Hello!
As June comes to an end, our team wanted to take a moment before we leave for Rwanda to give everyone an update on the team, project, and to thank all of our partners and donors that helped us reach this point. Donors, thank you so much for your generosity; without you we would not have been able to finance this upcoming implementation trip. Special thanks to our Corporate Sponsor, Genesis Digital!
Before we, the travel team, give more updates throughout the implementation process via this blog, let me give you some background on our past implementations and the plan for this upcoming implementation.
This summer will be the fifth rainwater catchment system our team has implemented in the Cyanika sector, Northern Province of Rwanda (near the Rwandan border with the DRC and Uganda). Throughout this whole process, we have been working with our partnering NGO, Village Makeover. The last catchment system implemented was in the village of Ntarama. The other three systems are in the villages of Munini, Gasebya, and Nyarutosho. This upcoming implementation trip will be in the village of Kibaya. Currently, community members in Kibaya are leveling and clearing the land the system will be built on. We have ordered the four HUGE tanks that will be used for the system, gathered the tools we needed to purchase in the US, and have prepared all of the documentation we need.
When in country, we will be working with local community members and the Community Vision Board to construct the system and to evaluate/monitor the previous systems built. To complete the evaluation/monitoring process, we will personally visit the systems in Munini, Gasebya, Ntarama, and Nyarutosho, talk to local officials and community members, and distribute surveys to gather quantitative data. This year will be the first year the team is completing a photo survey! The goal is to complete the survey using a "Humans of New York" theme, allowing us to talk to individual volunteers in the villages/community who want to share their stories. Hopefully it will give names and faces to the people we have dedicated our work to. We, the travel team, will take digital photos of the volunteer storytellers, and we will give them a polaroid copy of the photo to keep for themselves. Hopefully this survey will allow EWB CU Rwanda to build an even better and more trusting relationship with our friends in Rwanda.
I also realize that an introduction of the travel team is in order!
This year, the travel team is made up of four student members and one mentor. The four students traveling this year are Max Alger-Meyer, Sonrisa Macharia (myself), Will Nelson, and Zayna Pieper. Max, Sonrisa, and Zayna are all going into their Junior year at CU - Max in aerospace engineering and Sonrisa and Zayna in mechanical engineering. Will is going into his Senior year at CU for chemical engineering.
Our mentor is new to the team this year; as our mentor who has traveled with us in the past, Travis Grieman, was unable to travel this summer as he and his wife welcomed a baby earlier this month (congrats Travis!!). Our new mentor is Dr. Carlo Salvinelli, an instructor in the Mortensen Center in Engineering for Developing Communities. We are so lucky to have Carlo and his expertise traveling this summer!
The whole travel team will be meeting in Kigali, Rwanda on July 15th. We are all flying separately to Kigali from various places: Carlo from Italy, Max from Uganda, Will from Germany, Sonrisa from Kenya, and Zayna from the US. By happy coincidence, the president of the CU EWB USA chapter, Austin Riley, is also in Kigali working for Water for People. We are excited to meet him there! For now, we'll be learning as much Kinyarwanda as possible, hopefully enough to have a good conversation or two!
This blog will be the best way for anyone who would like to keep up with the team's progress to do so. Throughout our trip, we will be updating the blog, about every other day - with pictures!!
Again, thank you to everyone who has supported, in any way, and the entire CU EWB Rwanda team throughout the year! We couldn't do it without you all!
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