Engineers Without Borders

General meeting 10/22/08

October 23, 2008 at 5:21 pm | In Meeting Minutes | Comments Off

General Meeting 10-22-08

Announcements:

• CH2M Hill bought a table at the banquet, and wants four students to sit with them

• Banquet sign up sheets are being passed around. We will be preparing in Snell kitchen across from McAlexander fieldhouse on Thursday afternoon. We need volunteers starting at 3:30 on Friday.

• We met with the SEI and are looking into forming a stronger partnership. Details still need to be worked out, but they are applying for their Fiji project to become an EWB project.  Both clubs will nominate a project coordinator to work together on it.

• General meeting restructure: We are thinking about having just one general meeting a month, then a hands on workshops the other Wednesday. We are asking for ideas for workshops.

• Membership dues are $15 and can be payed to Evan.

Review of Rainwater Catchment (Malia presenting):

• We will be focusing on rainwater catchments for our Christmas and Spring Break trips.
• Explanation of what they need and how they work:

-Gutters collect water and carry it to the downspout.  Water then enters the first flush diverter to catch dust, etc. accumulated on roof.
-They need a roof that wont give off chemicals.
-A storage tank is usually used for drinking water, or if a large quantity needs to be stored.
-Filter systems are also necessary for drinking water (filtrones-potters for peace filters-are used in El Salvador)
-Some systems employ a floating ball valves to close off the first flush chamber, preventing any sediment from entering the storage tank, but they often clog.

• Sources for additional info:

-Texas manual on Rainwater Harvesting
-Rainwater Harvesting Demonstration project in Corvallis: www.ocs.oregonstate.edu.index.html
-Eugene project: www.uoregon.edu/~hof?S01havestingrain/intro.html
-Organic growers club system-built by EWB
-El Naranjito, El Salvador, project built last year.

• Malia showed us slides from previous trips.
• Wash stations to keep soap out of streams will also be added this time.

Banquet schedule of events/details

1. We will move food over to the MU before 6,
2. 6:00-Silent auction starts.
3. 6:30-Dinner served.
4. 7:00-Speaker (Dr. Kristine Kelly, 3^rd world water issues, bio engineering professor).
5. 8:00-Project team will go over what they have done.
6. 9:00-Cool shoes performance.
7. Clean up (and dance lessons for anyone who wants to stick around).

• People will want to see students involved in helping out as a proof of student involvement in EWB.
• Three courses: Salad, main course, and desert.
• Dress will be business casual.
• The theme is eat locally think globally. Most of the food will come from Wintergreen organic farm.
• Menu: greens salad and pork sausage dish plus a vegetarian dish.

Fundraising

• We have a team planning for the March project, we are going to need to keep raising more money to support it.
• The new SEI partnership and Fiji project will also require greater fundraising, as well as the new project we are in the process of selecting.
• We need to try to get people more excited about fundraising spread out the work load to increase to the levels we will need to keep going.