Marhaba,
With the help of a power generator we can finally update our blog tonight. Firstly our busy itinerary that we have planned:
Tuesday
Visit to Mar Chaaya monastery in Broummana to get an insight to their agricultural practices in their successful small scale farm.
Meeting residents of the Al-Amal centre for the disabled and tour of sweater making and wheat packaging areas.
Wednesday
Meeting with ICARDA (International Centre of Agricultural Research for the Dry Areas)
Thursday
Meeting with Litani Water Administration
Meeting with Union of Chqeef Municipalities
Field visit of Rock Village site
Meeting with Arnoun Municipality
Friday
Presentation to AUB (American University of Beirut)
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Monday, March 18, 2013
Off to Lebanon!!
We set off tonight towards Beirut via Istanbul. We're all a bit excited to finally visit the country we've been researching about.
For our trip we're aiming to get some quality local insight on the environment we are researching solutions for, some reliable weather data and some knowledge of local perceptions for the ideas we have proposed.
We'll also be presenting to the American University of Beirut on Friday and hopefully we receive some quality feedback from them!
Stay tuned for live updates when we touch down!
For our trip we're aiming to get some quality local insight on the environment we are researching solutions for, some reliable weather data and some knowledge of local perceptions for the ideas we have proposed.
We'll also be presenting to the American University of Beirut on Friday and hopefully we receive some quality feedback from them!
Stay tuned for live updates when we touch down!
Monday, March 4, 2013
Making progress
Today we met up again to discuss our research and to start planning our trip to Lebanon, which we are getting very excited about.
This week we have had some responses about some enquiries made about waterless toilets and given some useful literature to consider in terms of operation and maintenance requirements of different kinds of these "alternative toilets" We have also begun to work on some presentations explaining the concepts which we hope to share to those involved with the project in Lebanon.
Although some average rainfall data was located for Lebanon we are still seeking a more comprehensive historical set of data, as this will aid in the calculations for rainwater tank sizing, which is in the works with aid from a professor at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Hopefully we will get some contacts whilst in Lebanon that will be able to assist with the data. We are also looking at arranging a meeting with some representatives from ICARDA (International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas) as their headquarters are situated in Beirut. Hopefully we hear from them soon!
In the coming days we will continue to brainstorm and finalise our list of questions we would like to answer when we are present in Lebanon as well as a structured itinerary of our activities and meetings so we make the most of our time!
Lastly, we would like to share an executive summary of our project, which we submitted with our project plan and we plan to bring some copies with us to Lebanon to distribute to interested parties of our project. We'd appreciate some feedback on it, so please don't hesitate to leave us a comment or two!
Until next time,
RVG2013
Monday, February 25, 2013
Update
Just a quick update on the workings for the project. We met up today to talk about goals before the trip. We plan on collecting sources and doing research this week. Next week we will come together with our information and develop a plan for our trip on the 18th of March.
We are also planning on developing a survey for the residents/mentors of Al-Amal to see what their needs are along with their understanding of water issues in the area.
Hope you all have a great week!
RVG2013
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Marhaba everyone,
it was an interesting week in Beirut, Lebanon. What a great city to wake up in.
Since we are already interested in working more closely with the American University of Beirut, it seemed like a perfect match to involve the Nature Conservation Center, previously IBSAR, a research group at the AUB. From previous experience, Dr. Najat Saliba, a chemical engineering professor, had been of great help. Her expertise in native rural farming can come in truly handy as agricultural behaviour can greatly influence the use and management of water in a community. In the past, NCC as Ibsar has published a recipe book of native meals that can be easily made using the existing plants in Lebanon's rural areas, that often remain undermined. The recipe book is an aesthetic approach to community outreach and to create more civic engagement in maintaining Lebanon's rich biodiversity.
The Nature Conservation Center states their aims "to promote conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity for the purpose of enhancing wellbeing of people and nature by providing an open innovative and collaborative platform. Their mission is achieved through research, education, community outreach and knowledge dissemination. They hope to establish a recognised reference centre for the study and sustainable use of dry land biodiversity."
This is extremely interesting for us as the Rock Village is, as the name implies, an arid area of rural land. Together with the NCC we thus discussed not only the issues of water management in general terms but also the possibility to promote native agriculture, rather than invasive and imported species of agricultural seeds, that can also lead to extra produce so that farmers can build a strong network with economic benefits to the community. This will be discussed further in the coming month together with skilled staff and academics that could potentially join us in Arnoun.
Nassib and Maria El-Solh, the wonderful people of the Al-Amal Center, will take these discussions forward from now on.
At the same time, the timing of these meetings with the NCC worked well for everyone of us as many AUB professors and courses are participating in the IBDAA competition, the International Biodiversity Day At AUB in April this year. This means, students from various disciplines, such as Computer Science, Chemistry, Biology, Engineering, Writing, Social Sciences, Landscape Architecture and many more, come together to form teams and work on projects around the theme of Water and Biodiversity in the region, preferably Lebanon. As there were still students who had not chosen a project, we were able, with Maria, to present the Rock Village project in one morning class and offer it to students to get involved in. Within a day, several students from varying courses showed interest and are now looking into setting a focus to investigate further. They will also travel to the site to gain a better understanding. This can help us advance a lot in the research phase as we are slowly but steadily building a bigger picture of the project.
As the final IBDAA presentations are not too far from our final presentations, we can easily highlight their contribution within Aalto as well, which would benefit all the students involved and bring some attention towards the doings of universities in the Middle East, a field often overlooked in Finland.
HERE you can find the short presentation we held at AUB.
Thanks for a great week and many interesting meetings. We will be back in March and are looking forward to visiting the site!
- Nina
it was an interesting week in Beirut, Lebanon. What a great city to wake up in.
Since we are already interested in working more closely with the American University of Beirut, it seemed like a perfect match to involve the Nature Conservation Center, previously IBSAR, a research group at the AUB. From previous experience, Dr. Najat Saliba, a chemical engineering professor, had been of great help. Her expertise in native rural farming can come in truly handy as agricultural behaviour can greatly influence the use and management of water in a community. In the past, NCC as Ibsar has published a recipe book of native meals that can be easily made using the existing plants in Lebanon's rural areas, that often remain undermined. The recipe book is an aesthetic approach to community outreach and to create more civic engagement in maintaining Lebanon's rich biodiversity.
The Nature Conservation Center states their aims "to promote conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity for the purpose of enhancing wellbeing of people and nature by providing an open innovative and collaborative platform. Their mission is achieved through research, education, community outreach and knowledge dissemination. They hope to establish a recognised reference centre for the study and sustainable use of dry land biodiversity."
This is extremely interesting for us as the Rock Village is, as the name implies, an arid area of rural land. Together with the NCC we thus discussed not only the issues of water management in general terms but also the possibility to promote native agriculture, rather than invasive and imported species of agricultural seeds, that can also lead to extra produce so that farmers can build a strong network with economic benefits to the community. This will be discussed further in the coming month together with skilled staff and academics that could potentially join us in Arnoun.
Nassib and Maria El-Solh, the wonderful people of the Al-Amal Center, will take these discussions forward from now on.
At the same time, the timing of these meetings with the NCC worked well for everyone of us as many AUB professors and courses are participating in the IBDAA competition, the International Biodiversity Day At AUB in April this year. This means, students from various disciplines, such as Computer Science, Chemistry, Biology, Engineering, Writing, Social Sciences, Landscape Architecture and many more, come together to form teams and work on projects around the theme of Water and Biodiversity in the region, preferably Lebanon. As there were still students who had not chosen a project, we were able, with Maria, to present the Rock Village project in one morning class and offer it to students to get involved in. Within a day, several students from varying courses showed interest and are now looking into setting a focus to investigate further. They will also travel to the site to gain a better understanding. This can help us advance a lot in the research phase as we are slowly but steadily building a bigger picture of the project.
As the final IBDAA presentations are not too far from our final presentations, we can easily highlight their contribution within Aalto as well, which would benefit all the students involved and bring some attention towards the doings of universities in the Middle East, a field often overlooked in Finland.
HERE you can find the short presentation we held at AUB.
Thanks for a great week and many interesting meetings. We will be back in March and are looking forward to visiting the site!
- Nina
Monday, February 18, 2013
Project Plan
Today we met to go over our project plans. After going around with other groups we realized how broad of a topic we have chosen to cover. We plan to start our research and have it mostly completed by the time we travel to Beirut around the 18th of March. Hopefully the engineer from American University of Beirut can help us answer some questions about water availability in the area.
Monday, February 4, 2013
Project Planning
The group met today to discuss and work on the project plan that will need to be completed in a couple of weeks time. We started off by revisiting our objective and strategy trees from the workshop from last week and confirmed that the main objective and strategy we will be focusing on is achieving a self-sufficient water supply and management process for the Rock Village project.
We then began to analyse the components of our project plan which will involve:
- Background
- Beneficiaries
- Monitoring objectives
- Implementation
- Risk analysis and risk management; and
- Budget
It was a productive meeting and we have made a solid start in our project plan. Desmond has already begun significant research of the current water sourcing and supply situation of Lebanon and it has provided an excellent foundation for the group to begin the task ahead of us.
In other preliminary research, it was discovered that there are other NGOs in Lebanon with projects that share some of our more general aims and goals, and we plan to investigate further about these other projects to establish whether there are any elements which will be useful to our own research.
Conveniently, one of our group members will be visiting Lebanon very soon and will be setting aside some time to meet representatives of the Al-Amal Institute, and so between now and when she leaves we endeavour to brainstorm a set of questions for the organisation, and in particularly the current plans and goals for implementation as well as a clearer indication of what they wish to achieve in the social context of the project.
At the conclusion of this meeting, I would be confident to say the group has a relatively clear idea of where our research will be heading towards this semester and that we all look forward to providing worthwhile research towards the eventual implementation of this project!
Best,
RVG2013
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| Hard at work, with our objective and strategy trees providing inspiration. |
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