Columbia University EWB – Executive Board

MEETING AGENDA

April 25, 2010

In attendance: Sonal, Kevin, Burce, Lucy, Bethany, Dhristie, Christen

Alison (arrived late)

1. PL Updates

Ghana-Had another meeting with professional advisor yesterday. Finalizing summer travel details. Professional traveling with them (Ghanaian engineer in NYC) has been in on conference calls as well. Travel team has been meeting for 3 weeks and discussing what they need to bring and what vaccines they need.

Poster file was messed up when it was emailed, and the person printing it did not check the file before it was printed.

Planning water testing: what to test, what kits to buy.

India- If they are going to send a team, they will send them in August, and the purpose will be to find a project that is feasible and getting a new NGO contact. Waiting to meet with Greg van Kirk, who runs a company called Community Solutions. Inviting him to come to an EWB meeting. They work in Guatemela and have figured out how to combine micro finance with development work. Have done a successful project with smokeless stoves. He has been out of the country for a while.

Uganda- Submitted pre-assessment information on Sunday. The next day, we got an email from EWB-USA with a warning. We submitted a request for June travel trip, but our travel began on May 25. We had to modify our trip dates to avoid getting a Type A warning, so we are now going from June 1-June 25.

Working to buy everything that we need for the trip. We need to work on getting our money from the P3 grant from the Mechanical Engineering Department. We have to set up Pilgrim as a licensed vendor with the MechE department. As soon as we figure out when we are leaving, we will buy our tickets. We will mostly use our Boeing grant travel money for this summer’s trip.

Had our last travel meeting this week.

2. Website Updates

– Workshop with Angela , Master of Photography

Photography workshop, Sunday, 12-1:30 PM in 627 Mudd

HUGE interest from Uganda theme

Topics: Photo composition, how to ask, “can I take your photo?”

Should we have food? Bagels!

3. AECOM Meeting

4. Email

– Global Health AMSA

Sonal received an email from Global Health: They would like help with an event involving sleeping on the lawns, performances by dance groups. Raise interest for a petition to Congress to help with AIDS world wide.

Their planning meeting is TODAY.

5. Columbia Students for International Service (CSIS)

A new student group, institutionalizing student groups that do service internationally, put it into a classroom setting. They want to meet with us, to find out how we work and how we see ourselves fitting into their organization. They are working with Jack McGourty. They invited us to their meeting on May 2 with Jack McGourty. Sonal, Peter, and Hannah are definitely going.

6. Millenium Campus Networks

They want us to present at one of their meetings. Sonal responded to them, saying that, Yes, we are very interested in presenting. We await their response.

Yesterday’s meeting was cancelled.

Our presentation: We should have a themed presentation! Either a panel format or presentation format.

Columbia University EWB – Executive Board

MEETING AGENDA

April 18, 2010

In attendance:

Sonal, Sarah, Lucy, Christen, Alison

Bruce, Kevin

1. PL Updates

Uganda-Pre-Assessment report is due TODAY! Met this week with Vijay Modi, Pilgrim to discuss how they can use the P3 grant money. Discussed what is the future of the project after we’ve used the P3 money. Will be learning about how to use purchase orders and invoicing so that Pilgrim can order things and be reimbursed. Setting up conference calls with EarthWise(Jatropha source) and meetings with Pilgrims Edward and Dorothy. (Edward Eleazer: Pilgrim’s science researcher.

Exciting Update: MFP in one village was used so much, that the mill’s hammers were worn out. Without even telling Pilgrim, the village went and replaced the mill attachment.

The other MFP village is having leadership issues.

Deadline for us to use the P3 money: We have to use it by April 2011.

Ghana-Preparing for Earth institute presentation on the 23^rd. Narrowing down what kind of testing techniques they need to use. Finalizing latrine design. Started travel meetings (right now, 9 people want to go).

India-Not sure if they are sending a travel team this summer. We need a new contact for an NGO.

3 SubTeams are continuing to meet. Researching alternative designs and case studies.

CPR First Aid Training- Went Super-Well! Hooray!

2. Website Updates

Teams have been sending in info. Haven’t been put up on-line yet.

Before posting on-line, Bruce should make sure writing and formatting is uniform.

Add water conference info to the website.

3. DOC Debrief

Powerpoint presentation.

– Presentations

– What Worked

We had more pictures in our powerpoint! We had freshman on our panel! The amount of participation from EWB members. T-Shirts. Pictures up. People presenting were in charge of making slides for the parts that they were presenting. Anecdotes worked well for our audience. Spending time practicing is definitely worth it.

• Need to work on: We need to practice our presentation. We need to have a couple of different presentations set and ready to go, to pull out of our sleeve whenever we need it. We need to be more polished (this requires time and practice).
• Some prospective students got the impression that this was just a summer program. We had tried not to get into the chapter structure, because we thought people just wanted to know what we were doing. But we should have covered just a few of these basics.
• Answer: What do you do on a week to week basis?
• We should get a clicker to change our slides professionally.
• We had freshman and a lot of the leadership is very young. So it would be good to have a couple “veterans” to give the impression that we have more experience.
• Start with a video that tells students WHAT Ewb is, then “zoom in” for more information about the chapters and about our programs.
• Emphasize that other schools are very professor driven, whereas we are entirely student driven. But showing the video from EWB-USA would show that we are connected to a larger, super-professional whole.

Our next big presentation is for AECOM! We have to be super polished and very technical!

4. AECOM Meeting Updates

What AECOM has said about our press materials: they would like to see more, higher quality press materials.

5. PM Stuff

Collect T-Shirt Money!

6. E-mails

– NY-EWB partnership

7. General Body Meeting

April 29 at 5:30-6:30. Discussing Beyond Borders. At the CCE conference room.

EWB E-Board Meeting Minutes April 4^th, 2010

In attendance: Sonal, Lucy, Dhristie, Christen, Alison, Bruce, Sarah, and Kevin

Congrats Lucy on the EWB Campo Party!!!!!!

Things to think about next time:

§ Continue to spend money on the DJ

§ Keep the free shots – definitely the incentive to come

§ Policing at the door

§ Already give team back money – now only need to pay back campo complementary shots

§ Compile documents

§ Possibly two per semester- definitely have

§ Campo perks – have drink specials, not as strict on IDs

§ Could look at other venues

§ At 1 – 1:30pm needed bigger policing at the door

§ Need stamps so have one way to know who is coming in

§ Talk to the bouncer about letting people in waves

§ Clear about only having one drink ticket

Program Updates

India: Dhristie

The India Team has broken up into three teams. The first is a cook stove case study team, and the project history team to get contacts

Uganda: Alison and Christen

Pilgrim is looking to expand the MFP project. Before they travel they are putting together a training manual on putting together the MFP. The team will be meeting with Modi on Tuesday, so that they can discuss details and use the MFP money appropriately. They are also planning to pass on proposal to VJ Modi for the summer internship proposal for faculty support and suggestions of who to get in contact with.

Ghana: Lucy

Had a conference call and on working on getting another professional mentor who will also be traveling with the team this summer to Ghana. He will also be covering his own travel costs. Have decided on two travel trip for the summer and are working on getting in touch with the community to decide between three different latrine options and will be distributing a survey. In addition they are also working out the details for their water project.

The water conference is this Friday. This will be another source of funding for the Ghana team, and students are welcome. Lucy will send updates to the group.

Treasury: Kevin

Conference reimbursements will be given to three team members who then distribute it to other members. We are waiting for the EWB grant money. Travel teams are still waiting to be reimbursed. Will be collecting T-shirt money this week as well and T-shirt costs will be $12. The website was also paid for.

Website Updates: Sonal and Bruce

Have updates from each team and then have a link to the minutes. Have under latest news and include what PLs should announce. Should also change the picture on the front page and can have a rotation for updating the website.

Send your updates to Bruce once a month. Bruce will sit down with Cindy this week to be website trained and will train the secretaries from each team.

PR Materials:

Update the brochure materials. Have each brochure updated by next semester. Converting brochures to black and white to hand out Friday.

Create a master presentation.

Days on Campus: Sarah

Activities fair, Barnard, and CC and SEAS days on campus.

AECOM Meeting: Bruce

Possibly meeting April 30^th

Meeting with CCE: Sonal

Want to meet with us about Lion Share. Spoke about what we want from them. Plans to hold the next general body meeting with them. Could have food at a pizza party sponsored by CCE.

Beyond Borders Meeting:

Two weeks from now. Will discuss it with general body meeting, on Thursday the 22^nd at 5pm

Alternative Gifts market: April 10^th

Not going to participate this year, but will participate in the future.

Summer Proposal for internships: Sonal

Needs to be edited. Met with Dr. Lambret, and gave good feedback and a list of contacts to reach out to. Also spoke with professor Culligan, and is planning to set up a meeting next week. Culligan is also the vice dean.

Newsletter: Get it out by May

Tips for incoming freshman –make sure to send to the incoming class

Interview with Sonal about vision

What are seniors are doing and what they are going to be doing post graduation. What is there best experience

Plans for May/the summer

Honor seniors with a dinner

Standarize tac procedures

Have a PM lunch with Matt Basinger – potentially walk down with his office

Putting together a list of all the type of equipment each team has

Civil lab space

Precalendaring

Beyond Borders

Orientation

Board meetings