Narayana Pappu's Individual Contribution Page

Spring 2009 Contributions

This is my third semester as a member of Aguaclara student project team and the second as a member of Outreach group. The semester started with new members, a new group leader and a task to make the project sustainable commercially as well as increase the project's awareness among student community on-campus and outside. At the beginning of the semester outreach team was sub-divided into two different groups (Fundraising and Public relations) and because of my experience with fund raising in the past I joined the sub-group with an individual responsibility of prepare a constitution for Aguaclara student project team and register the group with the Office of student affairs in Cornell when the moratorium ends.  Throughout the Spring 2009 Semester I have helped to isolate potential grants including the Inter American Agency, applied for and received the National Science Foundation's grant to the Engineering Sustainability conference in Pittsburgh, submitted a summary for the Bio-engineering poster expo at Cornell and researched and compiled a list of Microfinance organizations based in Honduras. I worked with Jake to write and fine tune (through class discussion we both conducted) the constitution for Aguaclara student project team. I also helped Joe with the sample budget and other documents required to submit the grant by the Inter American Foundation.

Spring 2008 Contributions

The semester began with getting to know the new members of the outreach group and familiarizing myself with the new organizational structure of the group. During the very first meeting we decided that it would be a idea to sub-divide the group into Public Relations and Fund raising, with close working relationship with one and the other. Because of my prior experience writing grants I chose to join the Fund raising group along with Joe and Jake. As a new member to AguaClara the first few weeks were spent gaining an understanding of how AguaClara worked and what the Outreach team was charged with.

My first task for the semester was to update the other members of the Fund raising sub team of the work we did last semester. During our first individual meeting I explained Joe and other members of the work I did last semester and the general approach to fund raising. After our initial discussion I forwarded Joe the list of grants I compiled last semester and included the sample grant proposal document I, Erica and Rachael worked on last semester. I submitted the PSC affiliation document I worked on last semester and talked to Amt Samchomvong about possibility of raising money through PSC for the project.

During the first week I got couple of e-mails from Nicole with information about two conferences in Pittsburgh and Ithaca. I worked with Jake to fine tune his poster from last semester for the Engineering Sustainability Conference and edited the Abstract on Aguaclara website for the National Science Foundation grant of $750 which was being given out for students interested in attending the conference. I used the same abstract to submit the application for the Bio-Engineering expo at Cornell.

I gathered information about registering Aguaclara as a group with the student affairs office and worked with Jake to write the draft of Aguaclara constitution. With the help of Nicole we organized a discussion in the class to discuss the constitution with other group leader and prepare the final version with their inputs.

After the National Science Foundation's grant was allocated to Aguaclara for attending the conference in Pittsburgh. I prepared an extended Abstract for the conference and submitted it through e-mail for distribution to other conference attendees. I also prepared a budget for the trip to attend the conference and mailed it over to Kim Ann the conference co-ordinator at University of Pittsburgh.

Last week I read through the websites of BRAC and Grameen to figure out how Microfinance works and if they have any Microfinance based in Honduras. Through Grameens website I found a report about Microfinance in Central America.  I further researched the organizations I found on the report) and the procedures of funding used by these organizations and then compiled them as an excel sheet list. BRAC as it turns out is not involved in Honduras, Grameen only provides technical support to Adelante Foundation (AllAll the Microfinance orgnanizations in Honduras seem to follow the grameen model for lending pursposes, in this model an organization assigns a number of officers to a community to familiarize with the situations on ground and gather loan applications. Once the loan applications are reviewed they decide on potential borrowers (usually the limit is 5 people) and form a group of with all them as members. Then they give money to 2 members of the group (the loan could range from anything between $50 to $5000) and monitor repayments for a two year period. If the two borrowers do return the money on time they extend the loans to everybody else in the group, this dynamics creates a peer pressure among the borrowers to make payments on time. 

During the course of the semester I helped Joe with the sample budget for the IAG grant and connected him with Chris the plant operator. I also connected couple of the team members with Nadine Porter for printing the posters.

In the second half of the semester: I got the contacts of people representing Honduras at Inter American Foundation. Monroe had a conversation with the person in-charge and decided that since Aguaclara's research is not eligible for the IAF Grant and since APP has already worked with IAF to get around $500,000 USD, it should continue applying for funding the projects. I also spoke to Julia Love at resource foundation and connected John and Tamar to her to further the application process. John sent her a proposal, Julia's was very responsive to our request and the application currently under review. In April, I attended the Engineering Sustainability Conference in Pittsburgh where I participated in the poster presentation session. The response to our project was very positive, I distributed the new brouchures to participants (a representative of Sustainable Pittsburgh was very interested in the project and possible uses of Aguaclara technology in US).

Apart from this I found two new Cornell based funding sources for project participants. The first one:

• Bartels Fund is administered by Besty East, the dean of Engineering School. The fund provides upto $1000 for students to do research or get a practical engineering experience working. This could be potential source for students interested in conducting additional research in Honduras and students traveling to Honduras in January.
• HILC (Holland International Living Center) in North campus also provides funding (upto $1000 per project) for projects which have a cross cultural and international educational experience component to them. This could be a potential source of funding to offset some of January trip costs

I am currently with Joe to edit grants to Ford Foundation and Letter of Inquiry to Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I also found a contact at a US based microfinance/microcredit organization with an active involvement in Microentrepresis in Honduras. John is in process of gathering more information on application procedure and other requirements to apply for funding plants. The outreach team members next semester should follow up on this.

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