Well, hello everybody!
So, as y'all can see, we are having our next meeting on 10/21 in room E225 at 7:30PM. Be ready with your laptops, or paper and pen whichever you prefer, and help us out in the project meeting. Last week we had Bianka give us a review of her EWB conference experience and she has a lot of info! Hopefully, we will be able to post up her notes soon. Meanwhile, here are my notes from her notes, which means my notes are just bones, while her notes are full of meat and potatoes.
Fundraising Ideas
-When applying for grants, always write back a letter with updates of what EWB is doing. By the way, this should include a thank you!
-Rotary clubs are good organizations to start getting help.
-Writing letters to friends and family can also generate funding; for example, if our group had only 10 people in it and one person sends 4 letters out asking for 10 dollars, well you can do the math.
-Corporate lunches: try to find UH Alumni
-Example on getting attention: $2 a day challenge, trying to live off of $2 a day. If the media knows about this, they may come by.
-A partnership with the film club to promote EWB
-Money should go to training sessions and materials
For the Project Things to know:
-Health and Safety session: if person gets hurt, there may not be a hospital nearby.
-Remember about the safety of the community. Example: fence needed around wells so children don’t fall in.
-Learn how to do concrete mixing with just shovels. No machines needed. Remember that the technology we have here and take for granted may not be available in the community receiving help.
Guest speaker
Also, we had a guest speaker. His name is Mike Lutomski from Johnson Space Center chapter of EWB. He has 1 year of experience with EWB but a lot more by volunteering elsewhere. One of his most recent involvements was in a project in Nuevo Leon Mexico and Nicaragua.
Lessons learned:
He was involved with a community where his team installed a slow sand filter for getting clean water. The building where this was installed was always locked up because the guy with the key was never there for the community. What he learned, make sure the people who are leading the project in the community are reliable.
Projects never fail because engineering isn’t right or because electricity didn’t work, they fail because of politics, cultural problems, government inference, communities bickering, and lack of education.
He learned that when men are in charge, the projects get screwed up, but with the women involved, the projects get going, less problems. I wonder why…
There were state of the art latrines, where the toilet seat divides the liquid and solid wastes. The solid waste dries up so it’s not bad for the community. But because of the lack of education, the people will not use these cool latrines.
From the Slides:
Story: guy that was supposed to pick Mike’s group up was so drunk that he was not able to do so. No one on the trip was allowed to be driving just the person who was above 25, so this caused Mike to be stuck doing this. Always have a back up plan because things might not go as plan.
Know for sure if the community that is being helped doesn’t have any other groups that are already helping them out.
On the process of finding a new project, they encountered several problems such as roadblocks and no cell coverage. I can’t imagine being stuck with those problems. First of all, I do not go to the gym, therefore I have no upper body strength to be using a machete and cutting those humongous trees. Remember, there’s no electrical power in the middle of a jungle. Also, no cell phone!?
Lessons learned from developing another world
-boys will be boys..
they will play with their toys
ewb projects fail for many reasons, never because the engineer is not sound or equipment fails
-government
they are very formal, give them respect
There are many layers of government
Depending where the location, they can be very powerful
Stay neutral from elections, you'll avoid many problems
Respect the Govt, you raise their stature, this shows that they are getting help for their community. Also, they can and will help you or stop you
Watch out for corruption
Networking
-NGO'S
-keep attitude/ego in check…
Communication, communication, communication
-The “ewb model” is to have a long term, ~5 year relationship with a community
At the end of his presentation, he had the following quote:
“Minds are like parachutes, they function when open”
So this is an overview of what occurred in our last meeting. I did not feel the time fly, I enjoyed it overall.
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