Isla Urbana’s Escuelas de Lluvia

One of the Top 20 Most Influential Projects of 2024

Isla Urbana’s Escuelas de Lluvia

One of the Top 20 Most Influential Projects of 2024

For supplying vulnerable communities with clean water

Region: Latin America  Sector: Infrastructure  UN SDGs: 6, Clean Water and Sanitation; 9, Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure; 11, Sustainable Cities and Communities 

“Six out of 10 schools don’t have adequate water,” says Ana Paula Mejorada, director of Escuelas de Lluvia, or “rainwater schools,” a project based in Mexico. The majority of these schools are K-5, putting three to seven year olds and the faculty and staff who work with them in uncomfortable hygiene and sanitation situations. The problems associated with a lack of running water in schools can be so acute, Mejorada says, that principals have to purchase potable water — a cost for which there is often no budget — or shorten the school day. “This has a tremendous impact on children’s education,” she adds.

Mejorada and her team lead the Escuelas de Lluvia project with the goal of mitigating the impacts of water shortages in schools by helping them develop an autonomous water supply through rainwater capture. “As a society, we’ve done rainwater capture for thousands of years,” Mejorada says. “It’s an easy system, and it’s simple to maintain, to scale, and to replicate.”

Unlike many projects that involve installing infrastructure, Escuelas de Lluvia doesn’t just come in, set up a system, and hope for a positive outcome. It involves kids in the maintenance of the system, monitoring infrastructure integrity and functioning. But before that, there’s installation. The project of setting up a rainwater capture system in a school is carried out over the course of the school year, and it involves much more than installing system components. “Our project is less an infrastructure project than it is an innovative educational project that focuses on stakeholder participation,” Mejorada notes, explaining that every member of a school community, including students’ families, become an essential part of the project, and they’re crucial to its long-term success. 

 

A plant with a large pot of water next to it

 

The first step of the project, however, is primarily focused on installation. The Escuelas de Lluvia team works with schools that are either identified by the government or that self-identify as having a need for an adequate water supply, to assess the schools’ physical layout and their existing infrastructure. The project team draws up a plan based on this assessment, determining what the schools’ capacities are for rainwater capture and storage in terms of total volume, and then installing the sloped roof add-ons (which use gravity to move rainwater into capture tubes), gutter-like tubing, and cisterns that comprise the primary components of the rainwater capture system.

Children are involved throughout the process, and teachers incorporate the rainwater capture system throughout the curriculum, using it for math and science lessons in particular. Escuelas de Lluvia staff hosts and facilitates workshops for students and their families, teaching participants about rainwater capture and about water as a resource. “We want to raise consciousness about water from infancy through the life cycle,” Mejorada says. To that end, Escuelas de Lluvia appoints students as “rainwater guardians,” empowering them to become project managers within the school setting, ensuring upkeep and monitoring of the rainwater capture system while promoting awareness and knowledge about water as a resource.

The educational aspects of the project continue throughout the entire school year. The impact, Mejorada says, is astonishing. Students who serve as rainwater guardians in primary school often go on to lead rainwater capture efforts in secondary school. One school, Mejorada says, was able to capture so much rainwater that they decided to share it with nearby homes that were experiencing a drought. “The changes aren't limited to the school, but spread to the whole community,” Mejorada says. “This really fills me with pride.” 

Testimonial Image Escuelas de Lluvia

Many of the kids who are rainwater guardians in the primary schools where we work, go on to lead rainwater capture programs in middle school and high school.

Ana Paula Mejorada
Director
Escuelas de Lluvia

Many of the kids who are rainwater guardians in the primary schools where we work, go on to lead rainwater capture programs in middle school and high school.

Ana Paula Mejorada
Director
Escuelas de Lluvia
Testimonial Image Escuelas de Lluvia

The project is carried out with the support of the federal and municipal government, as well as private and corporate partners. The government’s role is to identify schools that are most in need of Escuelas de Lluvia's’ intervention, while private and corporate partners help fund infrastructure and installation. The average cost of a rainwater capture unit is $150,000 pesos (about $8,000 USD).

The collaboration, led by Mejorada, achieved tremendous reach in 2023: esculeas de lluvia were installed in 200 schools across 18 Mexican states, providing water access to 60,000 students via rainwater capture. While the team does work in rural areas, particularly with indigenous communities, its main focus is on cities. “The growth of cities is causing huge strain on municipal water systems,” Mejorada says.

“We planted a seed,” she continues, “and the seed is growing. There are now thousands of students impacted by the program, and they impact their communities. Deep, durable changes are important to us as an organization. A participant-based methodology is how we achieve them.”