Moving Forward

As stated last week, March continues to be a busy month for Empower. The membership of the society has been delayed due to some difficulties in submission of the forms. However, we will be affiliated with ARC, UNSW’s student body, definitely by 2^nd of April 2008. All the members have been e-mailed an updated list of contacts as some of the members chose to leave due to their personal reasons

Dev & Shanil after the meeting

Our off campus grant request would be taken up in May by ARC and we would be informed about the decision in two weeks time after the meeting. As for our own fund raiser activity, it had to be postponed due to the non-booking of space and informing Facilities Management about our fund raiser on a short notice. However, all is not lost. We plan to have our fund raiser soon. Olivia and Johnson would be helping Leesa and Jessica to organize the fund raiser. In order to make the fund raiser a success, all members are requested to send their ideas to Leesa or Jessica. The date of the proposed fund raiser would be e-mailed soon and updated on the blog as well.

Dev, Johnson & Olivia (The Young Empowerers)

As for our project, Shanil is updating the proposal and it would be updated hopefully by the end of this week. The updated proposal will be used to approach Australian School of Business (ASB) and Sri-Lankan corporations for the purpose of funding. Dev has been given the task of approaching a few Multinationals to convince them to fund our project. The good news that we have been able to get commitment of small funding from a Sri – Linkan source. Leesa will be helping Dev in preparing a write up for sending it to companies. Shanil will be identifying more companies, as potential financers, in Sri – Lanka.

Empower will be represented on Dean’s Lunch next week by Shanil and Leesa. It would be a good opportunity for our society to interact with the Dean of Australian School of Business and discuss our project with him. The Lunch will be held at QUAD Room 2083 at 1 Pm on April 2^nd 2008. All members are encouraged to participate in order to make our society’s representation better.

The date for next week’s meeting will be e-mailed to all the members.

Haaris

Affiliation and the Road ahead

March has and will continue to be a busy month for the Empower Team.

We've passed a few critical milestones over the last week. We held our first Annual General Meeting (thanks to all those who came!) as a part of our affiliation requirement with ARC (UNSW's student body).

We handed in our application for an Off-Campus activity grant (Monday 17th) and our affiliation application (Wednesday 19th). We are currently awaiting word from ARC with regard to our affiliation and our progress with our grant application. Here's hoping!

A decision was made to split the strategic focus of the team's leadership; Leesa focusing primarily on fundraising and publicity while I will be focusing on the strategic details of the project itself. We are hoping that this will provide the effort with greater depth and focus.




We are hoping to set up an important meeting between the Energy Forum and UOM next week. The Energy Forum (EF) is currently recommending the village of Kirigalpotta in the Moneragala District (more towards the East of Sri Lanka). Asoka of EF has said that their coordinator has identified two pockets of communities, one with 10 families and the other with 11 that ought to suit our project.

Over the next two weeks I will be focusing on revising the details of our current project proposal and trying to get as much media (Photographs and Video) of the village site and the sentiments of the community. This sort of media will greatly boost our chances of obtaining funding.

Leesa and the rest of our team will be focusing primarily on sponsorship contacts and organizing fundraisers.

Keep posted..

Over and Out,
Shanil