Friday May 25, 2007 – EWB

So most of you are probably wondering about the volunteer work which should be dominating the start of our stay in India, I’ll explain. EWB started a tsunami relief project in India with grand intentions, however because of its young age and inexperience as an organization I believe it bit off more than was feasible. Over the past year and a half it’s been hard to get the project through the approval process and funded. So our LA chapter housing project which is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, undertaking in EWB is in a position currently of not having nearly enough funding and not having national approval for our project. Our local NGO, which signed contracts to have the housing project done in a year from July 2006, has gotten so tired of not having accurate information about the project that the decision was made to drop EWB-LA. This puts Jenneli and me in a difficult position. Fortunately a few other chapters are doing work in the villages and we will be able to help those projects. Obviously there is a lot of background information and details I’m not providing.

I still feel a little uncomfortable working with our NGO (SDRWC) as rightly they don’t trust us as we initially came as EWB-LA. At this point I would like to get the wells dug for a water pipeline that EWB-San Diego is doing and getting the foundations and information ready for a couple wash stations that EWB-Texas is installing. Both projects are about 15% of the size of the housing project and seem a much better fit for EWB. It pains us both that the project is turning out this way and we can’t get the houses built at this time for the villagers but hopefully over the next year EWB-LA will be able to get the project passed, a new NGO located, and funding so the houses can start. If all goes well Jenneli and I will be finished helping by mid to late June so we can explore more of India.