Who wants to help??!!

Hello all,

I have been getting a lot of requests for information from everyone that was unable to make it to the meeting last Tuesday. I know you all are anxious to get started on this new information that we have gathered from our trip, so I thought I would give you all an opportunity to get started. If you are interested in any of the following projects and helping to research possible materials and costs associated with the implementation of them, please LEAVE A COMMENT IN THIS POST. That way, I can keep all of these requests in the same area.

So the projects we need to research, besides the irrigation and pumping project, are:
1. Cable stay/suspension pedestrian bridges
2. Rainwater catchments for houses, rainwater storage as an add to the irrigation project, and other rainwater conservation efforts
3. Water filtering for potable water - either at the source where there is a springbox and storage container, or at each individual casa
4. Organic farming techniques, terracing, other efficient farming practices including water efficiency, storage of crops, etc.
5. Coffee processing stations including depulping and sweetwater processing.

These are just ideas that we have gotten from Agros and the community of what might be some appropriate projects for El Eden. If you are interested in researching one of these projects, please let me know in the comments, and I will make sure that we get you what information we have on the subject.

Also, I need to know which date works best for people to come to the next meeting. The two that I have chosen are Thursday June 18th or Wednesday June 24th. I plan to have the post assessment report up on the EWB-PSPP website in the next week or so. I will send out an email when I post it so that you can all download it and read it before the next meeting. It is very important that you read the report before the meeting so that we don't spend too much time re-explaining the trip. Juan is also working on translating the health assessment and when he is finished, I will also be posting that information on the website.

At this next meeting, we will be discussing the results of the health assessment and what they mean for our project, as well as assigning new tasks, regrouping on the irrigation project, and talking about fundraising. Please come prepared!

So again, please COMMENT HERE ON THE BLOG if you have a preference in meeting date, and if you are interested in helping out with some of the research on the other project possibilities.

Thanks so much and looking forward to meeting with you all again in June!

Thanks,

Ashley

Team Meeting Agenda for 5/19/09

Hi all,

We will be meeting at Kari's house in Fremont on Tuesday for our meeting. Her address is 3635 Fremont Ave, Unit 206. There are two visitor's spots and then parking along Fremont Avenue.

Here is the agenda for our meeting! This will be an important meeting to make if you can because it will be full of information from our recent assessment trip.

Agenda:

Ashley/Erin/Kari
- Present slide show while explaining how the data taking process of the trip went
- Give thoughts on working with Agros/community of El Eden

All
-Questions/comments!

Ashley
Next Steps:
-Talk about priorities for our next trip and the possible dates.
-Talk about the new groups that will need to be formed in our team
-Next meeting time/place


Now here are a few pictures to keep you excited!


Some Preschool kids at San Jose spying on us


Some homes at El Eden


A few community members at the spring in El Eden


Francis, the woman at the community who made our meals while we stayed there, and her daughter Ashley.


Chiles!


Doing some water testing


Community members gathering for our meeting


The ZM76 pump as installed at San Jose


The Agros Nicaragua team, Jessica (our translator) and the EWB-PSPP team

NEXT MEETING TUESDAY MAY 19

I have decided to push back the meeting for a little while. We need to pull together our notes and such before we have a meeting on the assessment trip. Since I didn't really receive any input on days that people preferred, we are going to go ahead with Tuesday May 19. We will not necessarily meet every two weeks anymore, but will likely have more discussions over the blog and emails and have a reporting meeting at least once a month. We will go over that scheduling a bit at the May 19th meeting.

Just an FYI, this meeting will likely be a little longer than normal (no more than 2 hours), but should be very informative for those of you itching to find out what happened on our trip.

Look forward to seeing some videos and pictures, hearing about the community and Agros Nicaragua and the opportunities we think we will have with them, learning about some fundraisers that we are thinking about putting on, and helping to develop other sub groups and committees for the project.

I will post an agenda sometime next week.