After three years of waiting the time has come: The next SoWaDi mission! Three years in which a lot has happened. We built the devices not only once but twice here in Darmstadt, tried coming up with a concept of distribution,learned a lot about the device itself and brainstormed ideas on how to install measurement instrumentation to obtain long-term data.
The waiting was worth it and the team travelling to Tanzania does not come short on motivation, communication skills nor competence. It consists of Edgar, Jonas, Julius and Rebecca.
Edgar is one of our only members of the local group with long-term work experience; but not only does he contribute efficiently to the sub-group performance; he is also more than talented in the area of handcraft. Within the team, he is the expert when it comes to buying material and the workshops, which will be held in Tanzania concerning water quality, hygiene and the functioning of the device.
Jonas also brings three years of work experience into account and his job as implementing engineer has given him the chance to work some time abroad, which is more than valuable for the journey. Within the team, Jonas is the longest member that is part of the group and since last years, he has taken over the responsibility of being one of the group leaders from SoWaDi; he therefore is the project leader and the responsible person for the project cash.
At the same time Jonas became one of our leaders, also Julius decided to give leadership a chance. At the moment he is finishing his master in mechanical and in computational engineering. He has been part of SoWaDi for about one and a half years and has committed to improving the device ever since. In addition to the duties as head of the team, Julius also contributes to the performance group, which attributes him the role as technical expert during the stay in Tanzania as well as being responsible for water sample taking and testing.
Rebecca only joined the team a few months ago but has happily agreed to join and support our three experts in Tanzania, adding therefore a little bit of female power, which can only be positive. She is a Sustainable Urban Development student and has a fair share of experience in voluntary work abroad, so we could not have wished for a better forth team member. Unbelievably quick she became as much of an expert as our long-term members and in addition she is the one to ask when it comes to distribution strategies and market research.
The remaining 16 volunteers will be the backoffice during the 2 months of the time abroad. They will not only keep working in the subgroups coordination, performance, distribution, instruction manual and CAD, but also they are the ones supporting our team in Tanzania with whatever they might need. The head of backoffice is Sara, who has not only been teamleader for some years now, but also has a great network throughout our own and many other local groups.
The team introduced above has been meeting for months now in addition to our regular meetings, for discussing everything that concerns their travel. Questions like time management, budget, equipmentlist, health issues and many more were answered. But also technical concerns were talked through thoroughly.
Another very important part of preparing the visit consisted in keeping in touch with our contacts in Tanzania. Compared to 2017 when it was only the Malage VTC in Mwanga, we now have contacts to the Kilimanjaro Childlight Foundation, the Mamtukuna Folk Development College and the community in Kidia, Old Moshi.
All in all every single member and supporter of SoWaDi is looking forward to the next 8 weeks. We are sure that our team is unstoppable and will master every problem as the experts that we know they are.