Engineers Without Borders

El Salvador Meeting 5/18/09

May 20, 2009 at 6:35 pm | In Meeting Minutes | Comments Off

General:

1. We had trouble finding some of the posters/presentation material this weekend for the public health conference. Some of it was not returned from the doughnut sales. Gilmore is also locked during weekend.

• At the next meeting we will move everything to Peavey and take inventory.
• Carl: someone should go to the room first to see how it will work.

2. Public health people were very interested in using gps, etc.

• A member of a student group from Eugene was very interested in what EWB does and maybe working with us.
• Kay did household survey in Haiti and has made improvements from El Salvador survey
• Successful conference overall

• Presentations at conference: addressed governments not acting on informal promises (aid money); NGO’s funding the most effective aspects of development.

3. Jesse has fluent Spanish speaking friend, also an engineer, who would be interested in working with us.

4. Bake sale: it will take a week to get permission, we don’t have permission yet. Once we start we will keep going every week this term.

• Also we will not be able to have a run this year.There is not enough time.

5. Water bottles. Michelle wants to know how much we would pay. $15 max for stainless steel.

• People will pay a lot more for stainless steel. Plastic cost $1-2 less per bottle to buy. $4/bottle plastic, $6-7 steel. We could sell these in places where they already have bottles (sports stores).

• We could give them away with donations at davinci days
  

Design:

• The cost of cinderblock and ferrocement tanks will be very similar.
• We want to build test ferrocement tank with SSI? They have money to spend for this year. Jesse will get in touch with them. Otherwise we might be able to build one at pure earth
• Kelly knows a guy (Ryan) who built ferrocement tanks in Bolivia. He could help run this next fall.
• Michelle emailed someone at fonaes asking about plastic tanks

• There are working examples of polyducto lines, but we’re not sure if we want to risk using it.
• It’s connection to pvc is a major issue
• We will try to find some in the US and see if we can find a connection. Michelle will head this.