I think that we need to be thinking about what we want to lift up here for funding.  I would like to suggest we set the money that WE ARE GOING TO GET (a bit of positive thinking) into a fund that will be used to provide a drinking water supply for the village and the remainder to go to provision of sanitary facilities.  Or maybe combined with the water source a good pump so that we could move water around the village.

I would think that we also should be pitching to the Omidyar alums group as they will qualify for this 100 members in a group competition.

Other ideas????? 

Help me here guys!!!!!!!!!  We have nearly 100 people here and I am sure will qualify for this grant competition but we need to be ready to have the proposal ready to go in a week.

The property is blessed with adequate water sources, but a substantial investment needed to make those water sources safe and useful to people living there.

The  "maybe pump" part jumped out at me.  I think one reason it did is because energy and water are so intertwined. 

Yes, of course, potable drinking water is essential.  And I know that goals are essential for focus.  But when separating out a "potable water source"  it seems sometimes our sights are not on important matters. Running water in households has repeatedly been shown to dramatically decrease the incidence of diarrhea  whereas protected springs and  community wells  often do not decrease the incidence of  diarrhea,  especially in the critical under-five demographic.  There probably are lots of reasons why.  My speculation is that many of the reasons are connected with the human energy to fetch the water.  Mental cost/benefit analysis get invovled when people consider whether or not to wash their hands, for example, or the river water is closer to fetch than water from the well.

I don't think it's effective to simply think about "clean water" as an "it."  The old saw is: materials cycle; energy flows.  When thinking about water as an "it" and an end in itself we turn our attention away from the essential energy flows which enable water to cycle.  Put a pump into the plan, and immediately attention is drawn to the link between water and energy.  So I'm all in favor of thinking pumps in this plan. 

I was looking at John Todd Ecological Design, Inc.   Certainly I don't imagine the kind of money to enable hiring a firm like that,.  On the other hand the kind of thinking John Todd and associates would put into the design are precisely the sort that could make a truly big difference as a demostration project.  So I guess I want my cake and eat it too.  In a general way, it's hard to find the sweet spot: Daring to think big enough to find adequate solutions, but not so big to make it impossible for anything good to happen.

What to do with the grant?  I say yes to water!

John....

I am becoming a believer in miracles. For some unknown reason I do not have access to my mail (or facebook) here at home.  Tomorrow when I get to the office, I will mail John Todd Ecological Design, Inc. with the story of an incredible vision. Maybe it will light a fire in him as it has in us.  Imagine a constructed wetlands water treatment  plan that provides irrigation for our farm fields! And water pumped to the village....

Letter sent....now we wait!

I'm not sure if we have enough "wetlands" for the water treatment/irrigation plant idea - there are small rivers around the farm. But the distance is pretty far to imagine an irrigation system to the fields. John, I think running water to the houses themselves is a wonderful objective to shoot for. But it can really only be a long term ideal at this point, since the community has not yet planned the location of the houses.

The local price to dig and outfit a community borehole is about $7,500. If the water table is high enough (which Norbert thinks it might be) there are less expensive/lower capacity do it yourself boreholes (a pipe driven 10-15 feet straight into the ground with a small pump at the top) that can get water to each household compound. Purifying the water is another issue. There are expensive pumps that can do that for a central supply (like a borehole), but there are also very low cost products like Waterguard on the market these days that can be added to water to purify it.

What might be interesting to think about is a borehole combined with a treatment measure of some kind (either a purification filter/pump or an additive) with the water stored and provided from a water tank where the treated water is stored instead of from the borehole itself.

Just to clarify Christina . .. John Todd Ecological Designs CONSTRUCTS wetlands to do what wet lands do which is naturally clean water. His wen sit eis awesome but pretty graphically intensive.

I am just glad to have some people talking here!

We are just 2 members away from 100.... and we'll need more to really get the grant... so everyone... please share this great opportunity with you mailing lists!

I have put it out to many people and only a few responded, but I'll try again.

This is a great group of people. We can do this!

And yes, water is a must before all else.  Water is life!

Have you seen Playpumps: http://www.casefoundation.org/spotlight/africa/innovation/playpumps

I was also told about a new tool made in Canada that helps people dig a well by hand... unless I heard wrong. And I don't mean a shovel.

I'm keen to build a huge bamboo dome on the farm, or maybe lots of small domes, so I'd like to see some funds go toward that, but these may not cost much anyway.

Again... please help get more votes to put these ideas into action!

<3

Christina,  have you noticed yet that I'm a space cadet?  In one way I very much want to be taken seriously, but then again even I'm pretty skeptical of me and my ideas.  Pragmatic is very good and also where I too often fall short.  And when it comes to grant proposals I well understand they have to be focused.  When I was ruminating about pumps, I wasn't really thinking of anything very focused, rather just an approach to water where energy is included in the thinking.

You wrote:

"What might be interesting to think about is a borehole combined with a treatment measure of some kind (either a purification filter/pump or an additive) with the water stored and provided from a water tank where the treated water is stored instead of from the borehole itself."

Really that's very much in line with the kind of thinking I think is in the right direction, that is, it's thinking about water in terms of cycling rather than as a static entity.

The point about protected springs and wells not always being effective in reducing diarreha is something that comes from statistical inference.  It comes as a surprise, because every one is aware of people using water effectively and safely  from such sources.  It certainly can be done, just as you suggest.

John Todd co-founded The New Alchemy Institute   in many ways the scale of the experiments conducted there during the 1971through 1991are on the scale that well suits the Opok Farm Village proposal.

Water development is essential to the project.  You have identified and cost out specific actions to be taken.  I certainly don't oppose any grant money to be used  for expressly those activities.  But I do hope...strike that...I know that thinking ecologically--thinking in terms of working with natural systems is at the root of the Opok Farm Village vision.  Oh yes, I know that my point of view can get awfully hippy dippy at times.   But I really don't mean to distract from making this vision real, indeed I very much want to help. 

At Bioneers is a short talk by John Todd that's less graphicaly intensive and gives an overview of where he's comming from.  LOL but as I suggested earlier, it seems to me that he's gone on to tackling projects of a bigger scale than Opok Farm Village.  The good news is that John Todd is hardly alone is pursuing such an approach.  And his career has contributed in real ways to fundamental science.  So there are many capable of applying such thinking to a project such as Opok Farm Village.  What I really want to do is to find some of those people and give them a pitch.  We'll see how that goes.

There is an idea forming in my head that directs this particular Razoo fundraising effort toward more of a community building purpose.  I am concerned that allocating this $10,000 to a long term water solution will mean we don't use it right away. For the Razoo community at large it would be nice to be able to report back more quickly on results, I think.

Over at ned.com, we've been talking about bamboo domes, short-term and longer term housing and community building retreats during the course of 2008 that might involve local and international groups in working with child-headed households on emotional/spiritual balancing techniques. Some of the people involved in those discussions are very active here on Razoo with large group networks (apart from this one) of people who want to be a part of doing good things in Uganda. I have a vision forming of how we might propose using this particular grant (that we are going to get) to engage those networks more directly in the community building process. I think we have an opportunity to create a really Razoo rallying effort.

So I'm thinking that in preparation for the first community building retreats that Linda Nowakowski's group from Thailand will be a part of in March/April, we could estimate a rough budget allocation as follows:

We build a model of Cory Richardson's bamboo dome as a group gathering space (+/-$2000)

We build some dorm structures and sanitary facilities from the pressed earth bricks that John Powers (and Norbert) are so excited about (+/-$5000)

We include a budget to purify water from existing sources to service the group retreats planned for the first year, while we take the time to figure out the most appropriate long term water supply options for the community village. (+/- $3,000)

We get Cory's (and maybe John's) live input on further village land use issues and possibly  on associated future Razoo actions to plan during Cory's trip in November - reported back here. (can/should this budget contribute some travel/living expenses ???)

It could be interesting to think about extending invitations to the retreats we plan to some of the other Razoo members who've already been in touch with an interest to visit Opok Farm.

Thoughts?

Of course, we still need 2 more people to join the group before we'll be in a position to propose anything!