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.
The Clinton Global Initiative - Outstanding Commitment Awards are a series of $10,000 to $250,000 awards from President Clinton for student projects addressing these areas: energy and climate change, global health, human rights and peace, and poverty alleviation. We feel Oregon Direct Action and its projects fit this criteria well, and Shane, Hannah, and I been drafting our responses to the prompts over the last week.
We need readers!
If you’re interested in proofing our application, please download the draft [DOC] and either comment on the file and send it back to us, or leave your general comments on this post. Specifically, we’re looking for feedback on overall presentation of ideas and how well we address each question. If you find gritty grammar mistakes, though, please point those out too. Originally, the due date was supposed to be the 28th of July, although the website now says entries must be submitted by the 4th of August. In any case, we hope to submit this as soon as we can.
For the first step in this year’s project, we’ve decided it would be a good idea to create short, one page or less “Country Summaries” for the countries we’re most interested in working with (Peru, Haiti, and India). The goal is to determine which of the four types of projects (microfinance, education, water/sanitation, and decentralised energy) we’re considering would be the best candidate for an in-depth “Project Proposal” to come in the next few weeks.
A very basic introduction to issues within each country, we think, should include:
- Political stability
- Which regions (or states) of the country are in most need
- Poverty rate
- Average income
- Literacy rate (and/or telecommunications infrastructure)
- Access to improved water and sanitation
- Who has access to reliable electricity and who does not
Based off of those basic facts, and other anecdotal knowledge, we should also brainstorm how we especially would help advance:
- Microfinance
- Education
- Water/Sanitation
- Decentralised Energy
Critical to this as well is the need to find potential partners both within the country and in the United States to collaborate with at all stages of the project.
Considering the desire for brevity, is there anything else we should include in these summaries?