Ray Davis and the Silver City Rotary Club wanted to make a difference in the water situation in the Alamo Navajo Chapter, a very remote chapter of the Navajo Nation, 35 miles north of Magdalena, where only half of the 2,200 people who live there have water in their homes.

“Not having water is a real health and welfare issue,” Ray says. “Not having adequate water impacts the health and even education of children. If they can’t bathe or wash their hair, they are not going to go to school and they miss out on that education. It just compounds the problem already there.”

Within the community, there is one paved road to the community itself and the rest of the roads are dirt. Many families travel to the chapter house to get water – as much as 15 miles one way. If they want to do laundry, they have to drive into Socorro which is 80 miles away.

When Ray realized the problem, he approached his Rotary Club, where he served as president in 2006 and 2007 and now serves as the District 5520 Water Chairman, and the 45-member club decided to help.

“We wanted to show them that people outside of the chapter care for them,” Ray says. “We started to think about how we could help these people help themselves. That became one of our goals.”

Unfortunately, Ray and his club ran into some problems. There is a USDA grant available to supply water to all the homes in the area, but there needs to be a sustainable water management system in place for a year before they can apply for the grant. To do that, the community needs the tools and equipment to maintain and repair their waste water treatment plant and water management system. The Silver City Rotary Club is working to raise the funds to repair the system, needing $52,000 to complete repairs and maintain the existing water system.

While raising the money, Ray and his club found additional support they were not expecting.

“We started receiving donations of all kinds from people who couldn’t help with the water treatment plant but could donate in other ways,” he said.

The club came across a nurse that secured more than 1.5 million dollars worth of medical equipment and supplies, impacting over a million people. To date, over 1 million people in 47 communities in the state of Chihuahua and the Juarez area are benefiting from equipment and supplies donated from New Mexico and Southern Colorado.

“People began hearing what we were doing and the donations just kept coming in,” Ray says about the truckloads of supplies that have been sent primarily to Juarez and Chihuahua. “These are all materials that could have ended up in the landfill. We are keeping them out of the landfill and putting them to good use.”

An ambulance and fire truck were also donated to the Silver City Rotary Club and is now in Guatemala serving a community.

“What started as the Alamo Navajo Water Project has resulted in many great things,” Ray says. “We will keep that focus but continue working on any other needs we can meet.”