Village Survey : Project Update

Dear Readers,

It has been a while since the last update. Most of the team has been busy with assignments and exam preparation but have been committed to attending meetings and undertaking project tasks. Thank you all!

Accounts - April/May

(Click for a better read)

Registration

We are currently awaiting word from ARC with regard to the status of our Off Campus Community Grant. I was told last week that the amount to be granted was still being discussed and that we'd be contacted when it is confirmed.

Beyond this, our attempts to get corporates on board has been rather disappointing. The topic of recent meetings has been the registration of "Empower" as a not for profit organisation in Australia. This would make donations to the project tax deductible and also make us eligible for formal grants. We made a call to the Australian Tax Office on Thursday and Haaris is following up the legal requirements with Fair Trade.

Kirigalpotha Survey

(Questionnaire)

Asoka emailed me on Friday regarding progress at their end with the survey process. They held a village meeting and a core group of 9 villagers (in picture) were chosen to lead the mobilization process. What this means is that these 9 villagers are trained with respect to certain tasks (interviewing and filling questionnaires in this case) so that they conduct these activities themselves. This is a more participatory approach and allows for a greater deal of comfort.



The Energy Forum has been notified that the 9 mobilizers have completed the task of doing a preliminary survey of the selected sites. Asoka also informed of the fact that women's social status in the community is strong, as indicated by the fact that they compose the majority of the core group. An excerpt from his email;

Villagers decided to initially establish two biogas plants (one each) in village hamlets [Kiriglpotta Asvadduma (15 households) and Pitapola (9 households)] under this proposed project. The mobilization program should be done by stages. We trained the selected core group to do the survey and yesterday they informed that they have completed the household level data survey. The filled forms will reach us early next week. Then only we will be able to analyze the data.

Asoka highlighted that there are over 700 Jak Fruit trees in the area that are currently underutilized due to the lack of a market for the fruit. He suggests that we focus on this as a form of income generation. Sounds very interesting!

I was sent a copy of the survey (in Sinhala) and it does a good job of covering the basics like demographics, primary forms of energy used as well as future intended uses.

Well that's all for now.

Shanil

First Footage

I'm glad to announce that we've received our first batch of video footage from Kirigalpotha in Sri Lanka. The footage is brief but it is all very encouraging as it gives us our first look at the village while also getting some much needed feedback from the village itself.

Meanwhile the Sponsorship effort continues. We're working on a list of Sri Lankan corporates, Sri Lankan owned organisations in Australia and local city councils at this point of time.

New Developments

As usual there are quite a few developments to announce with regard to progress with Empower.


Media Footage from Sri Lanka

First and foremost we've been able to discuss the need for photographs and video interviews from the Kirigalpotta site. The Energy Forum was agreeable to this and they will be arranging a visit to the site for this purpose within the next two weeks.

This footage will give us a distinctive edge when it comes to pitching our project to all types of donor organisations.




Magazine Coverage

I was contacted by an upcoming Sri Lankan magazine that has secured a reader base (primarily the Sri Lankan community in Melbourne) and wishes to do a profile on me and the project. The intent, I was made to understand, is to cover students and their initiatives.

This too should give us some much needed awareness amongst the Sri Lankan expatriate community over here in Australia. I have already articulated to Angie (the writer who contacted me) that the primary intent would be for the project to receive attention and thereby boost interest towards funding.

Fundraiser

Leesa, Jessica, Olivia and Johnson have been looking towards organising a fundraiser for the project. Such an event would have the twin purpose of raising awareness and securing some funding for the project.

While an information booth would educate passers by with regard to the nature of our project, the intent is to sell something of value in order to raise money. The team is currently reviewing a slate of ideas in this regard. A Trivia Night is a possibility that was discussed with some enthusiasm. We'd like to host this event before the end of May in order to secure strong student participation.


Proposal Adjustment and Corporate Financing

The proposal has undergone some revision since last month, particularly with regard to the depth of the background, details of the location, the time line and the roles of partners.

We've also decided to increase our focus on Sri Lankan corporates for funding. We've compiled a list with over a dozen firms, mainly banks and conglomerates that we thought would have an interest in such a project. Dev would be organizing the mail outs while Leesa and I would be managing the relationship there on with follow up calls and emails.


Well that's it for now.


Over and Out,
Shanil

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

Moving Along

Greetings Readers,

The last week was spent focusing on our registration with ARC, the student union in UNSW, as well as sending out briefs.

Registration with ARC ought to be complete by mid-March latest. The team will then be eligible for various grants that we hope will fund a significant portion of the project. Empower will have an AGM on the 10th of March. While it is essential that existing members are present, those interested in joining are most welcome. I will post up the exact meeting details when I get them.




Another piece of exciting news on the financial front is that the Founder of Simple Wisdom (a Sri Lankan NGO), Mr. Florian Palzinsky (My former boss), is willing to contribute between $1000 -$2000 to our cause. He made no promises but he told me that he'd look into gaining more support for our initiative.

This is a valuable contribution though we need to spend even more time trying to strive for a minimum of 50% of the project cost before we can give our partners in Sri Lanka the go-ahead.

On the administration front, Leesa and myself are trying to structure out the interactions between the Energy Forum and the University of Moratuwa team.

Spread the Word

Thanks to Imtiaz of Ozlanka, Empower has been able to secure an article on the website. Ozlanka is a popular website portal for Sri Lankan news and events. With approximately 1.5 million hits per month, an article on the website could provide the project with valuable publicity and encourage donations and financial sponsorship.


The article is already online and can be read at - http://www.ozlanka.com/feb08/empower.htm

Shanil