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As AQUA enjoys its first foray outside of Canada as part of the programming of New Zealand’s Auckland Museum (June 24 to October 24, 2011), ONE DROP continues to evaluate potential sites for its travelling multisensory experience. ONE DROP’s special projects manager (AQUA), Geneviève Lussier, will be spending 2011 attending internationally renowned museum-organized conferences along with ONE DROP colleagues.

Geneviève’s first stop was Houston, Texas (USA), for the American Association of Museums’ Annual Meeting and MuseumExpo (May 22 to 25, 2011), where museum professionals from the U.S. and 50 other countries come together every year to enjoy networking opportunities and special events. Her next stop was Warsaw, Poland, for the European Collaborative for Science Industry and Technology Exhibitions’ (ECSITE) Annual Conference 2011 (May 26 to 28, 2011), which welcomes every year a network of European science centre and museum professionals from more than 400 institutions in 50 countries.

This week, Caroline Hardy, Project Manager for the AZULA Fund, and Tania Vachon, Project Manager in Central America for ONE DROP, are in El Salvador for a series of follow-up meetings with partners in the field.

Monday and Tuesday, they visited the families that are participating in the water and sanitation activities, and that will over the next few days be setting up their gardens to take full advantage of the rainy season, currently in full swing. Some of these families have already expressed their desire to also take advantage of the microfinance program to produce more or to start raising pigs for sale to make extra income.

They also attended a coordination meeting for all the project partners for a progress update, and to make sure that all the partners know how far along everyone else is in the advancement of their activities. These meetings also build more synergy between organizations participating in the project.

They then attended a water-themed artistic workshop in the community of Alto de Aguacate with a group of some 30 teens. Despite the heat and the sun, the youths participated enthusiastically in the three-hour workshop, which took place in a field not far from the school.

The administration and follow-up committee of the AZULA Fund, which is managed by ONE DROP, held its first meeting in the offices of Adel MORAZAN—the partner in charge of managing the funds. The committee’s operating protocol was approved at this meeting. Afterwards, all the participants headed to El Rodeo, the community hosting the “Cuentos de Camino Real” show. The seventh performance of the show went off without a hitch, except for the rain, which threatened the proceedings. Luckily, the show finished as scheduled, to the great pleasure of the 150 people or so in attendance.

June 2011 saw ONE DROP roll out a virtual welcome mat to the world’s younger supporters of our cause with a Facebook site brimming with activities, multimedia and discussions that fulfill their interests and needs. Just as we have been doing with ONE DROP’s original Facebook page, our new site will work to sensitize today’s youth to our mission, suggest actions they may take to further preserve water, and develop and promote dialogue among members. ONE DROP’s new Facebook page will feature contests, videos, games, news about the water challenges we face across the planet, uploads and a microsite highlighting information about the water crisis, and links to ONE DROP’s various youth projects and initiatives. Our first contest asks our new friends to suggest a name for this new, youth-oriented Facebook site.

Working with local partners in Honduras, Oxfam and ONE DROP are coordinating two projects to ensure that families continue to benefit from the infrastructure and support offered during the implementation phase of Project Honduras. ONE DROP’s project manager, Tania Vachon, returned to Honduras in March 2011 to meet with Project Honduras partners and explore the needs arising from the next step of the project: the consolidation phase.

Oxfam has received funding from the Canadian International Development Agency for a food security project in the same region as ONE DROP’s own Project Honduras. Both organizations have decided to combine resources to help families maintain their infrastructure while improving food security by, among other things, increasing the size of gardens, improving the quality of the soil and further protecting plants from predators.

3rd International Meeting on Water, Social Arts and Popular Education

About every 18 months, ONE DROP organizes an event called the International Meeting on Water Art and Social Education, addressing issues related to social arts and popular education. In November 2011, the city of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, will host ONE DROP’s third such meeting. “Multidisciplinary shows and water” will be the theme of the upcoming edition.

From June 9 to September 17, 2011, the urban landscape will be beautified by four artistic creations spreading the word about water-related issues. ONE DROP, in collaboration with the Quartier des spectacles, is setting up the Urban-EAU project, which aims to give the people of Montreal and its visitors the chance to define the relationship they have with water in the urban space and, in so doing, raise everyone’s awareness of the cause of water.

Urban-EAU will enable ONE DROP to explore the urban canvas that is the Quartier des spectacles—from the Latin Quarter to Place des Arts—through creative concepts by four Montreal artists: Caroline Hayeur, Christian Miron, Peter Gibson alias Roadsworth and Sylvain Robert.

To find out more, log on to our Urban-EAU page.