Saturday, April 21, 2012

Family, Bottles, Panama, Haiti TECH, Africa

Today our grand daughter Clara Rose all the way in the UK, is One Year Old. Thank heaven for SKYPE. We had sent her a very soft little dolly, which she looked in the face, then hugged and kissed her, and followed that by being a good mom and feeding her dolly with a teaspoon from her other gift, a little play tea set. Carl showed her the beautiful rocking horse he made her. It is so lovely! Too bad we haven't figured out a way to get it to her yet. Not that large or heavy - just awkward.

Again about the Buddy Bottles: you buy a bottle for $15 (stainless steel, choice of 3) and through your purchase we can send a bottle to Haiti as well, to the region where people should carry safe/filtered water with them. The person you gave this 2nd bottle to is now your Bottle Buddy! We left 50 in Panama, which was great. The bottles are not moving very fast yet, and that is in part because I'm not sure how to advertize them! On one of the busy days in Honesdale or Hawley I'll just have to set up shop on the sidewalk. The bottles really are very nice, and great quality, but there are SO MANY! (Due to the set-up cost). Most people give money and say 'take them all to Haiti! Which is indeed a good idea, but I am getting a bit worried here!
If you want a bottle either write to onebigboost@gmail.com, or leave a message at 570 470 9386. Start your message, or subject line with the email, with "Bottle Buddy order". BPA free, happy-looking, great quality! And we have only 100 left ;-D

The trip to Panama was rocky but interesting. It is a beautiful country, even if getting from point A to B can be an experience, to say the least. We ended up seeing far more (as in distance) of Panama than anticipated. The medical project was a neat and good experience. I, on the other hand, had nearly nothing to do, felt like an idiot standing around most of the time, which is not exactly my 'cup of tea'. All in all interesting as an experience, but neither of us felt the urgent need there that we have experienced elsewhere. Learned.

A neat new project in Haiti that i am very excited about. My friend Melet Deroze contacted me for help with various things, one of them a brochure. As I mentioned before, they have started a program for a group of students, drawn from the region around Verrettes. I believe we're going on Skype today, which will be very helpful because some of it is too vague for me to understand, while the project and their drive is fantastic. It is basically a program that teaches/exposes the older students to community aid and awareness, organization in case of disaster and training to be effective in case of emergencies. Next to expose them to subjects and experiences not taught in the public schools there. Ginny and Ed, our dear Michigan friends, for example, are sending us two microscopes so students will have a chance to see what they normally only see on pictures. With the cholera now that it especially important. I am in contact with an emergency preparedness group who will go over there to train them. We're sending them at least one telescope, etc etc.
One step at a time. I believe they will end up calling the project TECH: technology, education, communication, health, which includes all the basic directions they hope to cover. "They" is a group of about 6 dedicated teachers and others who can take more administrative responsibilities. Very exciting!

Africa. Talk about need! Talk about aid! It is very confusing. There are so many programs and, oddly enough, the only help they want is money. Not people, not just a good hand or specialists etc. But the people I have spoken/emailed with there say the opposite: we need people to come and help! Help is needed in Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi in particular. And none safe enough not to worry. I do not mind going - but do I have the right to stimulate others to go? Too much brewing and nothing like in Haiti, where such violence and genocide has not been for a very long time.

We'll keep eyes and ears and minds open: something always comes around that tells us what is needed most. that's how it works every time.

Be good, fellow earthlings.

Monday, March 26, 2012

all kinds of 'scopes' wanted.`

Needed to aid: Scope For Imagination, also know as No Limits of Possibilities.

A new program in western Haiti is pooling from5 schools some of the best, to expose them to wonders out children learn in or even before elementary school.
Together we can help.
Look in your attic or closet, and see if you still have that old telescope or microscope. They have to be in workable condition. Nobody needs junk. If it needs cleaning: we can do that!

These will truly be eye-openers to the students and teachers alike. Not kidding!

Please blog back, or email onebigboost@gmail.com

Imagine how good you will look through each of them!! :-)

I will take them there personally and make sure they can be used properly. They have just, through video, taken a look into the ocean. Now imagine a hair, a drop of water, a seed. The moon, Milky Way, nebulae, Mars...

Stethoscopes will be great for their emergency aid and CPR training!

Thanks for wanting to educate and stimulate INDEPENDENCE!

Marianne

Water, bottles, buddies, haiti, Panama, onebigboost,

Short but sweet:

Our spring fund raiser:

Buy a BUDDY BOTTLE (B`ot Zanmie, Botella del Compinche), provide one bottle for your BOTTLE BUDDY in Panama or Haiti, and $2 toward a classroom water filter (300 gall. day!)
These are for areas where untreated/unfiltered water can be a death-sentece, especially now with spreading cholera! (In fact: it really is right now, as I write and as you read!)

So....
You buy your bottle (great gifts!) with lovely Buddy logo and either a really cool bottle or a great graphic, and..
you get one
we deliver one just like it overseas - right now!
$2 toward a classroom water filter to fill the kids' bottle for the evening.

If you buy 25 bottles (= 50 + a classroom filter!) we'll even send you free water!

www.onebigboost.org
onebigboost@gmail.com for orders
22 Revelstone Dr
Honesdale, PA 18431 for checks made out to OneBigBoost

Thanks, Buddy!

Uganda and Nepal and always more.

Nepal. A friend in Nepal, Shanker, director of the fantastic SOS project in Kathmandu (really worth googling!) informed me of a volunteer project there. One can come for 2 weeks, 4 weeks or months. They need English teachers and simple caretakers/homework supervisors - so crucial - at the orphanage and school. There is a cost involved, but it includes getting to know the region and its history and learning some of the local language. It also includes a visit to magical Chitwan preserve, or to the Annapurna Range.If you know anyone, young or old, who is interested in such work, let me know or contact SOS village in Kathmandu, Nepal. (google), or write me for contact. It will be a time never to be forgotten.

Next: we're looming for medical personnel, teachers, artists and college students, and enthusiastic high school students who want to help, and/or need to do a Senior Service project.

Note: IF (IF!) all goes well, students may be able to compete for a 50% scholarship to the SewaRwanda project!

For now I am working on a plan to join a Rwandan team of 12 to set up a unique project in north-western Rwanda that will combine medicine and education. The group calls themselves SewaRwanda, Smile Rwanda. They are set to make a difference, and saw our post on Twitter. what a wonderful contact! I went on skype with Christian twice, and plans are shaping! The majority of these people are illiterate. We aim for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th weeks of July 2013, and, to be truthful, will include trips to the jungle national park where the Giant Gorilla still lives, as well as to a drinking place where every size ear, horn and stripe can be observed. A guided visit to the mosaic-filled Genocide Museum will be the initiation to understand the harm that has passed the people we will be working with. The trip will cost about $3200 for 21 days and includes everything besides insurance, immunization and chosen tipping. There is a definite limit to 20, with medical staff, educators, artists and a film crew. Nobody gets paid and fundraising has to be done by yourself although materials (such a PowerPoint) can be provided.

Uganda: Mubiru, Principal of Happy Years School (who can ignore a place like that?) received a full set Dell desk computer. I can't put on the pictures now, but will try later.
Another step toward the life and knowledge everyone deserves.
I praise Mubiru for his efforts, and his belief that then children can do anything, and that he and his staff can make it possible. My compliments, Mubiru!

OK everyone. Thanks for taking the time to read this. It is exciting and fulfilling to have friends when so much needs to be done to adults, the elderly and children, just like yours.
Marianne Kuiper Milks
www.onebigboost.org

Bottle Buddies, Panama, OneBigBoost, Cholera, safe Water

Our bathtub is full. Just what you wanted to know. But ours is filled with water bottles! That's what you do when you have 200 beautiful, stainless steel water bottles ready to visit friends! Today FedEx delivered boxes full of the coolest bottles. Literally. And all had to be washed with hot water and dish soap, so the tub was scrubbed and in went the bottles! Made life a lot easier.
Our OneBigBoost project has a spin-off and I'll start with that. It is called Buddy Bottle, B`ot Zanmie and Botella del Compinche. All on the front. Buddy Bottles are an effort to find you a Bottle Buddy. No, not sat the street corner bar. That's a drinking buddy, although this is much the same.
Cholera is on the rise again in Haiti, as expected. Except this time it is at the end of the southern peninsula, in the mountains south of Pestel (near Jeremie). It is spreading fast and we received an email and call from Dr. John Carroll, who was there, battling the diseased and leaving the deceased. But the big agencies, UN etc, claimed there was no cholera there. Whatever.
OneBigBoost immediately decided to spend a big chunk of our cache, and used $6000 to purchase 330 highly effective water filters that serve HOUSEHOLDS rather than community wells. Reason: if a well becomes contaminated again, everyone can be affected or infected. this way, during such an urgent situation, it is limited to a household. We did what we were advised. But we're small, and we cannot provide for 250 000 people in the region. We do try.

Our follow-up is a filter that provides safe water (clean is great, safe is essential) for a classroom. Its output is 300 gallon+ each day. But that us not all.
The safe drinking water needs to be available as often as possible.
Here comes the BUDDY BOTTLE, a project where everyone wins.
You buy a beautiful water bottle.
For the low cost one is given to a person in a remote region such as coastal Panama or the Haitian mountains. He or she is now your BOTTLE BUDDY. (a "Buddy" is a friend, in American English). Safe water to take home from school or to your home.
And: $2 from each buddy purchase goes toward another classroom filter!

Each buddy purchase is only $15.
Two stainless steel bottles: one with our logo and a great graphic design at the bottom and a screw-on top, the other with our neat logo and a double, bright orange 2-piece top, for drinking and for filling (and ice cubes!)
The third one, which will arrive tomorrow, is bright dark blue translucent plastic (everything BPA FREE!) with a flip top and straw. They're SO nice!
A bottle for you, a bottle for your buddy overseas, and $2 toward a $48 filter.
If you look at the sporting goods stores, you will see the same one for quite a higher price: every penny for this goes to the project. 100%. As always. We don't need to make a profit.
Gifts, birthdays, kid playing soccer, you on walks, neighbor on bike rides..think of the possibilities!
Email at onebigboost@gmail.com and we'll hop to it.
Yes: during Panama we'll take messages too. Well...I have friends, you know!
We'll add Panama pictures, including kids with bottles, soon!

Marianne Kuiper Milks

Panama, Haiti, Telescopes,Nepal...

Excitement is always part of my life, although highs are always followed by lows and highs again, like rain and sunshine. There are moments that I wonder what on earth I am doing, meddling in others' lives so far across oceans. Then I think of all the people who made such differences in my life - from thoughts to actions, from thoughtlessness to wisdom and the joy of warmest moments. Above all the friendships that each left a mark and made who I am. so much to be thankful for! And a message that it is ok.
Much has happened,needless to say. For the title: Carl and I are leaving for panama this Wednesday, March 28, and return too soon April 3. It will be a great taste of a completely different experience. We are joining an organization called 'Floating Doctors" a core of physicians and medical personnel who travel to different coastal villages to provide medical care, and medical and health education. All by 17ft sailboat!
They started in Haiti after the quake, still have their main home in north Haiti, but now have ventured to Panama and will soon serve really remote villages in Nicaragua as well. then back to Haiti. I'll be sure to write a follow up!
In the mean time, wnt3ing to step away from my digital camera yet not wanting a heavy digital SLR ( my fibro-myalgia hands cannot deal with that) and Sander advised the Olympus! What a treasure and pleasure! I'll post pictures!

Haiti. Many things done there, the last one of which is delivery of 330 household water filters to remote homes in the mountains south of Pestel. Pestel is a city on the northern coast of Haiti's peninsula, closest to Cuba. A cholera outbreak occurred the last spring and was, predictably much, much worse this winter. An MD from Illinois, Dr. Carroll, is there several months a year, for over 30 years, and contacted the UN urgently. Nope, he was told, there is no cholera there. What do you do then? The 330 filters were a drop in the bucket, but it IS a drop! They give a family about 1-2 gallons of perfectly safe water each hour!!!!
Now we are collecting for larger filters that provide perfectly safe water for a classroom full of kids, or a ward with patients, or in the middle of a group of dwellings. those are $48 each and provide well over 100 gallons a day.
I'd like to add that for the household filters we had a fund raiser, and had a huge contribution,$670, from Katie's small school near here, and contributions from Poland and Germany (and Michigan and Florida etc etc) as well. And an unexpected, fantastic collection for $173 from a tiny regional church!! What friends they have, in Haiti!


Other than all that I am enjoying the contact with my kids, and their kids, tremendously! Spring has come, seems long because we're had barely any snow, like in 1980 2nd 1981, 1986 and 1987,and some time in the nineties.
I keep track because snow is what I love most.
The world is clean and gentle as far as you can see, and you know that all promise lies underneath, waiting patiently. So I go to Panama, when I really cannot survive in heat. I think I will let myself be dragged behind the 17 ft sailboat, barring sharks and piranhas.

One last question.
As they have/had no idea what was under the ocean (surface), the students and adults in Haiti also do not know what is above.
I am looking for donations of all level strengths of telescopes (we can fix a bit, but they do have to work) and microscopes. Simple ones are fine! I will haul them to Haiti and give them to this bright and eager group of students!!

Be kind and be peaceful. Rowdy is ok - just have peace.