Date Auction Fundraiser Raises $1830

This past Friday was our date auction fundraiser. Students auctioned off the opportunity for a date to the highest bidder to raise money for EWB. In total, we raised $1830 for the Burere school project. 

This event topped off a full week of crazy events that made up EWeek, the week celebrating engineers. This year's superhero-themed EWeek had tug-of-wars, paper-airplane contests, skit competitions and more. EWB had 2 teams that competed as part of these events. 

A special thank you goes Engineering & Applied Science Tribunal for their work in planning the date auction and EWeek as a whole. Also, thanks to all the brave souls who got on the auction block for charity, and the generous benefactors who bought them!

Lights Out Fridays Going Strong

One of the several Education Committee Initiatives this year is Lights Out Fridays. Through Lights Out Fridays (LoF), EWB-UC members go around every Friday in the late afternoon and shut off lights left on in classrooms all around campus. The point in this program is an effort to change the energy culture at the University of Cincinnati. Lights left on on Fridays will probably be left on an entire weekend, wasting a lot of energy. If this is happening every week in classrooms all over campus, that can add up to quite an additional strain on UC's pocketbook. EWB students calculate the savings based on the amount of lights turned off, and we hope to submit a proposal to the University of Cincinnati at the end of the year, calling for installation of the motion sensing lights in classrooms across campus. This new equipment could easily be purchased with the money which UC has already saved from the EWB LoF team! This is exactly what EWB-UC stands for: sustainable solutions through partnership, that educate our community!

We like to have fun, too! Check out this great promotional video by two of our very own LoF leaders!

Summer Travelers Selected

After reading all the applications, we've selected our two travelers for the June assessment. Linea Olsson & Jim Moyer will represent EWB on our assessment in Burere. This assessment is focused on preparing all the final details necessary before school construction can start. We'll be bringing an updated memorandum of understanding to sign with the village council, and showing layout drawings of our proposed school. Linea & Jim will also be planning out water management necessary for concrete mixing on site, and securing building materials.

This trip will be part of a Village Life Outreach Project brigade. Along with representatives from EWB, UC med students will be traveling to conduct health clinics in VLOP's three communities. Students from the UC Honors Program will also be traveling on the brigade, as a culmination of a humanitarian design class taught by DAAP architect Michael Zaretsky. This multidisciplinary team will surely create an exciting and unique trip experience for all the travelers.

Jim is a 3rd year in Civil/Environmental Engineering originally from Toledo. He's currently EWB's internal vice president and has been since Spring of 2009. Jim has also worked closely on the Burere design since he first joined EWB during his freshman year. Jim's the person who schedules all of our great general meeting speakers, plus he oversees our project committees.

Linea is a freshman in Chemical Engineering who is actually an international student from Sweden. Linea has already gotten involved in both the Nyambogo committee and External Affairs. Through External Affairs, she's managed to forge connections with the co-op office (we're now presenting about EWB in Intro to Co-op classes) and Student Government(SG is currently investigating a bill that would make service-based travel eligible for UC International Grants based on their educational merit).

We're excited to have two great EWBers representing us on our assessment. As it gets closer to June, look for more updates on our trip.

EWB Hosting Invisible Children Screening

Last year, we hosted one of Invisible Children's road teams to screen their documentary.  This year, we're doing it again. IC is back with a brand new documentary that's more ambitious than ever and looking to get the word out.  The Invisible Children team will be coming hear to screen their new movie,"Tony" as part of their Congo tour.  This film will show the latest updates on IC's fight to end the LRA's reign of terror in Northeast Africa.

Our screening date is Thursday, April 21st in 525 Old Chem.  As the date approaches, we'll be releasing more details and advertising the event to all of UC.  As alway, the screening's free so bring all your friends!


If you have Google calendar, you can add the event right now by clicking the button below.

Future Cities First Meeting a Success!

The Engineers Without Borders After School Program, Future Cities, just completed its first meeting - and what a blast! This week there were about twenty 3rd to 8th graders that participated. We really just wanted to get to know the kids, so today we talked about recycling and tried to as learn as many names as possible. As you can see from the picture, we made recyclable name tags. As a group, we still have a lot to learn about working with younger kids, but we are so excited to do it! Stay tuned for more Future Cities news - if you are interested in our program, or would like to help, contact Mark Schutte and schuttmp@gmail.com.