EWB Lehigh Valley Professionals: Blog

Conf Call with travel team today Nov. 20, 2011

2011-11-20T19:29:00.000-05:00

Hi All,

Just got off the phone with the travel team, we had a conference call.

All is going well.

Concerning the Solar Panels and Lighting:

The solar panels are installed and the lights are VERY bright, they may go to lower CFL's.

There has not been much sun, therefore they have not seen much charging yet.
There are two teachers (I could not catch their names) who are responsible for cleaning the panels and collecting data. They helped with the installation. Tomorrow, Tom and John will be providing a training and maintenance manual along with teaching the them (and Chris Schmid, who is a physics major) all about maintaining the solar panels.

The administration building will have lighting all night long for security purposes.

The team plans to run a test tomorrow by operating lights for 1-3 hours to bring down the charge and see how well the batteries charge back up.

There seems to be some questions about remote panels and convertor in standby mode. Jim Butt and Tom Power will speak in a separate conversation to discuss.

Concerning Water:

Bill talked with Mustapha Thomas and three well drillers in Freetown. He will also meet a well driller in Freetown on their return.
The mattru hospital now has a well (160 meters deep) and it is providing water at double the capacity of what we need for the school, this is encouraging. BBC were the drillers for this well and Bill did speak with these people also.

The Jong river has had mining contamination upstream, this confirms our concerns not to use this source as a primary potable water source, since regulation and controls are not in place to protect the quality of this source. If we do not have enough water from other options (Sowa creek-gravity feed, or Deep well) then we could use the Jong for NON-Potable if needed.

Bill has looked at the Sowa Creek, so far he has not located a higher elevation than the school, so gravity feed is still inconclusive.

Diana asked Bill to get the elevation of the Jong River, at the Falls (Chris goes there often, approx 1 -1 1/2 miles upstream) incase we need this water option for non-potable use.

Diana asked Bill to get sample of the Well water at the hospital since it is close to the school and could be similar to what we would find at CSS.

Bill said there is a slow sand filter at CSS, he will check it out as a possible option for water disinfection at Centennial.

Concerning Sanitation:

Boys and Girls ARE using the urinals in the bath houses. The girls are using the handwash stations also. The boys are not.
Perhaps the boys need training, as this was not done during the last visit. Albert did take the boy students, class by class, to the boys bathhouse when they finished the renovation.

The tiles in the urinals are not broken-yahoo.
The urinals could be cleaner, the students are cleaning tomorrow.
The Data Journals are in and there has been NO residual water in the soak pits and cesspits, which is a good sign that they are draining properly.

Concerning Cultural and Other:

The computer that was given to the board on the last trip is not working. Tom has it torn apart and is trying to fix it. The laptop keyboard does not work, but they have a USB plug in keyboard and that works. If they cannot fix, Mr. Kallon will get it fixed with a local person who fixes computers.

Ahmed picked up 5 sewing machines in Bo along with getting needed pipe. He is an amazing help!
Sewing machines will be presented to the school/board for the home economics classes on Wed. at the board meeting.

Teacher and board member, Olive Tucker, made curtains with the fabric provided to the school for the girls bathhouse, looks very nice and provides the necessary privacy.

Mike wants inside dimensions and picture records on some of the buildings. (V, P-Chem and Physics building, S-Woodshop, X-Home Economics) the team will take photos and Diana will call with priorities tomorrow morning.

There is a new refurbished building on-site, Library built by district council. Building L1.

Tuesday Night the team is having dinner with all the principles: Mr. Kallon, Mr. Barrie, and Mr. Gobio

CIIB Board Meeting will be on WED.
Agenda:

Tour Facilities and Latrines
Convene Board meeting,
Report from Team on status of water, sanitation, Electricity.
Ask for priorities for various project focus from board
Review Board Function and responsibility - Handout from Lori
Request for a report from the Board in financials and otherwise.

Team sounds good, even got to watch a soccer game yesterday!

Best Regards,
Jamee

Travel team update Nov. 15, 2011

2011-11-15T21:52:00.002-05:00

Hi All,

Heard from the travel team again today, I spoke with Tom, John and Lori they all sounded very upbeat and happy.

The three of them are in Mattru now. They have met Mr. Barrie and Mr. Kallon and Albert. Mr. Kallon has been very helpful and really taking charge. They are working to keep up the pace as things are moving faster than they expected, such as the holes have already been dug.

Bill and Joe are doing very well also and have gotten very good information on Water during their visit it Freetown. Those two are still in Freetown, they are staying an extra day because they are going to a major Rotary meeting that was today. The travel team met some other rotary members while on the plane.

Tom, Lori and John also met Francis Mustapha and went to his school.
Lori is loving the CSS school, she said the children all have uniforms and have been very well behaved.
John needed to know the inner diameter of 2 inch schedule 40 pipe, I gave that information to him.

That is all for now.
Best Regards,
Jamee Pemberton

Google Images

2011-11-15T21:52:00.000-05:00

Google Images

The Travel team is in Sierra Leone and well!

2011-11-13T20:36:00.000-05:00

Hi All,

I just got off the phone with Bill MacNair, the whole travel team has made it safe and sound to Sierra Leone and they are all well!

The trip was pleasantly uneventful and the boat ride was good. We only spoke briefly. They were at Jay's with Joe, having cokes and relaxing.

They called me at 7:30PM our time, it was 12:30 AM (just after midnight) their time.

I will keep you all posted.

Best Regards,
Jamee Pemberton

EWB Travel team heads for Sierra Leone

2011-11-12T10:41:00.003-05:00

The EWB-LVP travel team of John Cirucci, Lori Cirucci, Tom Power and Bill MacNair head for Sierra Leone today, Nov. 12, 2011. They will all be meeting Joe Abu who will travel with them throughout the duration of the trip.

I will keep all posted on status through this blog as I hear from them.

Safe Travels and success to the team.
Jamee

Energy Fest 2011

2011-09-18T21:15:00.003-04:00

Today at the Pennsylvania Renewable and Sustainable Living Festival 2011, presenters: Carl Zvanut and John Cirucci talked about Centennial Secondary School in Mattru Jong, Sierra Leone. Our chapter is helping to rebuild the school with sustainable water, sanitation and electricity. There were about a dozen people that listened to the presentation. If you haven't been to the festival yet, check it out next year. Great food, great information on renewable energy, and lots of things to buy!

Dr. Moon Speaking @ Broughal!

2011-05-18T20:37:00.004-04:00

Bruce will be giving a presentation drawn from his experiences about cultural issues he's faced, followed by an informal question and answer session.
Please join us Thursday, May 19th at 6 pm in the Auditorium at Broughal Middle School.114 West Morton St. Bethlehem, PA.

Silent Auction- A Success!

2011-05-03T11:55:00.001-04:00

Thank you to everyone who attended our first annual silent auction! We had a great time!

2011-04-11T18:48:00.001-04:00

Come to our Silent Auction- April 29th!

Classroom Lighting for Centennial Secondary School

2011-04-11T08:38:00.006-04:00

Our next implementation trip is now planned for November 2011. We will install a solar photovoltaic power system to provide evening lighting in 3 classrooms. Currently, working on completing design changes resulting from new information provided by the February travel team. In addition, further work on the water project will be performed in November. We are not fully funded for this trip yet, so our efforts with Rotary and the Melt Fundraising Event are critical.

Travel Team

2011-02-24T18:41:00.001-05:00

The travel team has returned safe and sound! Come to our March meeting to hear all about the travel team's exciting adventure!

Conference call- Wednesday the 16th

2011-02-19T12:02:00.002-05:00

The travel team is doing well. The conference call lasted about 30 minutes but was very productive. We learned that the sanitation team is ahead of schedule. Bill gave an update on cesspools and the percolation tests and the potential water sources that we are considering. Mike, Jamee, and Joan (she did not talk due to laryngitis problems) gave their progress report on the tiling, concrete, and so on for the bathhouses. They are very happy with way the project is going so far.
In Diana's update, she told us that one of the teachers worked part-time on a radio show. The travel team, along with Joe, and the principal of the school, had a chance to tell what the project meant to them. This radio show was aired and a few of the local parents came to the school to check out the project. Lastly, Diana shared the information that was collected for the electrical team (solar panels and potential installation changes).

Team in Mattru Jong!

2011-02-14T18:56:00.002-05:00

Yeah! The team is officially in Mattru Jong. They spent the entire day working today at the school. They said they have accomplished a lot in just one day! I talked to Diana tonight and she said everyone is happy and healthy. Stay tuned for more updates!

Safe Arrival!

2011-02-11T20:57:00.002-05:00

Yeah! All team members have successfully arrived in Freetown. The team (Bill, Diana, Jamee, Mike and Joan) will be traveling to Mattru Jong tomorrow morning. Stay tuned for more news. A conference call is scheduled for this Wednesday.

Travel Team in the Air!

2011-02-08T21:46:00.002-05:00

Two of our current travel team members are currently in the air to London. They will arrive early tomorrow morning. Their flight to Freetown will arrive tomorrow night early evening. The rest of the travel team will be leaving on Thursday, and arriving in Freetown on Friday night. Check back for more updates on our travel team!

Thank you note

2010-08-04T06:33:00.001-04:00

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

2010-08-01T21:08:00.003-04:00

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!

2010-05-13T21:34:00.003-04:00

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

2010-05-11T20:05:00.004-04:00

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

2010-04-25T18:50:00.000-04:00

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

Science Cafe: Arsenic in Drinking Water

2010-04-13T12:21:00.000-04:00

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

2010-04-07T17:30:00.005-04:00

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

2010-04-05T12:19:00.001-04:00

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.....

2010-03-17T15:12:00.002-04:00

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!!

2010-03-15T06:20:00.001-04:00

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

2010-01-26T20:00:00.001-05:00

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

2010-01-22T10:21:00.001-05:00

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.

Sierra Leone trip

2009-11-13T12:25:00.000-05:00

Our trip dates are official. We will be in Sierra Leone beginning on January 22nd. The in-country itinerary is also well underway.

Sierra Leone Assessment trip

2009-11-11T18:08:00.002-05:00

The project coordination teams are working hard on the details of our first trip to Sierra Leone. Right now, we are putting effort into making sure that when our team hits the ground, they can do a great job assessing the needs of the community and determining what the details of our project will be.

3SA HVAC Mapping Workdays

2009-10-05T09:42:00.005-04:00

To Date we have completed 3 HVAC Mapping workdays at Third Street Alliance, we have mapped most of the boiler room, the Pool room (and roof) all the locker rooms and SACC room. This means the basement area is almost complete. Thanks to all the helpers!

2009-10-04T22:19:00.006-04:00

First meeting of the EWB technical team for Centennial Secondary School in Sierra Leone. Focused on planning for an Assessment trip in Jan/Feb 2010. Brainstorming, questions list, objectives, prework, initial travel team discussion. The full scope of this program is enormous -- we have a great deal to do in the coming years. In 2010 we will make the first steps toward bringing clean water to the CSS school community.

10,000 feet

2009-09-17T20:59:00.003-04:00

If you’d like to visit the Centennial Secondary School virtually via Google Earth or Map, use coordinates latitude 7.6132, longitude -12.1829. This will land you on the roof of the Chapel in the center of the school campus. The Jong River is immediately to the west of the CSS campus, and the town center of Mattru Jong is about 1 km to the south.

That is the 10,000 ft view. To learn much more about Centennial Secondary School at ground level, be sure to come to our chapter meeting on Tuesday, Sep 22, 6PM at Lutron to meet the Reverend Joseph Abu, an alumnus of the Centennial Secondary School and the US President of the Centennial Old Student Association (CeOSA).

Ready to Map

2009-09-11T06:40:00.003-04:00

A group of us got together last night to prepare for our first mapping day at Third St. Alliance. We have a plan of action, a list of supplies, and a better idea of who we'll need. As soon as we can work out a date with the Ricks, we will head over and start tracing their systems.

International project approved!!

2009-08-27T23:16:00.002-04:00

Got word from national this morning...they approved our Sierra Leone program application! This is really fabulous news. More info will be coming soon, but in the meantime please reply to the email you should have received about your technical skills and travel availability. Thanks!

International Project Selection Discussion - 8/19

2009-08-17T23:09:00.003-04:00

Very exciting! We finally have some international projects to discuss with the chapter. If you are a current member, you should have received an email with the logistics. Please come put in your two cents. See you wednesday!

Third Street Alliance-Scanning of all plans Complete!

2009-07-13T08:10:00.004-04:00

A BIG THANK YOU goes out to Sean Dooley, Ryan Walters, Charlie Myers and Rick Thomas for all their assistance in digitizing all of 3SA’s available building, HVAC and Electrical plans on a Saturday morning.

These digital files will be a great resource both for EWB-LVP’s 3SA project team, as well as to 3SA as permanent digital archive of their existing plans. We successfully completed scanning all 77 plans.

Special thanks to Sean for bagels and donuts and also to his company, Keystone Consulting Engineers, Inc. who graciously allowed us to use its facilities and scanning equipment. Another special thanks to Charlie Myers who has offered to plot paper plan sets using resources at his company, Rettew Associates, Inc.

I will make extra copies of the CD’s containing the digitized plans as well as 11x17 copies of the plans as needed. 3SA adn EWB-LVP will each end up with one electronic set and a full hard copy set of all plans.

Note: Several have offered to volunteer for mapping work dates-THANK YOU!. As soon as I get a chance to review the plans and work with the Technical Assessment team, we will make plans for Mapping out the systems and will I contact you then! Coming Soon!

Int'l project selection process moving forward

2009-07-09T21:36:00.002-04:00

The project selection team is making good headway, having decided to focus on open projects as posted on the EWB-national site. We are currently actively considering four projects, one in each of the following countries: Kenya, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Ghana. We will be contacting the NGOs or sponsoring organizations over the next two weeks to gather additional information about those projects.

A book to read...

2009-07-09T21:31:00.002-04:00

I'd just like to recommend "Three Cups of Tea" by Mortenson and Relin for those interested in a little extra reading. In addition to being an intriguing story about the creation of schools for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan, it relates many of the challenges involved with international development projects.

2009-07-08T13:58:00.005-04:00

Sean, Herb, Lauren and Sara Page met today at lunch to discuss current status of the 3SA project and the international project search. The 3SA project is moving along with current focus on the scanning of the HVAC drawings. Sara Page expects that there will be multiple projects started in the next few months. The international search team has narrowed their focus to about four projects on the EWB site, all in Africa. The are meeting biweekly to evaluate and further narrow the options. We may call a chapter meeting before the end of the summer, depending on progress of the search team.

Herb

Last EWB-LVP chapter meeting (for now)

2009-06-19T10:53:00.004-04:00

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

2009-06-08T19:20:00.002-04:00

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

2009-06-05T16:06:00.002-04:00

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

2009-06-03T23:10:00.007-04:00

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

Tech Assessment Team meeting

2009-05-14T20:07:00.002-04:00

Tonight the Technical Assessment Team met to discuss where we think we can make the most impact at Third St. Alliance. We have a list of projects that we are ready to start with. As soon as we run them by the Ricks and Judy to figure out where to start we should have our first workday.

Expanding our options

2009-04-29T20:34:00.004-04:00

After some discussion with EWB National, we decided to pursue the Third St. Alliance program as a partnership project. While this limits in what capacity we can work with them, this allows us to expand the scope of the types of projects we can work with them on. We are no longer limited to "green needs" but can help them address any and all of their needs.

We went through the list from the brainstorm session we had with the Third St. Alliance staff and identified many ways in which we will be able to contribute to their mission.

Next, the technical assessment team will examine the list and provide their input.

PA Energy Efficiency

2009-04-28T21:59:00.004-04:00

Check out this website for an initiative in PA to make homes more energy efficient. http://www.pahomeenergy.com/homePerformance/index.html . If you go to the page of service providers and read through the pdf download (bottom of page) there is at least one firm in Coopersburg that is listed and perhaps others in the area. Might be worth trying to recruit these folks...

Meeting with Third St. Staff

2009-04-21T22:23:00.002-04:00

Last Wednesday, several representatives from the Cultural Assessment, Technical Assessment, and National Liaison teams met with the Third St. Alliance staff (financial, program directors, maintenance, etc). We had a chance to establish guidelines for our relationship, get many of our questions answered, and answer some questions that they had for us. We got a good feel for what projects they're interested in.

2009-04-17T12:16:00.000-04:00

The Communications Committee met today and decided on a list of Labeling Guidelines to follow when posting on this blog. Below is the list of labels to use. Additional labels can be created as needed.

o Communication committee – Communications
o Fundraising committee – Fundraising
o Membership Committee – Membership
o Project Subcommittee – Project
o Community Outreach – Outreach
o University Relations – University
o 3rd Street Alliance Project – 3SA
o 3rd Street Alliance Project, National Liaison Team – 3SA Liaison
o 3rd Street Alliance Project, Cultural Team – 3SA Cultural
o 3rd Street Alliance Project, Technical Team – 3SA Technical

National Liaison Team Meeting

2009-03-10T13:19:00.000-04:00

Sara Page hosted Erika and me at her home last night at we started to edit the application to EWB national for the 3rd Street Alliance Program to be submitted to EWB national. We took away some questions for our regional EWB representative and questions for the 3rd Street Alliance. The draft document is posted on the share site.

http://sites.google.com/a/ewb-lehighvalleyteam.org/portal/Home/project-coordination-1/local-project/501-NewProgramApplicationThirdStAlliance.doc?attredirects=0