Natalie Hymer, ambassador for WaterStep, was awarded the President’s Award from Georgetown College for academic achievement, leadership, service, and potential as a scholar and Christian leader.
This is Hymer’s fourth summer working at WaterStep. She has worked as an intern, managed mission sites, and is currently planning a trip to Daréin, Panama for WaterStep with Tori Shover, who also went to Georgetown College.
According to Hymer, she received the award based on her leadership skills, which were developed at WaterStep. “I’ve had lots of leadership positions at school, but WaterStep was the greatest challenge to my leadership,” she said.
Working on mission sites, she had to convey to people why their jobs mattered. “I had to relay to youth that pulling weeds, or hammering nails would help them change the world,” she said.
Hymer said, “A lot of my character has been built here.” Now, in return for the impact WaterStep has made on her, she is investing in it by planning and taking a trip to Panama.
“The network in Panama is ripe for us to create a strong group of leaders,” Hymer said. “We will be installing 5-10 generators, but that is not our main mission. We want to train and empower interested folks to be able to take over the job of water purification.”
One of WaterStep’s main missions is to train trainers, and that is just what Hymer is looking to do in Panama.
Hymer and her team will be working with the Foundation for the Children of Daréin. They currently have 144 community centers, and 104 of those have bad water.
“We want to train a Panama team to complete the task of installing systems in these community centers, and empower them to raise funds to buy their own chlorine generators,” she said.
Brian Barnes has been working in Panama to establish relationships, and bring clean water to the communities. He has helped install three systems already, and helped Hymer connect with the Quality Learning University, who has offered them space to work from.
“There are a lot of people investing in this, and we’re ready,” Hymer said.
Hymer and Shover plan to leave the second week of June and stay until the first week of August.
To learn more about how you can get involved with WaterStep, check out our Get Involved page.
