Columbia University EWB – Executive Board

MEETING AGENDA

February 7, 2010

In attendance: Sonal, Sarah, Bruce, Kevin, Bethany, Christen, Dhristie, Lucy

1. Updates from PLs

India

Ghana had conference call with their professional advisor, Winnie. She said “source separated latrines are a BAD idea.” Working on latrine project, looking for KVIP design that doesn’t require frequent pumping. No progress this week on water project(they are meeting later today).

Uganda- MFP project same. Water project: not going to do a potable water filter, so they are going to work on a distribution system instead. Starting to design spigot system.

2. Colorado Conference

– Final List of Names-Sarah has it! Eleven people are on the list right now. 5 boys, 6 girls.

– Budget, Cost. Kevin spoke to Pete. Planning to take out $2500 out of our allocation and use the $500 travel grant. We plan to pay all of hotel and registration, and reimburse (by our calculations) $120 of airfare. If 11 people come, they will be reimbursed only $40 for airfare, but not have to pay for hotel and registration.

Question: Can we take out more money? From which account? Should we cut down the number of people we are bringing? We’d rather not cut down the list.

3. Debrief

– Earth Institute Meeting: Sarah, Dhristie, and Lucy. Louise had contacts for all 3 teams. We need to make a needs list for all 3 teams. She put us in contact with Lisa, who may do a grant-writing workshop for us. PL’s send the needs list to Sarah.

– MCN Event – they have many workshops and they help student groups to find speakers and mentors. If we are part of this, we can call them up and they will find people for us. They have conferences in Boston and NYC. But do we want to sign their agreement? If you sign, you have to attend a monthly meeting. We will have to send them our meeting minutes every week and attend meetings once a month. PL’s will present this agreement to each program to get their feedback. They have another meeting on the 27^th. If we want to apply for their $1000 grant, we need to get our membership and application done by February 27^th.
- SIPA Net Impact and Kevin Hong : We were thinking of talking to him. His group does a lot with Micro-Finanance. We could organize a training session with them. Bruce and PL’s will plan a meeting with him to discuss a training session.
- grant application and possible Stevens partnership
- membership contract

Meeting with Dr. Regine Lambrech: This Friday at 1.

Ideas to bring up:

-Fall charity event in addition/instead of Beyond Borders.

-Corporate Campaign. Do you have any suggestions of how we can access alumni networks? Show her our corporate campaign letters.

-Bring all our PR materials at the meeting. Ask her what needs to be improved?

-Show her our needs list.

Sonal’s Meeting with CUIT: If we want to give >30 people access to our documents online, a Courseworks style page would not be practical. They suggested that we store our files on our websites.

Green Umbrella: E-Board should send someone to their meetings. When do they meet?

Survey: There is an old survey on the Hard-drive that Katelyn sent out. Asking what kind of skills you have: language, websites etc. How would YOU like to help? What do you expect to get out of the program? Are you just here to build your resume? Beyond Borders Feedback. Ideas for this year. Changes. Likes/Dislikes. Rating of their current involvement.

Have a 1 to 5 rating system, but make sure there is an “I’m not involved option.” How well do you feel the other programs? How well do you feel that you know E-Board? Have an open comment box at the end. Sonal will send out a list of possible questions to E-Board tonight.

Party: CU-EWB will be having a party. Pot-luck. Programs will bring different kinds of food. India: Dessert. Ghana: Main course. Uganda: ? Date: March 6. Right before midterms! So people will not be stressed.

Bamboo Bicycle Project: They will be having community bicycle-building days as a fundraiser. It would be in Brooklyn.

Columbia University EWB – Executive Board
MEETING AGENDA
January 31, 2010
In attendance: Bruce (VP), Sarah (VP), Sonal (President), Kevin (Treasurer), Bethany (Secretary), Christen (Uganda)

1. Updates from PLs
Christen (Uganda)- Getting our water Project ready for TAC approval. Had a conference call with Pilgrim. Met with Pilgrim member in NYC. Met with faculty advisor, V.J. Modi. Discussed MFP’s, we do not have a jatropha oil supply chain left. We are probably going to pass off the jatropha business to Pilgrim. Beginning travel meetings this week.
Bruce (Ghana)-Kids day idea has been scrapped because the engineering department already does a similar program, and for free.
Kevin (India)- Recounted the winter-break trip. Each sub-group is going to present at the beginning of the meeting on their current research.
- Newsletter material

2. Colorado Conference
We will cover registration fee and cost of flight back to NYC. You have to pay for half of your hotel costs (this expense should be $25.) and your flight to Denver.
Send your names to Sarah Glazer if you are interested AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
We would like to send 8 or 9 people.
E-Board wants to send: Sonal!
- Number of members traveling.
5 from Uganda, no one yet from Ghana, 2 from India. Usually we send 2-3 per group.
We have $3400 ABC allocation left and $500 travel grant (this is in our EWB account).
Ask what would happen if someone dropped out of conference.
- Costs.
- Poster. Due February 19. Write a paragraph about your program and add 3 pictures. Sarah will mail out the old poster in Publisher format and send EWB guidelines as attachments.

3. NEEDS LIST (in case Alumni/mentor offers us something)
Uganda program- We are looking for a new mentor because Steve Forbes is stepping down. There are a couple people that we are approaching. We would like a faculty advisor for the water team. We have a contact with the earth institute, but we really need a professional advisor who can go on the summer trip with us.
India Team-Air Pollution meter. Soil, clay expert.
Ghana-need a chemical. Contacted some folks about it. It is hard to get transport it out of the US into Ghana.
Internal Database. Uganda has almost filled up their Google group.
4. Debrief Meetings
- MCN (Millennium Campus Networks) they have a similar model in Boston. On February 6, Lincoln Center, they will have their first meet and greet with all the student organizations that are interested in joining at 6 PM. In the past, they have not been very good with communication.
- Earth Institute
Bethany and Sonal went to this on Friday, January 29. There were 3 SIPA students who created Google Form, www.students4haiti.org. They are going to match up people’s skills with a project/need and plan spring break trips.
- Contact with Mentors

5. Survey Questions

6. Days on Campus

7. Earth Week
Are we keeping in contact with Green Umbrella?
Sarah says we should do something!
Bethany: Keep in contact with Student groups, offer our support to help with one of their events. Say something like, “as you plan your week, if you see any opportunities for us to participate, we would be willing to help with an event.” Something like that.

8. Party Planning

9. Funding/Outreach to Alumni/Companies
Dean Pena-Mora is interested in helping us outreach to alumni.
Could we have an alumni outreach/fundraising dinner? Alumni can buy table, EWB students sitting with alumni and a presentation about our projects. Guest speaker.
How would we reach out to alumni? Career centers, department heads, alumni affairs have their own contact lists, which they will not give to us (they will contact their contacts for us).
Put it in the SEAS bulletin?
10. Dr. Regine Lambrech (SEAS director of global initiatives)

11. Newsletter
Ways to keep projects updated on what other projects are doing.

12. Project Manager Meetings
Can probably be monthly. It doesn’t need to be at the Board meeting. We can have a separate meeting just for project managers.