Good News and Bad News

The good news is that the design of the roof and wall are completed. Eugene, our design lead, emailed out the designs and by the pictures and complicated numbers it looks like the schoolhouse will be ready to withstand any rainstorm, hurricane or earthquake. The bad news is that during the meeting we did cost estimates on the material and found out that we would need a lot of material that obviously requires a great deal of money. Our previous project was the latrines that did not require as much material as a schoolhouse so the costs of materials gave us somewhat of a jolt. Of course we are building the schoolhouse in stages so this way, we can raise the money needed as each stage approaches. If you want to check out the layout of the schoolhouse, they can be viewed through our Google Groups page (see attached link below) listed under discussions as EWB Schoolhouse- Building Layout and Alternatives.
http://groups.google.com/group/ewbucla-nicaraguasanitation?lnk=

Frijolillo

The word "frijolillo" may be hard to pronounce but we are excited to say it! Frijolillo is a tropical hardwood that we recently discovered is sustainable, meets our building standards, and is found in Nicaragua! It is used as a substitute for Cumaru, another hardwood, but frijolillo has all the same valuable qualities as Cumaru. We are very happy that we will be able to use such an ideal material that is environmentally friendly and has the right strength properties so we can construct a stable structure. If you want to learn more about frijolillo or other sustainable wood materials check out http://www.nicaraguahardwoods.com/products/S4S%20Frijolillo%20FAS(Cumaru%20substitute).php

And we are still applying for grants hoping to get enough funding so we can travel this summer. Furthermore, our NGO contact, Marvin, has informed us that the community has been eager for us to start construction on the schoolhouse.

Midterms, Marvin, MOU

Tuesday's meeting saw a decrease in attendance which we blame midterm season for. However, we were still able to have a successful meeting. Karen, who corresponds with our NGO contact in Nicaragua named Marvin, gave us an update that Marvin had given her. Marvin reported that the families in the community are using our latrines! The latrines are basically bathrooms that have chemicals added to the waste to turn it into fertilizer which is helpful since the community is mostly agricultural. Currently, in addition to the schoolhouse, we are working on improvements we can make to the latrines. Marvin also informed us that it is better to transport materials to the village during rainy season because the river will have enough water to make it easy to bring the supplies in the boats. We concluded the meeting with ideas on how to make our MOU (Memorandum of understanding) with the people of Las Brenas more detailed. It is important that once the schoolhouse is completed that it will be well maintained and that there be guidelines on its use.
Keep working on grants so we can fund the schoolhouse!

523, 524, 525

In order for us to continue Project S.E.D and go to Nicaragua, there are three forms that we have to fill out- 523 Alternatives Analysis Report, 524 Preliminary Design Report, and 525 Pre-Implementation Report. We have divided these reports into smaller parts to be more efficient in completing them on time.
Meanwhile, the design phase seems to be near the end with just a few more things to finish up like drawing it up on CAD (Computer-Aided Design). Speaking of CAD, some members of the Nicaragua team went about two weekends ago to a CAD workshop at UCLA to get some basic knowledge of how to CAD. So hopefully we learned enough to apply our newfound skills to our schoolhouse.