Thank you note

EWB Partners,

On behalf of CeOSA, I hereby express our gratitude for gracing the 2010 CeOSA convention, and for your great desire to partner with us in the rebuilding Centennial Secondary School. We are at loss for words that can express our appreciation. Please take this message of our gratitude, not only to those that were with us at the convention, but also to the rest of the Lehigh Valley Chapter of EWB.

As promised, those who were present at convention will take the message of our partnership with you to the rest of the CeOSA groups internationally. We have lots of Centennial men and women that will join us in partnering with you. You will not be disappointed.

Gratefully,

Joseph C. Abu

President, CeOSA North America

CeOSA Reunion

This past weekend, several members of our chapter went to the CeOSA Reunion held in College Park, Maryland. We had a wonderful time! Our goal was to update CeOSA on our progress and also on their potential responsibilities as our partner in the Centennial Secondary School Project. We also officially kicked off our campaign. We asked that if each member (and we think that CeOSA in the United States, as well as the London branch may number around 300) contribute $100 to our CSS Project, we will have the necessary funds for the first year to do what we need to do in terms of water, electricity and sanitation. We handed out fundraising kits to everyone. These fundraising kits consisted of our brochure, our campaign poster, a one-page summary of our project, and additional letters by Joe and Maria explaining the campaign. Please contact Maria at maria@1lovefoundation.org if you would like one of these kits. (for the electronic version- contact Lori at bacteria61@yahoo.com)

Our group was given 1 hour to present to about 20 representatives of CeOSA on Saturday. We ended up taking about 4 hours with discussions! We were very pleased with the outcome. Everyone listened carefully to our presentation. We ended our presentation with talks of an "advisory board". This was taken very seriously by CeOSA. They will be consulting with their other counterparts in London and Sierra Leone and get back to us on potential candidates for the board.

For lunch, Doris and Phillip Bundu, and their daughter, were in charge of preparing traditional Sierra Leonean food. What a treat! The cassava leaves were a bit spicy but everything was excellent!! We also found out that they cut their meat leaving in the bones which they add to their dish. This allows the marrow in the bones to add additional flavor to the dish.


Saturday night we attended a banquet that started at 9:00 (when we had dinner) and ended at 1:00 a.m. It was quite a night!

Sunday morning, Joe held his service in our meeting room. We were fortunate to meet two elderly ladies that were missionaries in Sierra Leone. One of the ladies taught at Centennial, then went to Bumpe High School. Her total time teaching was 35 years!! The other lady taught at the primary school in Mattru.

All in all, it was a wonderful weekend. We met many warm, compassionate Sierra Leoneans who really care about Centennial Secondary School. Again, we thank Joe Abu for coordinating and bringing us all together for this wonderful meeting.

On a side note, if any of our STRIVE students are reading this post, I will be collecting letters to take to Sierra Leone on our next trip to pass out to students. If you are interested in this potential pen pal relationship, get in touch. (Lori at bacteria61@yahoo.com).

Come Join Us!

Where: Allentown Brew Works
When: May 27th, 2010
What time? 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Cost: $20.00
Light snacks and 1 drink voucher will be provided.
Come join us for a great time and some interesting door prizes!

STRIVE

On May 6, our Outreach Committee presented an engineering challenge to a group of WONDERFUL students from Allen High School and Whitehall High School. The students are part of an organization called STRIVE. The mission of STRIVE is to transform lives by motivating and inspiring youth to become productive leaders and culturally conscious stewards of the global community.
As part of our program, the students brainstormed a solution to a water problem very similar to our very own Sierra Leone Centennial School Project. They did an awesome job! They were thorough and passionate about their responses. Our STRIVE Inc. students would like to follow our progress in Sierra Leone, so stay tuned for more updates on this blog. And THANK YOU STRIVE, Inc. students for allowing us to have fun while still teaching cultural awareness!

Cocorioko- Sierra Leone's Biggest and Most Widely Read Newspaper

Check out this article found in Cocorioko- Sierra Leone's Newspaper!

Science Cafe: Arsenic in Drinking Water

The first Science Café on
chocolate was postponed until
June (the exact date will be
determined later) due to weather,
but we are set for the next one
on April 22 at 7pm. Professor
Arup SenGupta from Lehigh
will talk about his work in
removing arsenic from drinking water. The title of his
presentation is “Sustainable Mitigation of Global
Arsenic Crisis: Recent Advances and Role of
Chemistry.” Professor SenGupta has received many
awards for his work, including the 2007 Grainger
Silver Prize Award from the National Academy of
Engineering (NAE) for providing sustainable
engineering solutions for arsenic-contaminated
drinking water of the Indian subcontinent. The
Science Café will held at Barnes and Noble in the
Southmont Center off of Route 33.

PRIDE OF LIONS FILM SCREENING

Where: Lehigh University, Packard Auditorium, Room 101
When: April 30th
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.

A BROTHER - SISTER TEAM GIVE VOICE TO THE FORGOTTEN THROUGH A NEW DOCUMENTARY FILM ABOUT SIERRA LEONE
PRIDE OF LIONS – SCREENING at LEHIGH UNIVERSITY APRIL 30th

"Magnificent, inspiring, and a brilliantly woven narrative." — Bob Anderson, CBS "60-Minutes”

"I believe the film Pride of Lions can help heal my people”
— Sorious Samura, Emmy Award-Winning journalist and filmmaker, Cry Freetown

The Lehigh Valley Professional Chapter of Engineers without Borders-USA is hosting a special screening of the award-winning documentary film, Pride of Lions (prideoflionsfilm.com) on April 30th at 6:00 p.m. at Lehigh University in Packard Auditorium, Room 101. The film presents Sierra Leone in a new light – the story of what it means for a country and its people who have been brutalized by an 11-year civil war, to move beyond their scars. Sierra Leone Dr. Bailor Barrie, featured in the film, will be the guest speaker prior to the film and after for the Q & A.

Brother and sister team, John and Louise Woehrle from Minneapolis, never intended to make a documentary film together until John had a life-changing experience after traveling to Sierra Leone in 2004. He was an acting teacher and screenwriter living in Los Angeles, when he was asked by one of his acting students to accompany her to Sierra Leone to meet her biological father for the first time. John had no idea how this trip would alter his life. After meeting the capable, intelligent, and gracious people from the village of Bumpe in Sierra Leone and witnessing firsthand the unthinkable suffering caused by war, he made a commitment to help.

Engineers Without Borders-USA is a humanitarian organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for people primarily in the developing world. EWB volunteers are engineers and other professionals who partner with communities to help meet their essential needs: clean water and sanitation, reliable energy, shelter, transportation, and education. EWB-USA has over 12,000 members in hundreds of professional and student chapters. They currently run over 350 active projects in more than 45 countries.

The EWB-Lehigh Valley Professionals Chapter (ewb-lehighvalley.org) is sponsoring a humanitarian project in partnership with the Centennial Secondary School (CSS) located in the village of Mattru Jong, Sierra Leone. The school was ransacked by rebels during the war, and much of its infrastructure, including its water supply, sanitation facilities, and several building structures are now incapable of meeting even the most basic needs. "Our partnership with CSS and the neighboring community of Mattru Jong, " explains member Sean Dooley, "will continue for at least five years as the needs are prioritized and the necessary improvements can be made in conjunction with the local authorities." The objective is to leave the school with sustainable solutions that can be carried on without continued influx of external aid.

SAVE THE DATE-April 30, 2010

A brother - sister team give voice to the forgotten through a new documentary film about Sierra Leone:
PRIDE OF LIONS – SCREENS at LEHIGH UNIVERSITY- APRIL 30th. Stay tuned, more details to follow.....

We had a wonderful post-assessment trip meeting last night. The team spoke in great detail about the days spent in Sierra Leone. An interesting addition to the talk was the presentation of a hand-made helicopter made by a 12 year old Centennial School student. The engineering skills that went into this small scale replica were amazing!

The original project request was for our EWB chapter to partner with CSS to restore infrastructure that had started to fail prior to the war and was further damaged during the war. This includes the water and sanitation systems, electrical systems and the structural integrity of the buildings. All of this is geared toward the goal of restoring the school to the excellent academic standards that it had previously met; the team did not find problems on the assessment trip that would clearly prevent the program from moving forward in this direction.

Our next meeting will be this Thursday if you are interested in becoming part of our project team committee. Please contact Diana Dunn for more information.(dunnds@airproducts.com).

Assessment Trip News!!

The purpose of the recently completed assessment trip was to obtain firsthand information that would allow the chapter to begin a successful program at the Centennial Secondary School. Extensive data was collected regarding current water, sanitation, and power facilities, along with many observations about cultural expectations, practices, and preferences.
The travel team of four EWB-LVP members and one CeOSA liaison flew into Lungi International Airport, arriving late evening on January 22nd. They were picked up by the second CeOSA liaison with a rental vehicle. All six travelers stayed at a hotel in Lungi that night. On the 23rd, the team drove from Lungi, through Port Loko, to Bo, then continued on to Mattru, arriving in the early evening. The team stayed at a guesthouse in Mattru from January 23rd through January 30th. During this week, the team spent long days at CSS conducting meetings and interviews with school administration, staff and students. They also carried out extensive water testing, a survey of the buildings and structures, and an elevation survey of water sources. The team visited and interviewed numerous members of the local community as well, including community leaders, health professionals, and NGO workers. On January 30th , the team returned to Bo, where they investigated potential sources of building materials, met with a local Rotary chapter, and met with a Bo subset of CeOSA. On January 31st, the team continued on to the capital city of Freetown, where they stayed until departure on February 2nd. In Freetown, the team looked for additional construction materials sources, identified other resources needed for future trips, and met with additional CeOSA members, an EWB-Sierra Leone leader, and a United Nations program representative. On the day of departure, they traveled from Freetown to the Lungi airport via a new water taxi service.
Come to our meeting at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 424 Center Street, Bethlehem, PA on March 16th, 2010 to find out more about our trip!

Conference call with Travel team in SL today

Hi all,

Today, 5 PM our time, we had a conference call with the travel team. All is well. The team seemed happy and busy.

Here is a quick summary of some of the things we discussed:

They are meeting lots of people, they did not get to meet with the Paramount Chief but with met another person in his place.

Monday the team met with the whole staff of the school and met several of the students, approx 750 people?
When meeting with the staff they did confirm Water, Sanitation, Power were their priorities. They also want supplies, such as, sewing machines for home economics classes and sewing class, lab supplies for science education, etc.

The team said Mattru was much more densely populated than they imagined. Not many roads. Their guest house accommodations are very good, they have showers and toilets.

They are meeting with many individuals and have received lots of input from them. The team stands out in the community so everybody greets them and talks to them. They feel very safe in the community and are starting to feel like they recognize and know people there. Everyone has been very helpful. The travel team has gotten lots of useful information and stated that the community has a general awareness of health needs.

Today they did a lot of water testing of several water sources: the Sella creek, Jong River, Well on site at Centennial Secondary school (CSS), another well in the town, and the guest house water. Water appears to be cleaner than expected. Some sources of water were low in pH so they are trying to assess why and will take further test tomorrow. Coloform test are inconclusive yet because it takes more than 24 hours for results, tomorrow they have results. The team was able to look inside the well at CSS. Wells in this area are all hand dug.

They are meeting the Well driller guy tomorrow, they will try to get a quote for drilling wells for CSS. They will try to find out typical depth of wells in this area. The Sella creek had a high turbidity.

Phone reception is marginal, lots of time lag between talking, which causes overtalking. Text messaging is hit and miss, they seem to be able to send better than receive text messages. We have not had too much of a problem reaching them by phone though.

We will try to have another conference call at 5 PM our time on Thursday. I will keep you all posted.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Best Regards,

Jamee Pemberton
267-377-9542

Sierra Leone Trip

Our first travel team is on their way to Sierra Leone right now. We will be providing updates from the team as they contact us.