Monthly Archive for September, 2008

More information on Peru, meetings galore, and marketing ourselves on campus

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Daniel Bachhuber
on 30 September 2008
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Another Tuesday night, another meeting. Or conference call, rather. Shane and Adrien joined me for our weekly meeting tonight and we were quite on the ball with the agenda. Unfortunately, Kevin is no longer with us either. We’re going to canvas hard for people to fill Tech, Finance, and PR.

Well, we’re on the ball moving through the agenda at least. With all of the business going on in the past week, almost half of our action items ended up in varying stages of completion. Of the things we did accomplish, reading and meeting with people were at the top of the list. We’re slow on working on our fundraising, specifically working on the Youth Venture Social Entrepreneur grant application and combing through the grant databases, but that will ideally pick up after this weekend. Personally, I still need to read Diagnostico, which I plan on making a priority for the next couple of days.

The next month will be a month of a number of meetings for ODA. As I reported last week, I met with Bethany of the PPPM program who offered a number of creative ideas for us to seek the support of the community, and get them involved. On Friday, Shane, Adrien, and I also met with Megan of Allen Hall Advertising (AHA). We’re interested in collaborating with AHA to extend word of what we’re doing and, from the conversation, it sounds like they are too. Of the ideas we came up with thus far, these are the things they could help with:

  • Art installations of appropriate technology sculptures (including a Biosand filter, solar panels, a micro hydro setup, and/or a wind turbine)
  • Bringing FLOW: For the Love of Water to campus in November as a fundraiser
  • A lecture series in the month of January or February

Along all of these lines, we’re going to step up efforts to people aware online. Join the ODA Facebook Group, yo!

Also of importance from the meeting are a few things. First, the feeling Shane got from reading through the aquifer recharge and reforestation research was that the two are somewhat contradictory. I’ll let him clarify in a later post, but the understanding I have is that the more trees are in the ground, the less likely water is to percolate through and recharge the groundwater. I think this might be an extreme situation, though, as no trees at all means increased runoff and soil erosion. It’s all about finding the proper balance. Moving forward, he’s going to continue reading through EWB reports, and Adrien and I will continue working on the needs assessment. We’ve recently (i.e. today) received updated information from Anna that is very promising.

 
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Thursday’s meeting with Bethany of PPPM

Published
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Daniel Bachhuber
on 26 September 2008
in Partners and Team
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Yesterday, I had a pretty sweet meeting with Bethany Johnson of the PPPM program at the University of Oregon. PPPM stands for Planning, Public Policy, and Management; I think the passionate students from the program would be a constructive addition to our projects. From the meeting, we identified a few ways for us to move forward. My brain is quite scattered at the moment, but I’ll run through them the best I can.

First, Bethany is really stoked about what we’re doing, and is interested in talking about ways Oregon Direct Action can be a program that is supported by PPPM. Originally, her idea was to advertise ODA as an internship opportunity for students in the program. I’d like to get the dedicated students more involved than a one term internship, though, so we’ll explore what a closer relationship might mean. Bethany was also a source of wonderful ideas, as a couple of years ago she tried taking students to Mexico on a service learning project. She suggested talking to both Bob Choquette, who teaches strategic planning and a grant writing class, and Nico Larco, who leads Design Bridge (a potential sister organization). I’ve recorded their information in our contact database. We should talk about how we want to approach them on Sunday.

Lastly, Bethany thinks we should definitely connect with the Study Abroad program. If we can get credit for the work we do, but have to pay for those credits, it might be possible to recycle the monies we have to pay back into the project. Clever, huh?

That’s what I’ve got from the meeting. I definitely did more talking than note taking. Thanks to Jason at Green Empowerment for the lead! Looking forward to seeing where this heads

Bethany of EWB UP, the start of the new school year, and Peru updates

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Adrien Wilkie
on 24 September 2008
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On Sunday evening, we had a conference call which included: Daniel, Shane, Kevin, Bethany Foran from EWB University of Portland, and me. Hannah finally arrived back to the States, but has decided to focus her time in other places than ODA. Consequently, we are now looking for another individual who would be interested in fulfilling the role of finance.

After going over our previous todos list, Daniel introduced Bethany, who is involved with Engineers Without Borders at the University of Portland. We were excited to hear about what she had to say because we think that EWB could be a beneficial partner to ODA. Bethany believes that we could form a good partnership because ODA does well at working with and building a relationship with the people both EWB and ODA are trying to help and EWB is excellent at providing the necessary engineering solutions. Currently EWB has two projects: Guatemala and Honduras. The project in Guatemala deals with rainwater harvesting, and the Honduras project is still in the planning process. Our next step of collaboration with EWB includes sending Shane to some of their meetings and continuing to invite Bethany to our conference calls. Thank you Bethany for speaking with us.

As school starts up again, Daniel thinks it is pertinent to schedule a few on campus meetings to build our presence and support at the university. One meeting should be scheduled with Katie Lynch, the Environmental Studies Department advisor, for the next week. Another meeting is to introduce our project to the advisors we have been in contact with over the summer. The final meeting should be directed toward the general community and once gain serve as an introductory meeting.

This Friday Daniel and I will be meeting with Megan from Allen Hall Advertising to discuss the possibility of them assisting us with promotion and awareness. Also, we have decided to sign up to table at the OUS Sustainability Conference that is going to be at the U of O Oct. 23/24.

Daniel and Shane received an update from Anna! She is in Peru and the needs assessment is partially completed. As we move along, it becomes more important to obtain funds. We need to search for grant opportunities as well as try to become a ‘legit’ student group at the University of Oregon. Currently, we need money for the Green Empowerment technical workshop.

The ODA website is coming along nicely, but our priorities for the website include: a team page with paragraph bio and photographs, a partners page with a listing of partners and logos, links to the wiki, mail, calendar, and docs, and a “copy this organization” blurb included somewhere.

We covered a lot this meeting and plan to meet again very soon.

 
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Notes from Participatory Rural Appraisal and Planning research

Published
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Daniel Bachhuber
on 21 September 2008
in Partners and Team
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Yesterday, I went in to Green Empowerment for a few hours to look though a rare, yet informative handbook. Participatory Rural Appraisal and Planning (PRAP), although I don’t remember whether that is the exact title, is a “methodology which helps to identify community problems and to plan solutions with the active participation of community members.” It focuses on the strategies of “participation, empowerment, and solidarity” to “strengthen the management capacities of community organizations and other development organizations.” The approach allows for rapid:

  • description and analysis of the community and it’s context
  • identification of problems and potential solutions
  • project design and programming of activities for project implementation

In short, it’s a way of identifying the issues in a community, and determining some ways to overcome them, by a series of community workshops. Contrary to what I thought before, it’s not a method of surveying in the traditional sense. You can achieve some of the same results, but it’s largely a group-based method of collecting data.

Several advantages in PRAP I found to be interesting:

  • Use of visual techniques: rural communities participate more effectively when they use visual techniques for gathering, analyzing, and presenting information. PRAP focuses heavily on getting the community to produce charts and diagrams in order to better understand their issues. A 21st century twist might be to get little Flip recorders and have the kids document the issues in the village!
  • Participatory community analysis, identifying problems and potential solutions together
  • Allows for the formulation of realistic proposals which can be presented to donors for financing. These proposals can be perceived to be more realistic because they’ve been developed by the community, not just development workers.
  • Similarly, development workers have less of a tendency to design projects from their desks, lending to the potential for greater success.
  • PRAP creates programs that are based on first hand information that is coming from the village or town.
  • The material from a PRAP (including maps, diagrams, matrices, and sketches) can constitute a kind of living “encyclopedia for the community, development organizations, and donors. I think geo-tagging information could fit here too.

Of course, there are interesting disadvantages as well:

  • False expectations of progress can be made. Community members sometimes think “after PRAP comes the money.”
  • Some of the information obtained can be incorrect.
  •  PRAP has largely been applied on the community level; there is very little experience in applying the methodology at the regional, provincial, or watershed levels.
  • Sometimes the community isn’t interested in PRAP.

A typical PRAP lasts about 3 full days. They are usually initiated by either the community asking a development organization, an organization initiating the PRAP because of past studies and/or knowledge, or a joint decision between the community and the organization based on mutual needs. A preliminary visit to establish contact with the community and leaders is critical to establish clarity and transparency.

Going through the workbook also provided a list of things I think we want to learn, either through PRAP or surveying:

  • Name of the community, parish, district, and province
  • Number of inhabitants and families (including men, women, and children)
  • Language(s) of the community
  • Existing services (i.e. health, post office, schools, church, and large businesses)
  • Migration patterns
  • Ethnic and religious groups
  • Means of communication available in the community (radio reception or transmitters? TV? internet? cell reception?)
  • Community works
  • Local crafts?
  • Division of labor within the family
  • What community work does everyone work on together, and how do they decide on splitting these up?
  • Identify the areas with specific problems (soil erosion, lack of water, etc.). It might be interesting to do this by having the PRAP group build a mock of the town in a pile of dirt and video recording the process
  • Learn about past NGO projects and whether they’ve “succeeded or failed”
  • Trend analysis of harvests, population of the community, deforestation, quality of life, etc.

Of course, the research also left me with a few questions unanswered:

  • Do we do a household survey in conjunction with PRAP, or does PRAP usually take the place of a survey?
  • If we do a PRAP, are there farmers with past experience that can facilitate the program?
  • Hypothetically, would it be beneficial to do PRAP before or after a household survey? I think PRAP could be an easier way to collect general community information than the method we’ve defined before.

Possible partnership with EWB University of Portland

Published
by
Daniel Bachhuber
on 20 September 2008
in Partners and Team
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In somewhat random fashion, I had a meeting yesterday afternoon with Teddy Acunas, his brother Christian, and Bethany Foran. All three are affiliated with EWB University of Portland, which currently has two projects on the table. The first is developing a rainwater harvesting system for the village of Agua Negra in Guatemala, and the second is a drainage system for the village of Guadalupe Carney in Nicaragua. My understanding is that they have enough manpower, and funding, to become involved with a third project. I’m excited to connect with them further as, although we have a number of big thinkers on the ODA team, we don’t have much engineering talent. EWB University of Portland could be a good source for this.

Field update on San Pablo water project

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Anna Garwood
on 7 September 2008
in Advisers, Partners and Team
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We’re finally getting going on the water project in San Pablo. As Jason mentioned, at a meeting with the mayor of the province of San Pablo, we got a copy of a study that CARE had done in San Pablo. It was a survey of all of the existing water infrastructures in the province, as well as surveying the management and social issues: Which communities have strong water committees? How many people wash hands? use latrines? etc. It is pretty complete on rating the funcionality of existing water structures, but does not have any information about the communities without existing water infrastructure.

Then, this week, Rafael Escobar, the leader of ITDG here in Cajamarca, and I went to meet with CARE to talk to them about water in San Pablo, so that we as least don’t duplicate efforts, and at best, can collaborate. It turns out that they are working with the provincial and regional government to develop a plan for water management — both for potable water and other water uses. They would like to work with ITDG on such a larger water program in San Pablo. In the next 4-6 months ITDG will be developing a whole integrated province-wide proposal for electricity, water and economic development in the area. In the meanwhile, we can get going on the smaller water project in one or several communities with ODA. This project with ODA will be a model for the other projects.

So, now we need to identify what exactly that project will be. On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, I’ll be going to San Pablo with Rafael, Walter and Liliana, all Peruvians who work for ITDG to identify a community to start with. We’ll also be identifying a community for a small wind project, installing a 500 watt wind turbine for a school, so there is a chance that both projects could occur in the same community. So, by the end of next week we should finally have some more information. During this first trip, we won’t be doing the house-to-house detailed needs assesment, but will take into the broader factors of need and opportunity. For the next trip, it would be great if ODA could refine that needs assessment tool that you began to gathering examples for.

Partnership with Students for Global Health, fundraising ops, and project discussion

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Shane Lofgren
on 4 September 2008
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Tonight, we got to talk with two new people who hopefully will be heavily involved in ODA, each in their own way. First we talked with Kevin McNaught, an incoming freshman at the U of O who Dan and I know from high school. He’s pretty tech savvy, having worked as the Director of Technology for the Tualatin High School Associated Student Body (quite a title, eh?), and will be possibly joining ODA in the tech position. Exciting stuff!

The other person we talked to was Alex Goodell. He proposed a partnership between ODA and his organization, Students for Global Health. SGH is primarily a fundraising organization, and so far they’ve been raising money solely for Face AIDS. However, he would like for SGH to have a “Direct Action” component that they would fundraise for, and he would like us to be part of that direct action component. Not only that, but he would also like for our communities to work together where doing so would be mutually beneficial. From what I can tell, the relationship would work as follows:

  • When requesting donations, SGH would ask people if they’d like to donate either to Face AIDS or to the direct action component, with descriptions of specific projects such as ours.
  • SGH and ODA would work together to do fundraising projects around school.
  • SGH and ODA would collaborate where efficient on any other projects
  • SGH would become a co-partner on ODA projects
  • ODA will attend SGH meetings and teach members of SGH lessons we’ve learned from our work in direct action.

We’re all very excited about this relationship and the way our community is expanding.

During Adrien’s Community Development report, she talked about her discussions with Allen Hall Advertising. Megan, from AHA, would like to meet with us to talk about how exactly we see our two groups working together. We decided that we should have a quick conference call to discuss this before the meeting, so that we can have a concrete proposal to bring Megan for our meeting on the 22nd of September.

During Dan’s Lead report, we were planning to talk about our Mission Statement and Team Goals, but we decided that it was inefficient to talk about these in small chunks spread over many meetings. Instead, we will have a call specifically devoted to perfecting these two documents.

During my Research Report, I talked about my Summary of Diagnostico. I also gave the team reading assignments. The most important thing for them to read are sections from Diagnostico that I will highlight, because it will give them further idea of what we’re working on. Besides that, they should read specific EWB reports in order to learn how a project is designed and a project report is written. Finally, I told them that they should further develop their philosophical underpinnings for their development report by reading all of the readings that I selected from my INTL 240 class.

The last thing we talked about was our relationship with Green Empowerment. We decided that we’d like to have a meeting with them so that both groups could gain a clearer understanding of the others desires and expectations, as well as our visions of our places in this project. We plan to email Jason and set up a meeting to discuss this. We are also planning to have an exploratory with Health Bridges International and perhaps talk about similar things with them.

 
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Summary of Diagnostico

Published
by
Shane Lofgren
on 2 September 2008
in Advisers, Partners and Team
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A while back, Green Empowerment (GE) sent us a diagnostic assessment that Solucciones Practicas did of the province of San Pablo where we hope to be working. Unfortunately, the document was in Spanish, and so we kept drawing straws to see which of the rusty Spanish speakers was going to have to read through and translate it.  Luckily, I was assisted in this task by the tool Google has that, when emailed a PDF as an attachment, allows you to convert that PDF to HTML. After I converted the document to HTML, I put it through Google Translate in hopes of getting a comprehension aid, and what I got instead was a fully understandable (with effort) English translation. So, as I read Diagnostico, I mainly read the translation and looked through Diagnostico to see the pictures, graphs, etc. Though I have reasonably good Spanish skills, this is something that anyone could do. I’m amazed at the tools the internet, especially Google, has to offer.

On to the summary. As a quick background, this region (San Pablo) is roughly equivalent to a county, it is part of the larger state of Cajamarca, and contains the towns of San Pablo, San Luis, San Bernardino, and Tumbaden. The province has around 20,000 people, most of whom live in the town of San Pablo. The diagnostic concerned itself mainly with describing the culture, the economic activities, and the relevant organizations with the area. Also, throughout the document there was a focus on rates of, previous efforts at, organizations concerned with, and potential benefits of electrification, culminating in an assessment of various sites where electricity could be generated. This makes sense given that Solucciones Practicas is, to my understanding, mostly interested in doing an electrification project in San Pablo.

Regarding electrification, it seemed to me first that providing electricity would greatly benefit this province.  Even beyond my first thought, that electricity could pump water and save people the time of moving it, electricity would allow for economic development beyond the current low-tech, agriculture and resource-gathering activities that comprise more than 90% of the local economy. Without electricity, the local dairy farmers are forced to sell to Nestle at whatever prices it demands, as Nestle has the only refrigerated storage in the area. Diagnostico identified a number of value-added industries, such as carpentry, that would be possible with electricity to power the machines. Even beyond this, electricity could help power the internet, thus opening people up to a world of free educational opportunities, and it could make life more pleasant, powering lights and electrical appliances. The author talked about a problem where many young people leave, and only ~50% of them return. Perhaps this could be stopped by providing better jobs, more education and more amenities.

The diagnostico also provided insight into the organizations in the area and how they could assist or hinder electrification and other development projects.  It seems possible that we might be able to set up a relationship with the Peruvian government (at the federal level), because they have expressed goals of rural electrification, have made strides toward accomplishing this, and continue to have agencies and funds for this purpose. However, I don’t know what other obstacles might stand in the way of such a relationship, but this does seem to be a worthwhile lead to explore since the federal government could undoubtedly marshal a large amount of resources to help us.

At the local level of government, it is clear that there is a complex web of relationships. There are non-elected (I believe) governors, along with elected lieutenant governors and mayors, who have overlapping responsibilities and don’t always get along. For instance, the governors don’t work well with the mayors of Tumbaden or San Bernardino, the author suggests that this could be because of political jealousy. Now, I don’t imagine the situation is much different or worse than it is in any representative democracy. I’m simply going to assume that, in this area, there is a complex bureaucracy. If we try to work with them, it would likely be in our best interests to enlist a local who knows the system.

The most promising groups, in my mind, are the very local government groups and the civic organizations. There is apparently a group of elected officials called the Peasant Patrols, who help with projects around the town. There is also a great number of organizations with economic purposes, such as the Association of Agricultural Producers, who could bring together many of the local farmers. Then there are service organizations, some of which help the poor and others who help with education and health. They could be very helpful when we decide to run educational programs on clean water and sanitation.

It is clear from reading Diagnostico that there is great good that can be done here, and many groups who could help us do it.