Thursday, July 24, 2008

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Grassland School updates:













Fencing wall construction + picnic (2007 June)

Grassland School updates
(following phone call with Sherap early July 2008)

Last batch of funding
Sherap spent the last batch of funding on fencing wall (construction is completed). The total cost was RMB 76,000, with RMB15,000 payment outstanding. (Not paid to the builder yet as retention)

2nd school building construction
Now he is preparing for the building of the 2nd school building. The foundation has been laid. Parts of the building materials are ready. These are such as certain portion of timber. This 2nd school building is slightly larger than 1st building. (Need further clarification from Sherap)

Summary of outstanding Building materials for the 2nd building.
- Self-made sundried hollow brick.
- Cement (for the brick bonding)
- Roofing material (roof tiles, I also ask him to check insulation cost)
- Apparently labor cost has risen.
- Also certain building material cannot be found from nearby town (Hezuo合作, Lingxia临夏) but need to buy from Lanzhou兰州.

Building Cost - Sherap couldn't give me any rough figure of how much $$ he will need to complete the building of this 2nd building. (Need further info from Sherap)

Fresh water supply
A spring on the upper slope of the village is used as the new water supply. Government has provided pipe to each household awhile ago. (end of 2007) Villagers do the pipe work (dig into the soil to install the pipe work) themselves to connect to the spring (water source). This water supply works most of the time apart from winter time where the pipe froze. In these situations, the villagers collect water from the old spring, which we saw in out last visit.

foundation work, 1st school building (2006 summer)
1st visit (2006 Spring)

School construction (2006 Summer)

1st school building completed (2006 Autumn)

School Opening (2006 Autumn)

School visit (2007 April)

School visit (2007 April)