April showers will bring May flowers! đˇ Here's what's been going on with EWB Peru Team during this month:
We're in the process of planning our travel week in Maras, Peru to implement an irrigation reservoir. This reservoir will give water to many crops in the community and affect hundreds of community members. Because Maras is an agricultural community, the income and livelihood of the community is greatly affected by the long dry season. This reservoir will help them get through it!
Our fundraising team is currently reaching out to rotary clubs and continuing with our sponsorship packet campaign. Thank you to A&V Refrigeration, Florida Septic Inc. and Pevida Highway Designers for sponsoring us! To learn more about our sponsorship benefits and how you and your company can get involved with our team, visit our sponsorship page.
If you would like to donate to our mission, please visit our fundraising page where you can donate to our team or to a specific team member.
Our fundraising team is also working with the UF Brown Center to organize a marketing schedule for our trip to Peru. We would like to record our time there in a way that shows our stakeholders the impact of our work with the community.
Our communications team has been in constant contact with Emilio, an engineer in Peru who is helping us with our design. He provided us with soil data, and we recently discussed with him some design concerns we had about the elevation of the land and the piping system for the reservoir. We are also working to get in contact with Peruvian government officials to determine the community's needs and organize logistics for implementation.
The Nitty Gritty
For those more familiar with our work, here's the nitty gritty stuff we've been working on:
We recently turned in our draft implementation plan to EWB-USA. This 106-page document is a detailed outline of our project and our plans for traveling and implementation. Everyone worked as a team on this design document in order to turn it in by our deadline. We also wrote a construction safety plan and an operations and maintenance (O&M) manual for the community's use. All of these documents will be reviewed by EWB-USA. The O&M will be translated in Spanish and printed to give to the community when we travel.
Our design team has gotten feedback on our Alternative Analysis report from EWB-USA. An Alternative Analysis report discusses other possible alternatives to our current design and plan. We study these alternative projects so we are prepared to act if something does not go as planned while traveling. We will be working on polishing our analysis these next coming weeks.
We will be traveling in August, and we are currently in the process of nominating new team leads.
That's all for now. We will see you in the summer. Until then, go Gators! đ