A Successful Burere Assessment

EWB-UC is proud to have completed a very successful assessment trip for the Kingigoro primary school project in Burere, Tanzania. The information gathered on this trip will be vital for the review of the project this coming autumn. Pending approval and successful fundraising, the team hopes for approval to begin construction in Tanzania this coming winter.

A special thank you is in order for Tom Bible who, without having had a major role in the first stages of the project, offered to be our mentor on this trip. His help was immensely helpful as we gathered data and we are happy that he is interested in continued support of the design.

The trip was an amazing growing experience. I'm very happy that my term as president of EWB-UC could start with such a moving event in my life. I hope that everyone will keep up with Blueprints and http://ewb-uc.org/ this summer to hear some of the stories from the trip as well as news about the Burere project as it nears design completion. It feels great to be home, but the work to help the Burere community construct their new school continues!

May EWBer of the Month: Brittany Dexter

Congratulations to Brittany Dexter for being our May EWBer of the Month. Brittany worked hard as a member of the design committee to make all the materials we used at our banquet. From the invitations to the little table-tents, we got great feedback on how well everything was designed.

Especially important was Brittany's work on the EWB newsletter. She revised our design to fit with our national logo and helped give our newsletter the reboot that it needed. You can find our latest newsletter here. 

Also, congratulations for Brittany on graduating this year with her degree in Graphic Design from DAAP. Thanks Brittany, we wish you all the best!

EWB Banquet a Huge Success

Thank you to everyone who attended our Spring Banquet last Thursday. We received an incredible amount of positive feedback, and we're already looking forward to making it better for next year. We had notable speakers such as Provost Santa Ono and Student Body President Alan Hagerty attend and speak to the integral part EWB plays to UC. We also had our keynote speaker, Keith Zook, coordinator of P&G's Children's Safe Drinking Water Program demonstrate the power of clean water firsthand, using their PUR packets. After purifying muddy water to crystal-clear drinking water, members and our speakers made a toast using the newly cleaned water. (pictured above)

We also had several of our partners there, such as Chris Lewis, founder of Village Life Outreach Project and Raj Mehta, the director of UC's Honors Program. Finally, thanks to our faculty mentors and advisors; Dr. Dan Durbin for Burere, Dr. George Suckarieh from Burere, and Dr. Margeret Kupferle who is our dedicated organization advisor. On top of the countless hours they spend advising the group, it was great to have them attend our banquet.

Jim Moyer, our new president, also gave an overview of our future plans for EWB. You can view the whole presentation here. We talked about our upcoming trip to Burere in under 2 weeks, as well as our next trip scheduled for Winter of this year, where we plan to start construction of the Burere school. We also showed our plan for Nyambogo, with a final assessment trip and design selection planned within a year. Finally, we showed how we intend to transfer knowledge from Burere's school to Otho Abwao's and begin construction in Spring of 2012. We also highlighted new successes outside of our traditional projects, such as our new Future Cities after school tutoring program.


On top of all the presentations and speakers, we had some fun as well. We raffled off several prizes, both souvenirs from past EWB trips and shirts, scarves and blankets screen-printed with our EWB logo. We also had a delicious dinner and desert. (special thanks to Classic Fare catering for reducing the price per plate as a donation) In the end, we're incredibly excited that all the hard work we put into the event paid off. We've said it dozens of times, but thank you to everyone who attended and to all the EWBers for all the hard work you put in to make this happen. We look foraward to seeing you all here again at next year's banquet.

Click here to view all the Banquet photos

Last Chance to RSVP for Spring Banquet

The date of our spring banquet is fast approaching, if you haven't turned in your RSVP yet, or by our mistake, never received an invitation-don't worry, there's still time! Email banquet@ewb-uc.org right now to reserve your spot.

Our spring banquet will be held on May 26th in the Presidential Banquet Hall of Lindner Center at UC. The program will begin at 6:30pm and will consist of a catered dinner, speakers such as UC Provost, Dr. Santa Ono and Stundent Body President Alan Hagerty, and presentations by EWB members about project progress.

If you have primary-aged children, there will be a craft program run concurrently with the main banquet so the whole family can attend without worrying about a babysitter.

Whether you're a company or organization that has sponsored us, a professor or professional that has guided us, or a family or friend that has cheered us along the way, we want you to come to our banquet.

An $80 per plate donation is encouraged to cover the expenses of holding this event and help fundraise for our projects. If you're on facebook, you can also RSVP to the facebook event. But remember, the official RSVP is done by emailing banquet@ewb-uc.org.

Please include this information with your RSVP email

Number/Names of Adults

Number of Children

Donation Amount

Thank you and we hope to see you there!

Committee Updates

This week the Nyambogo Project Committee has two new advisors, Nalin Sahni and Todd Trabert. We are looking to have our alternative analysis for this project done by the end of the month and we are hoping to move into the design phase by the beginning of next year.
In the Burere Project Committee, we are looking to meet with Peter next week for our assessment form and getting ready for the summer assessment trip. We are slated to have this project implemented during the winter holiday next year.

The Banquet is swiftly approaching and with only 2 weeks left we are kicking it into high gear to get everything ready in time.
We are stepping it up in our Fundraising Committee as well. We are in the process of applying for a grant that will hopefully cover the cost of our Otho Abwao project. We are also working on business cards and donation boxes.