R ichard Lawrence has a Rotary make-up in Antigua, Guatemala, to thank for his winning photo in The Rotarian 's annual photo contest.

Lawrence's photo of a Guatemalan boy inspecting a cup of water won the People's Choice Award after readers cast their votes from a selection of six finalists chosen by the magazine editors from a pool of hundreds. The winning photo was announced on www.rotary.org in June and appears in the October issue of The Rotarian.

What follows is the story behind the photo.

Lawrence became acquainted with Antigua Rotarians while vacationing in Guatemala on more than one occasion. Back at his home club in Manchester, Connecticut, USA, he mentioned his new friends when the club was thinking about projects. Those connections eventually gave birth to an award-winning water project, which in turn resulted in the award-winning photo.

With the help of the Antigua Rotarians, the Manchester club and 10 other clubs in District 7890 (Connecticut and Massachusetts) partnered with a nonprofit to install a gravity-fed water system, gray-water filters, latrines, and new ovens in the community of Cojomachaj.

The project won an External Relations Best Cooperative Projects Award from RI's Public Relations Division for 2006-07.

Lawrence took many photos during the project and put them together for a PowerPoint presentation he used to recruit more clubs to do a similar project in a nearby community.

Of the winning photo, Lawrence says: "We were having lunch, and I happened to be sitting at a table. I glanced down and saw a little boy; he was looking in this cup. Sunlight was streaming through a protective tarp over the building. I put on my telephoto, snapped some photos, and it came out great."

Visiting Cojomachaj and seeing the appreciation of people in the community had a lasting impact on Lawrence.

"It transformed me as to what good Rotary does," he says.

Lawrence and his wife, Elin, will be heading back in October to visit that project through a Volunteer Service Grant from The Rotary Foundation.

View other photos from Cojomachaj above.