Blessings In A Bag partnership

We are pleased to announce an upcoming partnership with Blessings in a Bag! I emailed them previously, but they did not reply. So it was heartening when I received a reply the second time round! The main points of the partnership are in bold. A meeting should be scheduled sometime in August. Stay tuned for more updates!

Hi Diana

Apologies for this late reply. Emily forwarded me your email and on behalf of the team, we would like to express our gratitude to hear from you and your friends who are willing to help us with our cause.

We couldn't be more excited with the help that you offered, because we always have Blessings Bags to distribute be it to our beneficiaries or travelers under our Blessings in a Bag Movement program. Our main focus is to help as many underprivileged children as possible and we would not have done it without the kind help from people like you. So, feel free to let us know how many bags you guys will be able to bring over to Cambodia. :)

Also, we would like to know whether you guys are interested to be our ambassadors under Blessings in a Bag Ambassadors program... Maybe it will be best if we can arrange for a meet up, at your convenient time, or you can always come down to Serene Centre to meet the core team, as well as our volunteers, on any Sunday to discuss this better... :)

Looking forward to hear from you again and thank you again for contacting us!

Cheers!
Arbella
Street Team Coordinator
Blessings in a Bag


www.blessingsinabag.org
Follow us on TWITTER: twitter.com/blessingsinabag


-- You can't do great things with small love but you can do small things with great love -- Mother Teresa


--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Diana Yusoff <dianayusoff@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 11:49 AM
Subject: Wish to be involved
To: emilyteng@blessingsinabag.com
Cc: blessingsinabag@gmail.com, Tan Ming Hui <tan.minghui86@gmail.com>


Dear Emily,

I chanced upon your website through a magazine feature article, and
thought that your cause is very meaningful,

My friends and I are a group of students from NTU, intending to go
down to Cambodia in December for a water filtration project under the
Youth Expedition Project (YEP).

We wish to participate in your Blessings In a Bag programme, be it to
distribute bags to the children in the village in Cambodia, or to
provide some of our manpower/assistance if you have any upcoming
events or logistical needs.

Please let us know how we can be involved. Perhaps we can meet up some
time in the first week of August to discuss this further.

Additionally, through the YEP Leadership Workshop, I've come to know
other leaders going to places like Batam, Nepal, Cambodia and Vietnam,
who are likely to be able to participate in your programme as well. Do
let me know your needs and whether you need me to link you up with
them.

--
Best regards,
Nur Diana Yusoff
Nanyang Technological University
NTU Students In Free Enterprise (NTU SIFE)

Liaison with CROAP

I had just sent an email to CROAP, our Cambodian NGO, to suggest the few areas that we can work on. We are very fortunate to have a very receptive local NGO. In addition to the water facilities, I intend to plan for a few more meaningful activities for our team. Probably will have to check out with CROAP. Otherwise, we can probably link up with other NGOs for mini-projects.

The following is one of the email which i sent to CROAP.

Dear Father,

From the discussion with my university, we would like to suggest a few areas in which we can work on to improve the quality of the water.

Firstly, the water in the existing pond is rather murky. It is likely to be due to the type of sand/soil in the area which caused the water to be unclear.

Instead of relying on the existing dug pond, in which water seeps through the soil from the river to the pond, we suggest building a separate concrete pond(attached as Pond design.ppt) with a drain to channel water from the river to the pond. We can add in different layers of filters in the drain, so that when water is filtered as it travels through the drain.

With the concrete pond, we can directly use the water from the pond for washing purposes.

Secondly, we suggest building a simple water filtration concrete unit whereby water is filtered from the top and clean water is collected at the bottom.

Water will seep through layers of filters. I have attached a sketch(Blueprints.zip) of the proposed filtration unit. It may seems rather confusing.

I will try to obtain pictures of a built one, so that it can help you to better visualize.

With the filtration unit, water produced is likely to be portable, but it will take a longer time. Therefore, water for washing should be taken from the pond whereas water for drinking should be taken from the concrete filtration unit.

Our team hopes to build the above two facilities with the support of CROAP.

What do you think of our proposed solution?

Please feel free to clarify with us.

Hope to hear from you soon!