Hi Northeast Region Admins!

Please address the following and forward to your membership as needed.

Elections....
As promised, it's time to vote for the 2010 Northeast Region Executive Secretary.  This position will be held for 2 years, through Fall 2011.  Each chapter is allotted one vote, so please coordinate with your group before submitting your choice.  Please vote here by March 15, 2010 at 11:59pm.

Conference....
We are a little more than 2 weeks away from the 2010 EWB-USA International Conference in Denver, Colorado.  If you have not signed up yet, or would like more information about the event, please visit the EWB-USA Conference Webpage.

Thanks to a successful workshop, the Northeast Region will be offering six (6) $250 scholarships to NER members attending 2010 the International Conference.  One scholarship will go to a member of a developing chapter and the remaining spots will be selected randomly by lottery. The application deadline is March 5, 2010, so please apply soon!  The application is here.

Workshop 2010....
Applications for the hosting the Northeast Region Fall 2010 workshop are due Monday March 8, 2010 at 11:59pm. Benefits to the hosting chapter (or chapters, if you want to collaborate) include the ability to help shape the workshop content and program, promotion of your chapter and school name, significantly reduced attendance fees for members of your chapter, and a portion of
any profit.   The chapter application can be found here. Please send completed applications to Bree Carlson (president@ewb-northeast.org). The Northeast Region Steering Committee will make a decision by March 15, 2010.  If you have any questions about hosting a workshop, please contact Bree.

Technical Webinars...
Regular webinars, hosted by EWB-USA, are available and open to all EWB members.  The next EWB-USA Technical Webinar is on March 11th from 2:00 to 3:30 PM EST, and is on "How to Complete the 521 Pre-Assessment Report."

Link:  https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/941800611
Phone:  (866)-614-4098
Call in ID:  8530069

NER Forum....
The Northeast Region has the advantage of having many chapters in close proximity to each other, yet at times, it can seem like we're all a world apart. To help open more collaboration among the region, we've set up a page on the Northeast Region Forum for chapters to post their public events. As you all know, many of our chapters host speakers, hands-on trainings, social events, etc., but getting the word out to nearby EWB members isn't always easy. We hope this forum will make it easier for collaboration. In addition to posting updates on the forum, you can also subscribe to different pages and receive e-mails when updates are made.

Please register yourself as a member.  If you have any questions about the forum, please contact Alexander Aman (forum@ewb-northeast.org).


Bree & Julie, Co-Presidents
EWB-USA Northeast Region

See the following from James McBryan of EWB Orange County Prof Chapter:

 Hello all!

 I am a member of a project in Olancho, Honduras with the Orange County chapter.  We currently have in our grasp one of the RAREST and EXPLOSIVE fundraising opportunities in the history of our projects: the company Springsoft will donate $3 everytime someone plays an online game.  I wanted to share this with you because 

 1) it is hard to get fundraising resources for IT related projects within EWB

2) the social networking potential of the internet can help developing countries more and more!

 In the game, you protect laptops from evil monsters so that these laptops can one day be given to a child to in a developing country so they can use it one day for information and education.  And, at the end, you have to register to win the iPod so that they can track how many people have played the game.  Your email will only be used to contact the winner.

 To play this game, just go to: http://www.springsoft.com/holiday/2009

 Thank you all for reading about our current fundraising progress and if you feel so moved, please pass this on.  Any effort to play this game or share it with someone else will directly bring needed funds to Olancho, Honduras.

 James

For more information on elections please see the Elections 2010 webpage!

A total of ten scholarships are now available to members of the EWB-USA Northeast Region.  The purpose of this scholarship is to provide a portion of registration and travel related fees for student and professional members wishing to attend the 2009 EWB-USA Northeast Region Workshop, held in Boston, Massachusetts from November 6 to 8, 2009. Scholarship recipients will receive $100 each. A total of ten scholarships will be awarded, one of which will go to a developing chapter.  The remaining scholarship recipients will be selected randomly by lottery. The application deadline is October 9, 2009.

To apply for a scholarship, please go here: http://tinyurl.com/NER-Scholarship.

If you have any questions, please contact me at workshop@ewb-northeast.org.

Warm regards,
Bree Carlson
Co-President
EWB-USA Northeast Region

Hi fellow EWB members of the Northeast,

The festival is just a week away!  We are going to have some amazing musicians at this years Jamaica Green Festival along with healing arts (massage, acupuncture, nutrition) and a bunch of sustainability and green workshops (permaculture, soap making, cheese making & wild edible species identification)...all to benefit Engineers Without Borders projects to help communities in need....check out the festival website and flyer for details:

http://www.ewbnewyork.com/jamaicagreenfestival/

We will also use this as an opportunity for an informal meet up of chapters in the region and discuss projects for mutual benefit.

 

Hope to see you there!  And please spread the word to chapter members and anyone else.

Be well,
Jason

--
Jason Kass
Engineers Without Borders

.. and thanks for participating!

I am a water professional trained in city planning who is studying theological ethics at Boston University's School of Theology. There, I am concentrating on ecological ethics with regard to water management, with a special interest in access to water as a human right. For my practicum in the coming academic year, I am undertaking a series of conversations about water as a human right with people around Boston who are affiliated with Engineers Without Borders. My goal over the year is to work toward clarifying some moral criteria pertaining to development and allocation of water resources in order to assist civil engineers, economists, scientists, and others who are technically-oriented in decisions they may have to make regarding water resource management. Given the prospect of climate change in coming years, its potential impact on water supplies, and reports of existing and growing water scarcity in places around the globe, better guidance in these questions seems to be needed.

In order to ground this work in specific problems involving conflicts over water rather more than in theory, I am asking for suggestions about cases that may help to bring some of these ethical questions to the surface. My purpose here, too, is to find material that will be interesting to people who are technically-trained, but also morally concerned. So, if you know of cases involving water conflicts that involve ethical questions that you think will be interesting for your peers to learn about, or, perhaps better, have come across cases that have left you a little concerned or even troubled, please let me know about them. I am trying to come up with three cases to consider with people in Boston in our conversations next academic year. All suggestions for problems worth examining are welcome. You may send your thoughts to me through Julie Gagen/Mass State Representative.

---

Updated on 6/3/09 (see attached for full description)

A Human Right to Water? 
Beginning Ethical Consideration of Water Development and Allocation Decisions 
 
Water, often now a limited resource, has historically been at the center of tensions between 
competing interests in locations all over the Earth. Increasing population pressures, combined 
with the prospect of climate change and reports of water scarcity worldwide, are making 
decisions about water development and allocation not just difficult, but painful. In these 
circumstances, those who contribute to such decisions – scientists, engineers, economists, and 
others who are often schooled and trained primarily in technical fields – may find themselves ill‐
prepared to come to what they believe to be equitable solutions to very challenging social and 
technical problems. 
 
This project proposes to test over the coming academic year what theological and ethical 
reflection may offer to help clarify some of the choices that lie with these decision‐makers – 
choices that may affect persons, cities, and regions for years, or even for generations. Working in 
Boston with technically‐oriented professionals and students who also feel some moral concern 
about the consequences for others of their work in the water field, this undertaking will make 
water as a human right the starting point for a cycle of discussions that try to discern some 
helpful guidelines for these hard choices. 
 
The project has three goals: 
 
• Identify case studies that bring some of the current ethical issues present in water 
development and allocation forward. These cases are intended to provide shared 
material for joint discernment toward strong grounds for ethical decision‐making in this 
area. 
• Identify a small set of questions that encourage decision‐makers in the water business to 
examine for themselves with greater depth and clarity the implications and consequences 
of the choices that they make. 
• Work toward articulating a small number of criteria that provide guidance and support 
to those involved in making decisions about water supply and sanitation in light of the 
challenges that are named above.