I recently discovered that the first indigenous president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, was on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart about three years ago. The interview is relatively short, especially because there is lag time throughout the interview to translate between English and Spanish, but it provides a nice snapshot of Morales’ political views, which have had an indelible impact on Bolivia’s recent history.

You can view the interview by navigating to this website.

Today, there was a major development in the fight against indoor air pollution through the use of clean burning cookstoves. The US State department is pledging $50 million dollars over 5 years to support the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. This development is relevant to EWB-UW, as EWB-UW is one of many organizations who are working to reduce indoor air pollution around the globe.

The New York Times published an article on this development here.

I’ve decided that I’m going to try to follow up on crucial meetings by making updates.

Here are some action items that members may want to follow up on after the first general meeting of Spring ’10:

• Engineering Discovery Days: April 23 – 24. EWB is going to create and present exhibits for K-12 kids during the College of Engineering’s Open House. Contact Kathryn (cogerk@uw.edu) if you want to help. The first meeting in preparation for this exhibit is Monday (April 12th), 5:30pm in EEB 403.
• Seis de Mayo Spring Social: May 6th. Mark your calendars for May 6th. More info to come.
• Next Water Project Meeting: The Water Project design phase is just getting started! The next meeting is on Thursday
• Travel application for Roads Project: here. Due to Dean on Tuesday, April 13th. Travel will be between July and August.

The presentation for this meeting can be found by clicking here

– Monica

Congratulations to our new and continuing officers:

President: Mark Raleigh
Vice President: Craig Norman
Secretary: Elaine Chao
Treasurer: Kayla Eychner
Membership Director: Devon Simpson
Fundraising Director: Matt Idso
Ambassador: Matias Gonzalez
Webmaster: Monica Huang
Publicity Director: Kathryn Cogert
Projects Director: Postponed election

General members are needed to vote for the candidates!

We encourage you to get involved with EWB, and becoming an officer — even just running for the position — is a great way to jump right in. If you are interested in running for an officer position for the upcoming school year, we encourage you to fill out a candidacy proposal and email it to ewbuw@u.washington.edu, preferably by Wednesday, February 3rd. You may also show up on election day to run for a position. Candidates will give a short speech about their motivations for running for the position.

Come join us at our first general meeting of the year in EEB 303 at 5:00 PM on Thursday, January 14th.

We have just had our first social of the year, the Edible Car Competition, on Wednesday November 18th. Congratulations to the winning team — Jonah, Dylan, Dana, Sami, Monica, and Rory! Photos of the event are coming soon.

Members of EWB have just returned from a successful implementation of two water systems and more than 60 roofs and stoves, as well as a thorough survey of the road in Yanayo, Bolivia.

Cecil B. Feeder, a filmmaker from San Francisco, accompanied the EWB team to Yanayo. See a clip of his documentary, “Welcome to Yanayo”, here!