November Updates 🍂

It's November, and we've entered into this month with a grateful mindset. During the season of giving, we want to express our utmost appreciation for your support. We are so blessed to be a part of such a meaningful nonprofit organization like Engineers Without Borders USA, and your support helps us make all the difference in Maras, Peru!

This has been a big month for us! Our fundraising team secured an EWB-USA grant from their sponsor, The Boeing Company, for $4,000. We are so grateful to be a part of a meaningful organization like EWB-USA that connects its chapters to influential companies and aids in the fundraising process. This grant will cover nearly 1/5 of the cost to build an irrigation reservoir in Maras, Peru that will affect hundreds of community members. To learn more about our project, visit our project details page.

We would like to thank all of you for supporting us in our humanitarian endeavors. We would also like to recognize our fundraising team's hard work these last few months, and a special thanks to Robert Feder, our fundraising lead, for progressing our team forward in pursuit of our mission.

If you would like to help keep this momentum going, here is a link to our fundraising page, where you can donate to our general team or to a specific team member. Thank you to everyone who has helped us raise over $2,000 so far! 🎉

We have finished our 2018-2019 sponsorship packet! Thank you to our members that worked so hard to put it together! Take a look for yourself here to learn more about how you or your company can sponsor our mission. All of our donations go directly to our project in Maras, Peru, and are tax-deductible.

Both the Gumby’s Pizza fundraiser and the Blaze Pizza fundraiser this month went great! As you can probably tell, we are pizza people 🍕 Huge thank you to everyone who came out to support us. We appreciate all the help!

Our Project Lead Karyna Villalba met with EWB state representatives to discuss mentorship and future statewide fundraising endeavors with other national chapters. We’re excited to expand our horizons and make connections far and wide!

The Nitty Gritty

For those involved or familiar with our work in Peru, here are the nitty-gritty details on what progress we’ve made this month:

The communications team has been reaching out to the Peruvian government and Cenprodic, a nongovernmental organization that worked on a previously built irrigation reservoir in Maras, Peru. We are reaching out to other organizations that have worked in the area and researching geological data so we can better understand the environmental situation. We have also contacted the university’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Science to gain knowledge about agricultural mechanics. We have specifically been researching water and soil data and evaporation rates so we can conduct a water balance test. With a water balance test, we can optimize the size of our irrigation reservoir design.

Andrea Essenfeld, a new member of our communications team, is going to be educating our team on Peruvian culture at our general body meetings. Gaining the community’s trust and respect is our top priority, so we need to develop our global mindset.

As design team outlines their alternative analysis report, the communications team is reaching out to prominent community members to present our alternative projects.

• Alternative Analysis Report - For every project we plan and design, we must submit an alternative analysis report to EWB-USA. An alternative analysis report provides details about our project design and purpose, 5 possible project alternatives with an in-depth comparison of each, our project schedule and a design drawing package. This report is an important part of our planning process, and it helps us prepare to adapt in changing circumstances during our implementation trip.

The fundraising team is drafting emails and discussing who to reach out to with our new sponsorship packet. If you believe your company may be interested in sponsoring us, please reach out to our Fundraising Lead Robert Feder at fundraising.ewbufperu@gmail.com or follow the instructions on our sponsorship package under payment information.

Again, our team is so thankful for your support. From all of here at UF Engineers Without Borders Peru Team, we would like to wish you and your family a Happy Thanksgiving and a blessed holiday season. Go gators! 🐊