this is a day that feels like a week or like 10 years. i woke up this morning at 6 to find out my dog had died… and then right to work. im not sure i can remember all the passes but it went something like this. ceci and i made it to a meeting with 3 local organizations including the branch of the lions club and were given 15 5 gallon bottles of clean water and 200 cans of tuna, this was followed by about $1000 in medical donations some people suffering from kidney failure. from here we continued to organize of an emergency response initiative we are calling “help on the way”. we went on air at the local polytechnic institute in the next town over and publicized our efforts and put out a call to action that came back with a great response from the community at large.

this is going to be a coordination of public, private, organizational ,and governmental interests, really who ever wants to be involved. its about cutting the red tape and streamlining response efforts in emergency situations. As we are clearly in a full scale regional state of emergency we want to use the focus of our current relief efforts to help to unite those most needed to help in the moment as group for future actions.

the problem is that this emergency began over a week ago and the first significant food and water reserves are just making there way in and that is after we have done a lot of pushing. it seems clear that every involved wants to help but all the different protocols don’t sync and it makes efforts deathly slow. keeping in mind the Edens Rose Foundation is doing all it can to support the community evacuated to our center but the problem is a lot bigger than just one community and even in our community we are only able to effect a small group of people.

bringing in rice and oil and clean water for the center and some other necessary things in conjunction with our efforts to support our core group of 8 community representatives has now become a small part of our global efforts in the region. together with some very special people we were able to get 200 pounds of rice, 25 liters of cooking oil, about 10 heads of plantain, and 5000 liters of clean drinking water to our center in san ramone in just one move.

although we have 8 to 15 families at the center at all times we are using “Noah’s Ark community center as a distribution point for aid to satellite locations in the part of the community we have labeled the red zone. our red and orange emergency zones make up over 60 families currently present in the community. the need is very clear to open up the legal perception of some themes effecting this situation because of the natural layout it just doesn’t fit the standard formula.

at the end of the day we finished with a long meeting of all our group and some members of the state government. we are all looking at the same end goals and finding ways to get there in terms of immediate emergency aid and long term infrastructure development. i Believe the local mayor is going to be a big part of pulling this all together and i am at a loss for not having had a chance to meet with her.

in the morning we have a big presentation to educate people about the situation and organize the emergency response effort. were hoping to collect a lot of needed goods like food and medicine. we have 8 out of contact communities in our group, the worst hit in all the country and we are talking about 200 pounds of rice per day for each community. we have a long way to go and my hopes are that we can start to expand or capacity to help in ours and other areas by uniting together wit hall the interested parties. please pray

today was a day filled with great prayer and fellowship. Thanks to some new friends we were able to send visitors to new parts of our community with a hopeful message of peace. spending most of the day working out how to ration our water and food supplies reminded me to give a big thanks to agua naya. this local company came to our aid like a good neighbor and a true friend, this 8 buckets sent to us has been the only water donated or given to our situation.

many in the community seemed frustrated over things they had been promised but as you all know my philosophy is to free the mind from dependence and build ones own basic need infrastructure. i tried to share with the people how easy it is to get emotional but i believed they were mostly mad because they had been promised things that were not delivered. of course my point to them was that frustration will not help us to build and maintain that which we need to survive as individuals or a community.

i have been receiving a lot of negative feed back from the people about how the government is acting and a lot of feed back from the government about how the people are acting. im not sure how i am thought to be a representative of either one?

please all continue to pray for everyone dealing with this emergency both the people and the government! may focused work and unity pave the way to the kind of solutions i believe we are all looking for.

After massive rains we are in a complete state of emergency. I am working hand in hands with the disaster relief minister to coordinate efforts on San Ramone. Of 8 communities out of contact, San Ramone is the worst hit and one of the most organized to deal with the situation.

We are beginning an evacuation to our community refuge and basic needs center for families in the red zone of the worst hit.

I believe together with the government we will be able to provide food water and shelter for the community

I am working together with a medical support team to maintain the highest level of service but we are short on a few things… vitamins being at the top of the list and apart from dengue, anemia is at the top of the list. Of 300 people seen so far 70% are children.

After some serious planning and preparation with our group of community representatives for a meeting with the local government or plans have been offset due to heavy rains all night. The flood had now begun to over take even the elevated houses and emergency evacuation is now taking place in parts of the community.

OK everyone here is the basic plan and situation in terms of water, food and health. we have classified the community into 3 zones Red, Orange, and Yellow. Red and orange zones make up about 2 thirds of the community and have little or no access to water. they use rain water collection when they can but some times there is not sufficient water, in the event of a shortage they use the flood water. it is possible to treat the water to some extent with carbon and chlorine but as this will not work to make flood water drinkable we are hoping to develop a simple system or locate one in the country that can be purchased that will allow for the filtration of water from rain collection and directly from flood water in the event of an emergency. the systems we have seen go for around $50 but it is unclear if they will work for the flood water.

the best i can see at this point would be to supply this simple filter to each house in the red and orange zones and also create a central purified water source at our community center with activated carbon and reverse osmosis filtration. this will be around $5000 and all 3 parts of the community will have some access to this water to augment the home rain and flood water filtration.

next is the food… as it would not be possible to fee all 100 families on a long term basis we are working with our Eden’s Rose community representatives to create a food distribution program that will allow for the purchase of food at its base price. the idea is to find support to purchase a large amount of food one time and distribute it at the cost to replace the food. although this will not be free food it will increase the buying power and each dollar will buy more food. in this way a continued supple off food at the cheapest price will remain available after the initial investment. all the people use rice, beans, lentils, salt, cooking oil, and other basic staples so it is easy to buy in bulk.

the health concerns are a bit varied but we believe the most prevalent outside of basic water bacteria issues that can be addressed through filtration would be dengue. Dengue is present in about 60 percent of the people and the suffering can be intense. one of our representatives is just now recovering and told us he is on a one month wait for an appointment with the doctor about an hour away. the running joke in the community is the doctor diagnoses what you died from. our best efforts here can be directed toward prevention.

it may seem a bit far out but that what it takes some times. we are looking into assembling an essential oil distillation unit that will allow us to make a highly effective natural insect repellent for home and personal use. this will be absolutely safe and extremely effective. after the initial investment the herbs are available locally and for a few bucks in gas as the only secondary cost we can create a large amount of repellent.

at this time the only other way to combat the dengue is to spray ddt on everything. this is not the best option for what i hope are obvious reasons. to do this the government fumigates along the sides of roads and sprays the houses, even if this was a good idea it has no effect on the houses of the people in the red zone and for only about half the people in the orange zone that are living in houses as small islands.

our proposal is to address each of the food, water, and health concerns in this way. although other options are being discussed this is a first look at what we think is possible and sustainable.

NOW WE NEED YOUR HELP

we need resources and im hoping for volunteers to help with kick start campaigns, outreach to community and church groups, outreach to local media and organizations that may be able to offer help

for more information or to coordinate efforts please contact
Gregorysheldon321@gmail.com
skype: Gregorysheldon321

i will keep you all updated. thank you for your continued prayers in these trying times

[9:53:30 PM] *Armi*: cant imagine small kids in that kind of situation HORRIBLE!!!

[9:57:38 PM] Gregory Sheldon: its important to understand that this problem doesn’t usually get this bad

[9:57:47 PM] Gregory Sheldon: and it normally begins in march

[9:57:55 PM] Gregory Sheldon: that means the hard times are yet to come

[9:58:54 PM] *Armi*: It send shivers down my spine… how that can fixed permanently?

[9:59:12 PM] Gregory Sheldon: the truth

[9:59:23 PM] Gregory Sheldon: it would be better for these people to move

[9:59:38 PM] Gregory Sheldon: but if they could afford to live any place else they would not be here

[9:59:53 PM] Gregory Sheldon: thats is however a very good question

[10:00:11 PM] Gregory Sheldon: we talked about why the situation is the way it is in some other posts

[10:00:34 PM] Gregory Sheldon: this region used to be a forest and the people cut it all down about 50 years ago

[10:00:54 PM] *Armi*: I know we have places in the same condition in here but … some kind of prevention can be taken every year or something

[10:01:06 PM] Gregory Sheldon: we would need to completely regrow the entire forest and create new modern forms of water and land management

[10:01:27 PM] *Armi*: that will take at least 20 years or more?

[10:01:37 PM] Gregory Sheldon: yeah we would need to work on a large sacal to get the infrastructure in place

[10:01:57 PM] Gregory Sheldon: the problem is we are fighting the government on ever front

[10:02:57 PM] *Armi*: this is latin america, is not an easy thing to do that

[10:04:37 PM] Gregory Sheldon: this is a world of of spirits and souls

[10:04:49 PM] Gregory Sheldon: i don’t believe in geographic realities

[10:04:58 PM] Gregory Sheldon: i believe in god

[10:05:16 PM] Gregory Sheldon: we are fighting a battle between good and evil

[10:05:28 PM] Gregory Sheldon: and your right its not an easy thing to do that

[10:05:49 PM] Gregory Sheldon: but the alternative is unimaginable