Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Hello friends!

It's been a while! We have a couple of updates for you.

We are continuing on our path to get 501(c)3 status with the help of Eugene lawyer David Atkin handling the process. We are looking for people who would be interested in being on our board (quarterly meetings required, one year terms), on our advisory board (maybe one meeting a year) or voting members who in rare cases can hire or recall board members.

Obviously being a board member would be easier for people in our area, but distance is not an obstacle as we can easily arrange conference calls. We need three full board members to move along with our process at this point. The advisory board and the voting members will be needed later on. Please contact us if you have any interest in these positions.

Laurie spoke to Victoria (our contact person in C'orao) on the phone recently and even she has been having trouble catching people at home - she was quite apologetic - so it wasn't just us! Nonetheless, the people she talked to are happy and daily using the stoves. Another friend, Richard, visited Tomas and saw several of the stoves. He had opportunities to talk with a few residents that had worked with us and was impressed in regards to their conversations regarding the other aspects of our work, i.e., proper use of the stove and it's relationship to respiratory illness; home and property hygiene addressing common health problems like diarrhea; and improved waste management in the community. So our initial reports are positive!

If anybody can provide hosting space for our website that can handle a page built in Dreamweaver, let me know.

Thanks to everybody for your support on these projects.

Laurie & Steve