience’s daily life and beliefs into account. We take a look at the play with one of the troupe’s actors and the artistic director of the HAYTA group.

For over a year, an eclectic group of actors has been crisscrossing the department of Esteli in a lime green truck loaded down with material In every village where they set up their stage, a skillful blend of acrobatics, magic and local legends captivates the eyes and minds of spectators. The actors want to entertain their audiences, of course, but also to increase awareness and change lifestyles.

Fences, barbed wire, cement posts … The materials arrive by minivan, by oxcart or by motorbike. Delivery of the first materials is the first tangible sign of a peasant family’s participation in PECAN. This starts in April and extends over several weeks. This time, it’s also the beginning of an adventure that can change a lot of things. Let’s visit one of the 400 families who are making the leap in 2007.

Hunger often casts its shadow over Nicaragua, the second poorest country in the Americas after Haiti. Famine is more acute in March, April and May, during the end of what the peasants call the “dry period”. The term is primarily a reference to the prolonged absence of rain, but it also cruelly applies to the contents of their pantry ...

It takes nerves of steel to visit the Esposito Ramirez family. The trepidation begins as soon as the little pick-up truck leaves the main road and begins the long climb to the village of Las Palmeras. Running along the side of a cliff, the dirt road is etched with deep grooves left by rainwater runoff. All together, it takes over 45 minutes to cover just twenty kilometres or so. Despite the difficult journey, the family of four dreams of selling crates of vegetables in town. Join us as we visit them at home.