Last EWB-LVP chapter meeting (for now)

This past Wednesday we had our last EWB-LVP chapter meeting before our summer hiatus. We had a fun BBQ and got a chance to learn about some water filtration systems! Our guest speaker could be a potential source of in-country contacts for our international project, so it was great to hear from him!

We will start our monthly chapter meetings back up in September, but we will be having work days at Third Street Alliance (3SA) in the meantime - information on that will be sent through our e-mail distribution list. There will also be updated posts on this blog for the progress made at 3SA...if you'd like to help out with our partnering project, send me an e mail!

Chat with National about int'l project

Erika, John and I just talked to Rosemary Powers at EWB National. We were mainly trying to get some guidance about how to evaluate the 'open' projects posted on the website. We learned that the applications get posted/pulled on a monthly basis and that applications that are not selected by chapters get reviewed after 8 months. In terms of getting more detail about the projects that are posted, we were instructed to contact national once we've selected a small number of projects in which we are interested. They will then give us the contact information for the groups submitting those projects. In most cases, the scope, funding, and cultural dynamics are not well defined in these applications, so it would be up to us to focus in on those issues.

We specifically asked about Kenya, since there are a number of projects listed there and we know that it is currently under a travel advisory. Rosemary said that EWB projects are ongoing in Kenya and that she would give us the contact info of some folks on the ground who could give us more details/background.

In terms of projects that we identify independently from national, they will be looking at the following (at a minimum) as they decide whether to grant the application:
- who will take ownership after the project is complete?
- will the entire community benefit?
- what is the specific scope?
- does it fit EWB mission and vision?
- what other NGOs are there?
- are we pushing this on the community or are they asking for it?
- does the chapter have the skills/fundraising to achieve success?

We talked about some other topics but I think these were the most important.

International Project Movement

FYI to everyone - John, Lauren and I have a conference call meeting with our EWB regional rep on Monday June 8th. We plan to discuss some international project choices and get some advice. This will definitely help us take a step in the right direction and we want to have EWB-USA involved ASAP!

Stay tuned for an update from that meeting!

Blog blah blah

We rolled out the this blog site in April as a means to informally share information within the chapter. The idea is for our members to post current news, provide timely information to others in the chapter, and, in particular to invite comments, questions, discussion, ideas. So how are we doing? ...Well, first the good news: 1) we haven't had any major bandwidth problems; 2) a few members have embraced the idea, particularly writing on our Third St Alliance project; 3) we have left room for improvement.

For me, this blog thing is a rather alien concept. I learned to type on a manual Underwood typewriter (no, I don't still use it), so the idea of stream-of-thought communication with the other 1,500,000,000 folks online is not entirely natural. Hey, wouldn't it be great if someone wrote up the Dummy's guide to using the EWB-LVP Blog site? -- Already done by the "Our Geeks are Better than their Geeks" Communications Committee!!! Go to ewb-lehighvalley.org, hit the "MEMBERS ONLY" button on the lower left menu -- this takes you to our share site, then navigate to Communications/Blog Docs (that's how I get there). Or, here are the direct links:
How to Blog
Blog Collaboration Norms
If you are not an EWB-LVP member, there is one simple, additional step -- JOIN!
-John