Notes from 2/22/2011 Meeting with Dr. Lindner

The goal of today's meeting with Dr. Lindner was primarily to show her our presentation for next week's meeting with Richard. Dr. Lindner approved the presentation, but had a few suggestions:

1) Change title from "Design Specifications" to "Proposed Design Elements (or Options)"

2) Add the slides from the last meeting with Sokany

3) Prepare a notebook for Richard that includes:

- a list of questions

- our contact information

- a copy of the presentation

Other items discussed:

• In the future, plan to have 1 meeting per semester with Richard
• Maximum cost of latrines (~$50)?
• Remind Richard of Banquet on April 6th
• Add a couple of days to our assessment trip and conduct a program about engineering. Ask Macedonia about their education program. Connect with schools in Cambodia, Cambodian engineers, and university faculty.
• Create a fundraising project for home gardens
• Address water management issues in a second phase, overlapping with the latrines (Phase 1: Latrines --> Phase 2: Water Management). *Set intentional target dates
• Develop a means of gaining photo permission (ie. signing a statement of consent) to address ethics

Next meeting: Sunday February 27th @ 8:00 pm

Notes from 2/20/2011: Skype with Polin & Soknay

At tonight's meeting, the team skyped with Polin and Soknay. Here is the information gathered from our conversation:

• Latrines are considered a good project, however:
• The Cambodian government plans to implement 1 latrine per family by 2025
• Starting in the urban areas and working their way out into the rural areas
• Soknay will give us contacts from the Cambodian government who are a part of this latrine project
• We would create a latrine design that can be shared with the government to implement

Other possible projects:

• water management (community pond, canal, dam) to help with the 6 month period of no rain; mainly concerning agricultural purposes*
• introduce engineering to students going to university during a 2-3 month stay**
• small home garden project (~$1000-2000)

* Soknay stressed that the water management project would be very helpful and important for the communities. The team discussed the possibility of incorporating water management into the latrine project.

** Since a 2-3 month stay seems a little unfeasible at this point, the team discussed the idea of offering engineering workshops during our assessment trip, as a small side project, since local students expressed a lot of interest in the project during the previous assessment trip.

Other updates:

1) To maintain effective communication, we will be skyping Soknay and Polin once a month- Alex added these future dates to the calendar.

2) We discussed skyping SNV within the next week or so.

3) Unfortunately, the IC replied that there are not any Cambodian students currently available for us to talk with. We discussed other options of native Cambodian contacts.

4) We will be meeting with Dr. Wilke within the next couple of weeks.

5) The meeting with Richard and Susan is officially set for Wednesday March 2nd at 7:00 PM.

6) Our next meeting is Tuesday February 22nd at 9:30 AM in Dr. Lindner's office.

Presentation for Richard and Susan

1) Intro and Objective (Sarah)

2) Assessment trip, Conclusion, and how we got there (David)

3) Design Ideas (Ashley)

- Materials (REB and materials) (Laureen and Alex)

- Costs (Laureen and Alex)

4) Collaborations (roles too) (Sarah)

- Soknay/Polin

- Greene & Ronald

5) Conclusion & Questions

- goals, objectives, their thoughts

Drop individual parts in the dropbox folder "Put your slides here"

Notes from 2/15/2011

Our first meeting at the new time of 9:30 AM was quite successful.

The agenda:

1) Mr. Ronald Mierau – email; skype/conference call date; email Kristin

2) Richard and Susan – email date to Dr. Lindner; need to make a presentation

3) Post-Assessment forms ?!?

4) Contact the International Center again

5) Dr. Greene - email Dr. Lindner to obtain contact info

6) Skype with Soknay - email and ask for future availability

During the meeting, we accomplished this list and also received a lovely REB presentation from Laureen. The next meeting will be at 8:30 PM this Thursday the 17th to begin preparing our presentation for Richard and Susan.

Note to everyone: remember to forward all responses you receive to your emails to all group members!

Notes from 2/6/2011

The highlight of last night's meeting was Alex and Sagar's informative presentation on latrine piping, which should be in the dropbox for future reference.

As a side note, we are attempting to change our regular meeting time from 8:00 PM on Sunday to some time during the week, perhaps in the morning. Everyone be sure to fill out the new doodle!

Notes from meeting with Dr. Lindner

Topics that were discussed at Thursday's meeting with Dr. Lindner:

1) Ideas for latrine building

2) Post-assessment forms and phone interview

3) Future meeting dates

Dr. Lindner's suggestions/what we learned from the meeting:

1) Present latrine ideas to SC with a powerpoint.

2) Set up a skype date with Polin and Soknay, schedule before meeting with Richard.

3) Target for Assessment trip is December.

4) Photojournalism students will soon be paired up with our team to document our progress.

5) Dr. Lindner will be available to participate in the post-assessment phone interview.

Also, remember that Banquet is April 6th at 6:00PM in Emerson Alumni Hall.

News from the first week of February

Last Sunday's meeting was general in nature. We discussed a couple of events that we have this week- rebuilding the biogas digester with Jon on Tuesday and the lunch meeting with Dr. Lindner on Thursday.

This morning, Sarah, Laureen, Ashley, and I met at the Energy Park with Jon to deconstruct and begin reconstructing the biogas digester. A few improvements were made to the initial design: we raised the digester more to improve ease of input and output flows, used inner tubes in place of tape when attaching the bag to the PVC pipes, and secured the pipes to the bag by wrapping the bag around the outside of the pipe to prevent the bag from clogging up inside of the pipe. Thanks again, Jon, for letting us help out!

Thursday we will be having our meeting with Dr. Lindner at 11:30 AM at the Arredondo Room in the Union. Please remember that we are meeting at 11:00 AM in front of the Arredondo Room to prepare ourselves.

Also, please remember to read the Post-Assessment forms and research/do whatever it is that Sarah assigned for you to do in her email from 1/30/2011.

As usual, we will be meeting at 8 PM this Sunday in the normal spot.