Early afternoon yesterday, Shane and I were afforded the opportunity to connect with Anna of Green Empowerment who is currently in Cajamarca. We had a whole list of questions to ask, so it proved to be a useful time to connect. From the call, there were a few major points I want to pass along. The audio recording is worth listening to as well.

First, Soluciones Practicas will hopefully be hiring a sociologist in the next week to implement the survey we sent a couple weeks back. This sociologist, and a technical surveyor, will draw data from several communities in San Pablo, including information about the previous water systems and specifics on how/why those previous water systems didn’t work out so well.

We also talked about funding this project/these projects because there are at least a few communities which could be the recipient of support, although Suro Antiguo would likely be the first. Grants are certainly one revenue source we are looking at, and we have a few potential leads. We’re also interested in potentially connecting with a local Rotary chapter because the San Pablo project could be right up that alley. One experiment, however, I think we can jump on right off the bat is using The Point to raise funds for a specific component of the project (for instance, hiring the sociologist). Yesterday, I came across a pitch titled, “Save NewsPageDesigner.com.” In less than 24 hours, and using the power of the internet to find a niche audience, they were able to raise $2,500 to save the website. I think there are two distinct components to the campaign’s success:

1. The “ask” was for a concrete goal. I feel as though non-profit fundraising is commonly for a large, nebulous amount of money. By breaking the “ask” down into specifics (hiring a sociologist, paying for a water tank, etc.), I feel donors might be more willing to support
2. You commit to donate, but aren’t charged until everyone in the community agrees that it’s a good idea.

For us to experiment with The Point, however, I think we need to: identify what specifically we want to raise money for, have a plan for marketing the fundraising effort, and set metrics for defining success with the experiment. The cool thing, though, is that we can experiment with this right away.

On the call, we also spoke briefly about Green Empowerment offering an “internship” to ODA members over summer 2009 for those that want to travel to Peru. Anna is receptive to the idea, but we need to better understand what specifically we need from GE to make that happen.

The Point is an old idea with a new twist. It’s a website which allows you to establish a “cause” (or reason you’re raising money) and solicit funding for it. The new twist is that, instead of immediately donating, the audience pledges their money towards the project. Once the pledge jar gets to the requested amount, then credit cards are charged. If not enough people rally around the project by the due date, then no funds are raised.

I think this approach has an interesting psychological advantage. There’s no cost to commit to an idea, and you’ll only donate if enough people think the project proposal is a good idea. It’s a bit like a 30 day money back guarantee.

Furthermore, if we can market it well, I think this could be a really effective way to fund certain physical components of a project (the solar panels, for instance). We give as much information as we can about the project, and the funders know exactly where their money is going.

The best example I’ve found is the “Pansenor Water & Electricity Project.” We can do it even better!

The water project is off to a good start. We just heard that the Christadelphian Meal A Day Fund of the Americas will be supporting a water project in Suro Aniguo with a $15,000 grant for the rehabilitation of the exisiting water distribution system, sand filters for households that the potable water system doesn’t reach, and community work to sustainably manage the water resource. In the next 2 months, we’ll be undertaking the socioeconomic and technical surveys in this and several other communities in the district of Tumbaden with the goal of launching a larger project to address the critical water needs in this area. Check out my post on the Green Empowerment blog for more about the area.

Arguably the most amazing film I’ve seen this year, “FLOW: For The Love Of Water” is playing at the Bijou Cinema in Eugene this Friday at 7:30 PM.

Granted, it isn’t the most uplifting film in the world, but it’s a must-see. Even if you’ve seen it before (hint, Shane), I would highly encourage you to come see it again. It is so many adjectives I’m lacking right now, and might just convince you to get involved with ODA.

Join Oregon Direct Action, and work with students at the University of Oregon to promote basic needs sustainably in Peru and elsewhere.

Currently, we’re looking for several bright, passionate students on campus interested in helping to provide safe and reliable water access to communities in San Pablo, Cajamarca, Peru. You’ll get to learn all about project research, design, implementation, and follow up (think needs assessments, appropriate water technology, and Participatory Rural Appraisal). Our team, at the moment just three people, has room for people to help with Operations, Finance, Communications/PR, and as many Associates as we can manage.

There’s a community kick-off meeting on Wednesday, the 22nd of October at 7 pm in the Knight Collaboration Center (room 122 of the Knight Library). If you are a student at the University of Oregon, please contact us or RSVP on Facebook to give us a heads up on the number of people showing up. We’ve got to make sure there are enough snacks for everyone.

Also, we’re looking for professors and professionals alike to serve on our Board of Advisers for the fall term. The advisers will meet with the ODA team once per month tentatively on the third Wednesday to discuss project developments, give feedback on project and funding ideas, and help improve organizational strategy. Additionally, we hope the advisers will become more intimately engaged with our projects, as everything we do is easy to follow along with on our website.

The applicants will be voted in by the team after the first joint meeting this month on the 29th of October. Positions will be term by term, although applicants are more than welcome to serve indefinitely. Please contact us if this sounds like an awesome fit for you.

Hail Mary it was. After dropping the ball for the last two weeks, Shane and I worked hard this morning to get our application in for the 2008 Staples Youth Social Entrepreneur Competition. Overall, I think it turned out quite well, especially in terms of summarizing our project and how we’re going to involve both the communities in San Pablo and the University of Oregon. It’s weak, in my opinion, near the end, as we discuss just how we’re planning on funding this project and what our inspiration for it was. I’ll be interested to hear what reaction we get (and hopefully it was submitted correctly. I emailed it in early because the server was down and then did the online form about 40 minutes after 3 pm).

Earlier this morning, I was fortunate to sit down with Katie Lynch of the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Oregon to discuss what ODA did over the summer and where we are at now. After that, we moved on to discussing several different questions I had:

How do we best involve the community with our projects? One path forward is develop a core team, and then use that core team to crowdsource tasks to the community. I think this is highly feasible, and in tune with the open source concept, but we definitely need to fill out the positions of Finance, PR, and Tech first.

When should we schedule a meeting with our potential advisers? The game plan is to schedule this for the third or fourth week of October. Katie thinks is a really good idea, by the way. In the interim, we need to do a couple of things. One, we should identify what organization structure goals we have for ODA (do we want to be a student group, a non-profit, or a program of another non-profit?). I think this will evolve over time but, as I get to later, being just a student group doesn’t have the advantages we think it does. Two, we really need to establish the specifics of what we want these advisers to help with. A “job description,” per se, that lays out the number of hours per term we would expect them to contribute, when we would meet, and what type of support we want, among other things. Ideally, we’ll have a solid draft of this before we begin to solicit potential advisers.

Can use ENVS as our fiscal sponsor? Boy, this was a fun question. I learned quite a bit. Apparently, unlike I had thought before, the University is not a 501(c)3. For a number of grants, we need to have 501(c)3 status specifically. Katie will look into whether ENVS can provide this for us, but it might not be the best option because there is a significant overhead cost. She suggested we talk to Green Empowerment and/or the Institute for Culture and Ecology as to whether they can provide fiscal sponsorship. It sure would be sweet to have someone in charge of finances to look into this for us.

Where should we look for more people to get involved? I think we’ll plan on marketing ourselves to the Sustainability Coalition on campus, but Katie suggested we also connect with the UO Business School and Jcomm. Both are good ideas, we should advertise out when the team goals are a bit further along. We’re also welcome to put flyers up around ENVS when we get to that point.

What do you know about Meyer Sustainability Grant? Katie is 90% sure this is a grant for projects on campus, and mentioned that Steve Mital definitely the contact person for this. Considering MAPLE Microfinance was launched by a grant from this fund, I think we still should look into it.

All in all, it was a wonderfully productive 45 minutes, and I look forward to working closely with Katie in the near future.

Incatambo is also sometimes spelled Ingatambo or Inkatambo.

It is possible that the highland lagoons could serve as a potable water source with pipes flowing to many communities, although this would be a major infrastructure of 10s of km of pipes. For the time being it probably makes sense to focus more on small-scale distributed options.

20 households (HH) and the primary school get water from a piped system with an enclosed spring box. The remaining 50 drink from untreated surface water. 2-3 HH capture a few springs and channel them into a pond. Water is then delivered in pipes from the pond to the households. Most people drink from ‘puqueos’ (shallow surface water holes) or ‘quebradas’ (streams or gullies). Some people boil the water because a health promoter told them that the surface water is dirty.

Community groups include: Programa Juntos, Comedor Popular, Ronda Campesina, Asociacion de Productores and now the Frente de Defensa de las Lagonas.

There is a milk cooling plant (gas-fired) that the teacher rents to Nestle. Each morning 4 milk trucks deposit the fresh milk into the plant. Milk production is basically the only income of the community (80 cents of a sol per liter, each cow produces 5-10liters per day). There is no public transportation other than getting a ride on the milk truck. 

Electricity options

Strangly, there is a TV tower in this village without electricity. The tower does not work because they don’t have gas for the generator.

There is a river 3-7km away, apparently 4 times the size of the other river in Regalado (where ITDG is installing a micro-hydro). Gilberto from ITDG will visit the site to see if there is potential and if it is feasible to power the town at this distance. Otherwise, wind power seems like a good option. ITDG-GE are currently applying to a foundation for a 500w wind turbine for the secondary school.

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.

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.