$1,500 pays for installation of a rainwater catchment sysem for a health clinic or a school in Central America.  The typical target project is located in a rural area of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, or Panama.

The project utilizes simple technology to capture rainwater that comes off the roof of a community facility, and channel it into a vessel, to be stored for drinking and other uses.  Water runs off of the typical tin roof, and instead of falling to the ground, is diverted by a system of rain gutters.   The gutters may be covered to prevent the entry of leaves and other debris, and there may be an additional screen near the tank which is kept clean manually.  The water from the gutters is aggregated in a downspout and collected in a tank or other type of vessel.

Rainwater catchment may be considered as a subcategory of rainwater harvesting, which also incorporates additional means for capturing and storing water. 

During a typical wet season, the rainwater catchment system may serve to collect all of the water needed for the facility.  During the dry season, the facility often must look for other means to obtain needed water.

This project is a natural antecedent or follow-up to the typical School Water Tank Project, mentioned elsewhere on this site.  Water collected by the rainwater catchment system is stored in a sanitary tank for later use.

There are many improvements that can be added to this project to make it more useful.  If water is saved for a considerable amount of time, it must be filtered and otherwise purified if it is to be safe for drinking.  If more than one barrel is needed, a set of valves must be installed to switch the water flow to the empty barrel.

Care must be taken to ensure that the water collected can be used with a minimal amount of treatment.  A useful addition is a simple device that uses a float valve in the collection line to send the first rain out onto the ground.  Only then, when the roof surface is cleaned of pollutants and debris, is the water channeled into the drinking water supply.

It is important that rain gutters of the appopriate materials and quality are used, in order to maintain functionality for many years to come.

The installation of the gutters and piping is easily done by the community members.  Thus, donations go direclty toward materials, and not for labor or overhead. 

Once the efficacy of such a system is seen by the townspeople, the process may be replicated for other community buildings and for family homes.

Please use Twitpay, @twitpay, http://twitpay.me, powered by PayPal, by tweeting the following from your Twitter account:

@twitanthropy twitpay $10.00 for rainwater catchment