Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Our Journey: The Ups and the Downs

Throughout our journey as part of the PUC Costa Rica micro hydro project, our team has encountered many ups and downs. Some days, the tides were definitely in our favor. Other days though, we would receive discouraging news. Throughout all of this, however, we are evermore grateful for our experiences together. Onward, we fight, striving to fulfill the goal of providing much needed additional electricity to the Sirena Biological Station. I've compiled a list of some of our ups and downs.

Ups
  • Meeting up with Andres, a researcher at Sirena and the one who initially requested for this project. We gathered a multitude of useful information from him.
  • Preparing for presentations to the Student Advisory Learning Board (SLAB) in Simon's abode while listening to indie music and eating homemade food.
  • Adopting a new member to our team in Spring 2012, Rosanna. As our project deals significantly with electricity, her electrical engineering background provides a beneficial addition.
  • Collaborating with Dr. Gilbert, a UT professor who did research for his PhD at Sirena. He will be helping us search for funds.
    • What starts here with us, changes
    Costa Rica and the world.
  • Learning about project development, teamwork, micro hydro power plants, and Costa Rica.

Downs
  • Total funds raised so far: $0. We've tried contacting many company foundations, but to no avail. We'll keep searching for money as we truly believe our project is something of value to Sirena, Corcovado National Park, Costa Rica, and the biodiversity community.
  • Seeing two other teams denied permission to continue their projects for the time being. We are sad for their unfortunate ending, but we are also very grateful that our project is still going.
Right now, there are still many tasks to accomplish before implementation. We will continue to work hard in developing the micro hydro project. The two main tasks that we're focusing on right now is fundraising and design.

If you would like to help us out, get involved, or know more, please contact utpuccostarica@gmail.com.
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