Recruiting New Members (New Pics)

We're in high gear recruiting new members as new freshman come to UC for the first time and everybody else returns for fall classes.  We've been hanging posters and tabling at various events.  All in all, we've added over 100 new people to our email list.  Now we're just frantically making last minute preparations for our 1st meeting of the quarter, this Thursday.

If you want to see first hand some of the stuff we've been up to, we added some new photos.
Click here to view our photos from this quarter

Blog Redesigned

As you might notice after a few glances, our blog has undergone a pretty radical redesign.  The black background and narrow post column has been replaced by a textured background with photos on either side of a full width post area.  Since we changed so much of the design, we're also renaming it: from now on, the EWB blog is titled BLUEPRINTS.

Apart from the obvious engineering connotations, we chose the name because like blueprints, this blog is a peek at future ideas and plans that haven't yet come to fruition.  They're designs that still may change or switch with time, but serve as the definitive source of current information on our projects.

As always, you can check all of our latest blog posts on BLUEPRINTS at http://ewbucin.blogspot.com

EWB Speaks at Global Health Conference

Cincinnati Children's had a conference on Global Health and EWB was invited to speak on building community partnerships.  In our talk, we focused on a series of steps to building a solid partnership based on our experience.  They are...

• Make a Good First Impression: know the culture and get to know the people
• Identifying Stakeholders: start meeting the people in the community with influence
• Establishing Roles: create roles like a community contact or decision making committee
• Setting Partnership Terms: agree on areas like funding and community contribution
• Reinforce Roles: train people for their roles and show the rest of the community who the role-members are
• Maintaining Communication: even between trips, keep a steady flow of communication
• Revision and Reaction: constantly evaluate and tweak decisions based on how things are going.

At the Cincinnati Children's Global Health Conference

Latest Burere School Design

Our Burere team has been hard at work over this summer, finishing up the school design for this Winter's implementation.

Here are the latest drawings of the school.  It's a four-room school-house with each room intended for one grade level.

The walls will be concrete columns and confined masonry in-between.  The roof with be wood and corrugated metal sheeting.  The foundation will be constructed while our team is there this December!