We need your Help with some Simple Tasks

HELP NOMADHOPE’s Mali School Projects with some Simple Tasks

We are growing rapidly and trying to keep up. Below is a running list of short term tasks that could use a great and energetic volunteer like you! These won't require any engineering, just some tenacity and time. Also some longer term Chairperson roles for NomadHope, and some project leadership roles below..........

Your help with these will free us up to focus on our current project implementations and support of the schools and students in Mali.  You can live ANYWHERE and Help with these.

If you can take on any of these, by taking the lead and following through, please contact our Executive Director at Keely@Nomadhope.org  

1. Help us sell this beautiful painting of a young Tuareg girl – maybe via e-Raffle, let's get creative! http://nomadhope.blogspot.com/2010/02/for-sale-one-of-kind-original-tuareg.html  - purchase is a tax deductable donation.
2. We are looking for a corporate or individual donation of $5000 (or 2- $2500) for a Match of $5000 that has been promised by a private donor. This $10,000 will then go toward 3 Millet Centers for the schools in Mali that we are working with. The Centers generate income for the school to purchase school supplies, and to maintain / repair their solar lighting, latrines, school buildings, and clean water wells.  
3. Coordinate a Rotarian Trip to Mali – we are looking for a travel agent or event planner to coordinate a trip to Mali for Rotarians from several clubs.
4. Find a Malian Engineering University student intern to live and work in our villages as an intern. We have some contacts you can start with. Must speak French. 
5. Sign up lots of Ralphs shoppers for our Community Contribution program and each time they shop & swipe their card, they donate to NomadHope! instructions for sign up here: http://nomadhope.blogspot.com/2010/03/shop-at-ralphs-and-help-child-in-rural.html
6. Help us sell Gil Garcetti’s beautiful photography books, “Water is Key” for $100 ea. each can also be autographed for $150. Purchase is a tax deductable donation. He made this fabulous donation to us, now let's leverage it! He will even do a brunch if we ask, http://nomadhope.blogspot.com/2010/02/water-is-key-photography-book-by-gil.html
    
7. Sign-up a Celebrity Spokesperson for NomadHope – we are looking for a famous musician or athlete to represent our programs in Mali. This entails appearing in our marketing materials and our website, attending our annual fund raiser, and other marketing efforts. A tie in to Education, Africa, Mali, Soccer, Jazz or Blues would be ideal!

Donate effortlessly when you Search or Shop the web

Download our new GoodSearch toolbar, it generates $$ for us every time you do a search or shop online!

http://www.goodsearch.com/toolbar/nomad-hope-sahara-solutions-foundation

Help effortlessly support Nomad Hope! With our new toolbar, every time you search the web or shop at one of more than 1,300 participating stores, a percentage of your purchase will automatically go to our cause (at no extra cost to you)!

Pass it on.

Shop at Ralph's and Help a Child in a Rural School!

Please Sign-up for a Ralphs' Rewards Account, attach it to your keychain and every time you shop at Ralph's for groceries, swipe your card and you will be helping us with our Rural School projects!

............tell your friends & family too!

TO USE THE RALPHS COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTION PROGRAM, and add us as your sponsored charity, take these steps:

1. If you already have a Ralph's Rewards card, then click here to login or register online at http://www.ralphs.com/
   Most will be new online customers, so they must click on SIGN UP TODAY in the ‘New Customer?’ box.
   
   or  pick-up a Ralph's Rewards card at any Ralph's, then click "Sign In/Register".
   
   or..Did you lose your card or you use your phone number at the cash register? Call 800-660-9003 to get your REWARDS card number.
2. Enter your zip code, select favorite store and finish the regitration steps. You will then get an email to confirm.
3. Click on 'My Account' and login
4. Enter your 12-13 digit Rewards Card # from the back of the Ralph's card
5. Go to 'Edit Community Contribution information'
6. Input our 5 digit NPO number '92117', or search for "SAHARA".
   We are listed as Sahara Solutions Foundation (NomadHope.org)

You're done! now every time you shop at Ralph's you are helping us help children get educated.
 
Members must swipe their registered Ralphs REWARDS card or use their phone number that is related to their registered Ralphs REWARDS card when shopping for each purchase to count.

Thanks!

For Sale: One of a kind original Tuareg Giclee for sale.

Original painting for sale.

Buy Now!
This beautiful original painting of a young Tuareg girl has been donated to NomadHope by the artist, Leslie Clark.

“Taberert” Giclee on Canvas by Leslie Clark.

Includes a one-of a kind hand painted frame.

Dimensions: 18" x 24".
$700 OBO

WATER IS KEY, Photography Book by Gil Garcetti

We are offering these beautiful photography books to the first 20 donors, “Water is Key” by Gil Garcetti for donations of $100 or more.

We will send you an autographed copy for donations of $150,

Or, all of the above and "Brunch with Gil", for donations of $250 or more!


WATER IS KEY, Balcony Press 2007
The beauty and the power of the photographs resonate deeply with all who see the photographs and read the accompanying quotes and essays. Though this is Garcetti's fifth book, it was his first photographic project. It is a call to action to people in the industrialized world to become involved in helping bring safe water to the people of West Africa. All of Garcetti's profits from the sale of this book and limited edition photographs are going to non-government organizations working in West Africa on safe water projects.

"The renowned architectural photographer Julius Shulman, ... , called Garcetti's images'remarkable' ''. (Photos in IRON and FROZEN MUSIC) "He says Garcetti's work is full of sensitivity. 'He's not just a good photographer, says Shulman. His compositions spell out a sensitivity which embraces his subject in a personal way. [WATER IS KEY]. ' "
- Sara Terry, Christian Science Monitor, October 17, 2007

Email Keely@NomadHope.org  to purchase your book NOW!

Donate Airline Miles - Cashless Donations Help Too!

I was just given a wonderful suggestion, ask all NomadHope donors, volunteers, and fans to donate airline miles to the Foundation! This can be used for volunteers' travel to work at our project sites, which is one of the highest cost travel expenses we have.

The more I thought about this, the more excited I got about sending this message to all of you. Many of our engineering volunteers simply can't afford the airfare costs to get to our rural school sites in Mali, Africa. They need round trip airfare from the USA to Europe (11 hours in flight), and then to Bamako (5 hours), and finally another flight/airline to Timbuktu (2 hours). And then a 2-4 hour 4x4 bumpy car ride, and that's just getting there~

If everyone we know donates some airline miles, we can really help out the volunteers and make more progress each year. Now that is music to my ears! Even if we only have enough miles to help with one-way or to provide an upgrade, that is tremendous and also a volunteer recruiting perk we can offer. (flying for 18 hours, driving for 4, and then sleeping on the ground with no hot water... is not a picnic!)

So, anyone out there with miles in an airline account can do this. Here are the links below. Be sure to email Keely@nomadhope.org to get our air miles account #, so we can track it for you, and send you a tax receipt!

1. American - https://transfer.points.com/AAdvantage/init.do;jsessionid=4C2F9BDC4F2CFA27C366BE50FF4D2780?method=transfer&CAMPAIGNCODE=AAMarketingPageShareFeb10&c=AAMarketingPageShareFeb10
2. Delta - https://dn.delta.com/skymiles/purchasemiles/transfer/landing?region=us&lang=en
3. United - http://www.ualmiles.com/TransferMiles.jsp

Pass it on!
FYI - Each travelling volunteer needs, for example:
on America: 20-30K miles one-way to Europe, or 25K to upgrade one-way
on United: 25-50K miles one-way LA to NY, and 55 - 110K one-way to Europe
on Air France: 80K miles one-way to Bamako
or just enough to get to NYC would be great!

$$$$$$$$ Funding arrives! $$$$$$$$$$

Our Rotary Grant for Farach & Zouera has been FUNDED! Now we can sign agreements with our partners in Mali, schedule the work, and plan our trip with the Engineers to oversee the work. WOOHOO, (can you see me dancing?)

Best Cooperative Projects Award!

Congratulations to our team, we were awarded the Rotary International Best Cooperative Projects Award for our work in Mali~!

Design Approval, Vendor Agreements, and Scheduling, August '09

We are making a lot of progress and maneuvering our way through several final design and scheduling issues now.

First, I want to share some great news with you.

• We have a donor who has contributed in the past and was so impressed with our partnership with Rotary and our ability to turn a few dollars into a large project, that they have promised another $5K if we can find a matching donor! Let us know if you have any ideas for this.
• Also, we won a Rotary International President's Award, for Most Cooperative Project! This was presented to the Rotary Clubs of Manhattan Beach and Bamako. Once we have the certificate, I will post it here!
• We are now up to $64,700 in funds for this phase, see the new thermometer volunteer Bob Kasai added to our website and BLOG margin to track this! , Thanks Bob!~And volunteer Jeanne Beesley got us prepared for the upcoming fund raising opportunities, with posters and brochures, Thanks Jeanne!~

The topics we have been spending most of our time on are: final designs and EWB approval, vendor agreements, community MOUs, project management structure and tools, funding paperwork, marketing materials, and project budgets. I'll share some details with you here on each............

We just completed our EWB-LA and EWB-USA design reviews last week and got some great feedback from many expert engineers, both in our local chapter of EWB and the national team. Thanks EWB!~ Some of the items they encouraged us to work through, which were all pretty minor, are:

• 
  
  including concrete mix specs for tap stand, topo drawings for the pipeline, converting to metric measures for translations
• 
  
  connection detail for solar panels to the roof, and correction of a solar side view diagram.
• the most significant issue, which we were already aware of, is the available head from the reservoir for flow to the tap stand. The local engineers did not get the same height calculation our engineers did during our assessment trip, so there is a chance we will have to lift one or both of the reservoirs. We have funding for this, but are hoping it is unnecessary, as the school fencing is turning out to be much more than planned. We will start in Zouera which has the best chance for water flow success, based on our measurements, and put a contingency plan in place if water does not flow. The planning for raising the reservoir will take some time and care, so this will not happen on the first implementation trip. We will plan to do a detailed assessment for this while there. Fatima and Hamadi were very helpful in ironing this out with the local Mali engineers, to assure we are all on the same page, Thanks Fatima and Hamadi!~
• Clearly our lesson learned is to plan for elevation survey equipment on our next assessment trip.

Volunteers Ed Andrews, Alan Kwan, and Tony Haske are leading the charge to finalize all designs and include them in our vendor agreements. Thanks Ed, Alan, and Tony!~
The vendors that have been selected are all experienced in the area, and come with good references, they are:

1. Project component: Farach & Zouera Hand Washing Stations (Water Pipeline + tap stand)
   ENTREPRISE DE CONSTRUCTION MOBILE AU SAHEL (E.C.M.S.)
2. Project component: Farach & Zouera Solar Lighting
   AFRIQ POWER
3. Project component: Farach Solar Copy / Print Center
   IESC Geekcorps Mali
4. Project component: Zouera Millet Grinding Machine
   Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Tijani
5. Project component: Farach & Zouera Project Management / Status Reporting
   Adjmor / ONG
6. Project component: Farach & Zouera Raising reservoir (ON HOLD)
   Direction de l'Hydraulique Timbuktu

We are in process of finalizing the vendor agreements and translating them to be signed.
Hamadi is in Farach and Zouera this week to have meet with each community and update them on our progress, as well as to have the MOU's signed. Thanks Hamadi!~
We have settled on a hosted version of Sharepoint for our project management tool and document storage, and Skype and DimDim for our web conferencing tools. We are getting very organized! Our team got together for brunch two weeks ago, to meet everyone face to face and get to know the team more personally, we will do more of these I hope! Seems I make a mean frittata! Michelle has taken over our project management and coordination, and is helping us make better use of the Sharepoint site, Thanks Michelle!~
Aliyah Levin and Donn Ennis, our Rotary Club of Manhattan Beach sponsors, submitted all the necessary Rotary funding paperwork and all the Rotary Club contributions, so the project account should be funded in a few weeks now. Thanks Aliyah and Donn!~
All for now.................