Note: The first three questions are for the CGI Make A Commitment application and the rest are for CGI U Outstanding Commitment Awards. The entire set was submitted on August 1st, 2008. These questions were originally drafted on Google Docs as “Grant Application - 2008 CGI Make A Commitment [Google Doc]” and “Grant Application - 2008 CGI U Outstanding Commitment Awards [Google Doc]“
Commitment title:
An Open Source of Water for Peru
What will your Commitment to Action be?
Oregon Direct Action commits to identifying the constraints of safe and reliable water access in San Pablo, Peru, improving access in as many communities as we can help, and beginning to make connections amongst players in clean water, health, education, and micro-enterprise.
What specific, quantifiable goals do you or your group hope to achieve? (500 words)
At this time in our project cycle, we’ve mapped three primary components to this year’s “An Open Source of Water for Peru.”
The first involves understanding San Pablo’s current characteristics of water access by collecting data through a comprehensive social, economic, environmental, and technical needs assessment. Meeting with communities and thoroughly understanding their needs is an integral starting point for any sustainability initiative.
Combining the analysis from our needs assessment, knowledge from similar case studies, and background research, we will work with our international and in-country partners to establish a plan of action to promote sustainable water access in San Pablo. For towns that already have reliable access to water, we might market Point-Of-Use water filtration systems. For towns without consistent access to enough water to meet the Millennium Development Goals, our project might include a solar or ram pump to transport water. The number of projects we implement depends heavily on the amount of funding we are able to access in the coming months.
Throughout this process, we hope to identify and evangelize replicable strategies for improving the province’s access to health, education and economic opportunity. Increased access to safe and reliable water is one important means of achieving these goals; local education about how water fits into the broad web of development strategies is also critical. We hope that access to clean water will help lay the foundation for other economic and educational opportunities, and help lift the region out of poverty.
How do you or your group plan to meet the stated goals (500 words)
Our plan is to complete the bulk of this project by the end of August 2009. At the moment, we’re working with Green Empowerment and Soluciones Practicas-ITDG to develop and implement a comprehensive needs assessment that builds upon work the two organizations have already done. This effort is scheduled for September and October 2008. Analysis and interpretation of the surveys will happen shortly after that.
We will begin fundraising and our University of Oregon campus awareness efforts as soon as fall term begins. These efforts will continue to evolve as we identify the specifics needs and high impact solutions for our project in Peru. Oregon Direct Action’s work in Peru will happen in December 2008 to January 2009 and June 2009 to August 2009.
Section II: Commitment Information Please limit your responses to 125 words or less per question. Attachments should not exceed one page in length.
1. Please describe your Commitment to Action and its objective(s).
Oregon Direct Action (ODA) is a non-profit, student-led organization at the University of Oregon. We are committed to economic empowerment, cultural sensitivity, sustainability, and helping the world’s bottom billion meet their basic needs by pioneering an innovative approach to student engagement. This approach combines experiential education with the theories of organization developed by the open source community. Principles such as equality, inclusiveness, and transparency in design, processes, and decision-making have revolutionized how our generation works together. The social sector is exploring how these principles might mobilize greater civic engagement, and students are ideally situated pioneers. Currently, we are planning a water access project in Peru with Green Empowerment, an Portland-based organization with extensive technical international development expertise.
2. What progress has your Commitment to Action achieved since inception?
Our Commitment to Action began May 2008 as we started organizing internally and discussing pragmatic ways to support the developing world. We began by identifying four types of issues in four countries to which we felt we could contribute the most, and connecting with international and in-country organizations to see what would be pragmatic. Eventually, a partnership with Green Empowerment to improve access to safe and reliable water access in the Peruvian province of San Pablo came forward as the best option. We have started researching and planning how to address this issue. Currently, we are drafting what we will want from a needs assessment of this province.
To start a community foundation, we have reached out to well-respected professors, met with similar student groups both on campus and off, and begun a general awareness campaign. Oregon Direct Action is also coordinating a retreat in August to discuss in detail our theory of change, bond as a team and as friends, and map the broad range of goals for this year’s efforts.
3. What need does your Commitment to Action address and why is it significant?
According to the 2006 UNDP Human Development Report, more than 1 billion people around the world lack access to clean water. We are working in San Pablo, a province of Peru, where nearly 40% of its roughly 24,000 people get their water from unimproved sources (e.g. rivers, streams, ditches). This, coupled with the lowest electrification rate in the country, magnifies negative effects in health, education, social and gender equality, and economic opportunity. According to the World Bank, 53% of the country lives below the poverty line. Such extreme poverty also has a detrimental effect on the environment, as people are often forced to the margins of society. Safe and reliable water access is the core of San Pablo’s development.
Our Commitment to Action also works to bring students from the point of wanting to change the world to actually changing the world. We will provide tremendous growth opportunities that we hope will leave students wanting to improve the world for the rest of their lives.
4. What specific experience have you had, in or out of the classroom, to prepare you to effectively implement your Commitment to Action? What relationships have you developed to provide necessary skills or expertise?
The Oregon Direct Action team, consists of four intelligent and highly-motivated juniors from the University of Oregon. We bring knowledge from complementary courses of study, including Environmental Science, Journalism, and Economics. We have also worked with projects such as the Coalition Against Environmental Racism (CAER), Students for Global Health, and Whitman Direct Action, a multi-faceted look at India’s socio-political constraints to clean water access. Our diversity lends us the opportunity to simultaneously see the different categories of the sustainability spectrum. The team’s collective past experiences, with both the social and technological sides of environmental concerns, are a foundation with which to build our Commitment to Action. This forces us to look at not only the necessary sustainable technology of a project, but also the cultural, political, and economic requirements of the people whom we want to help.
We have cultivated relationships with many students and friends involved in similar projects, as well as with professors and mentors in both local and international organizations.
5. What relationships have you developed, on- and off-campus, to advance your Commitment to Action? Have you received statements of support from your university community and/or your target communities?
As part of its open source philosophy, Oregon Direct Action stresses the importance and value that comes from its community. We have already met with like-minded campus groups, such as MAPLE Microfinance, to discuss ways in which we can collaborate. We plan on intensifying our networking efforts in the fall. We are also developing relationships with organizations such as Hubli Water and Health Project, Argyham, and Soluciones Practicas in Peru, India, and Oregon. Whitman Direct Action, our sister organization, is also an important partner.
Our strongest relationship at this time is with Green Empowerment, a Portland, Oregon-based organization implementing renewable energy and water systems that alleviate poverty and preserve the environment.
Professors in International Studies, Environmental Studies, and Business have expressed interest in giving informal feedback as our project progresses. Using this foundation, we plan on establishing a diverse board of advisers in the fall to formally guide our initiatives.
6. Who are the key stakeholders in your Commitment to Action? How have you involved them and how are you ensuring that your commitment responds to their needs?
The key stakeholders in our Commitment to Action are the residents of San Pablo, Peru. The mayor of the province has asked for assistance, and we are currently working with our partner, Green Empowerment, and their in-country partner, Soluciones Practicas, to develop the necessary social, technical, economic, and environmental surveys to do a needs assessment. Only after that step will we have a better understanding of how we can work with the community to help them address their own development issues. We believe that community negotiation is crucial at each stage of any sustainability effort, and we plan on working with the people of San Pablo through the entire process.
Our secondary stakeholders are our own local community, who we have begun reaching out to and plan on involving more significantly with our projects this upcoming fall when everyone is back on campus.
7. What is the budget for your Commitment to Action? Please list the anticipated expenditures and sources/quantities of income and support.
At this stage in the project we do not yet have an exact budget. If the CGI grant requires this, then our team requests to be conditionally accepted until we know what our expenses will be.
As an example of what this year’s project might cost, we looked at the past budgets of projects in Nicaragua and Peru:
- Equipment (solar panels, pump, etc.): ~24,000 + 6500 in design and installation (Nicaragua) - 30,000 (Peru)
- Transportation (airfare, local): ~ 4,400 (N) - 7,000 (P)
- Community Development (health, sanitation education, etc.): ~ 5000 (N) - ? (P)
We will also incur costs related to multimedia and awareness (website, video camera, posters, etc.).
We are raising funds through a variety of means including, but not limited to, grants, sponsored lectures, dinner fundraisers, movie nights, and direct donation. If our project involves reforestation and aquifer recharge, there is also the possibility of applying for carbon credits.
Section III: Outstanding Commitment Awards Criteria In 125 words or less, please describe how your Commitment to Action addresses each of the award criteria: sustainability, impact, innovation, potential for replication, and leverage.
1. Will your Commitment to Action advance environmental efforts on your campus or in the community, and if so, how? Will the commitment be able to sustain itself over time without requiring continuous external support, and if so how? Does this commitment promote environmentally sound economic development, and if so, how?
Our approach to economic, environmental, and cultural sustainability is both international and local. In considering how and why to address basic needs, the ODA team looks at sustainability through a multitude of lenses, including the environment. With our projects, any technology installed (solar water pump, BioSand filters, etc.) will be managed and supported economically by the community. We have also begun researching how reforestation affects aquifer recharge, with the hope to better understand how to strengthen a watershed against increased water use. Oregon Direct Action’s development is environmentally sound, as we help to provide basic needs, while promoting intelligent use and reuse of limited natural resources. By increasing access to basic needs in an environmentally-sensitive way, we are also increasing economic potential.
2. What are the desired, realistic, long-term outcomes that your Commitment to Action will produce, and how will you measure your progress? Please be specific.
ODA’s mission statement is intentionally broad, allowing us to choose what we do based on how we interpret its application to the world today. In San Pablo, we hope that reliable access to safe water, along with health and sanitation education, will lessen the rate of gastro-intestinal disease, and help ensure the restoration of the watershed. If we enable women and children to spend less time collecting water, it will be easier for them to access other opportunities in education or micro-enterprise. These large objectives can be indirectly measured through assessments of public health, community growth, and environmental indicators.
Furthermore, we want to develop and implement our projects in a way that allows others to learn along with us. We can measure our success by the number of people who are directly and indirectly involved with our mission.
3. In what ways is your Commitment to Action innovative? How does your approach differ from or build upon the approach of others, and why is it more effective?
Innovation is what drives Oregon Direct Action. Our projects emphasize using appropriate technology to address infrastructure needs, building from the wealth of knowledge and experiences of others, and holistic thinking about how sustainability applies to development. Our team benefits from the unique experience it offers, learning how to work within a team towards multiple objectives. Furthermore, we are an “open source” organization, based off a model started by Whitman Direct Action and licensed under Creative Commons. The advantages of this are three-fold: transparency, interactivity, and replicability. We do our best to make everything we do, and every decision we make, completely visible to our community so that they can both learn from us and hold us accountable. We actively welcome new ideas and solicit contributions to our work, and are designing the project such that the community can be just as involved as the team.
4. Please describe the potential for scaling-up your Commitment to Action on other campuses or in other regions. Is there potential for involving additional campuses, communities, or organizations to expand the impact of your commitment over time (at reasonable cost)?
Every aspect of what we do has the potential to scale up, provided there are individuals who are motivated to do so. This is one core component of the “open source” concept: easy and accessible replicability. Our organization has already been “ported,” or re-established from elsewhere, and we are continuing to refine the model with Whitman Direct Action and Engineers Without Borders at the University of Santa Cruz, among others. In this process, we will attempt to publish everything about our team and projects online. The San Pablo project with Green Empowerment and other partners will build upon lessons learned from previous projects in Latin America and Southeast Asia. If others are interested in learning from our experience, and educating us through theirs, we are all for the connection.
5. What institutional resources will you use to complete your Commitment to Action? How is the implementation of this commitment uniquely suited for a university setting? How are you effectively involving your university community?
Oregon Direct Action’s collection of talent, innovation, and dedication will drive its success. Being on a university campus gives the team access to passionate individuals with a broad range of knowledge and experience. The University of Oregon is an especially beneficial setting as it is known nationwide for progressive sustainability and environmental initiatives. To organize the community around our endeavor, we are planning an awareness campaign involving school newspapers and magazines, lecture series, informal networking with friends and in classes, and coordination with other student groups. A strong digital presence, at our website and otherwise, is also important to this engagement process. Our penchant for digital participation is ideal for the technology forward university setting.