Ramping Up for the 2017 Monsoon Season!
The monsoon season in the Kathmandu Valley is just beginning as you read this and will continue all summer. All of the water resources in the Kathmandu Valley enter the valley as precipitation, and a majority of that (roughly 80%) occurs during the monsoon season. We've been preparing for months now, installing precipitation gauges and building a team of citizen scientists, in order to collect precipitation data across the Kathmandu Valley to better understand water inflow from the monsoon. We also just recently completed a Pre-Monsoon Workshop on June 17th to kickoff the season. As we continue this work, there are two ways that you can be involved and help out!
Citizen Scientists
If you live in the Kathmandu Valley and are interested in participating in the project as a citizen scientist for the S4W-Nepal project please get ahold of us at +977 9823 623 744 or info@SmartPhones4Water.org. During the monsoon season, citizen scientists can participate by maintaining a rain gauge that will be provided and taking daily precipitation measurements. We are also in the middle of an outreach campaign targeting students and young professionals ages 14 through 35, as well as retired people. If you would like S4W-Nepal to come and make a presentation (Nepali or English) to your school or workplace please let us know. Part of our goal in the Kathmandu Valley is to engage young people, and their energy and enthusiasm, to get them excited and invested in the growing importance of wise resource management.
Cell Phone Donations
Do you have an old SmartPhone sitting on a shelf or in a drawer somewhere collecting dust? Well, we can use it! Immediately! Many people living in the rural outskirts of the Kathmandu Valley are interested in becoming citizen scientists, but don't have a compatible GSM Android phone with working camera and GPS to perform the measurements. Your old SmartPhone can make a difference by providing an educational or employment opportunity for a citizen scientist and by generating critical water data in the Kathmandu Valley!
Each citizen scientist records their data observations using a SmartPhone app developed using the ODK platform (read more about this here). As our team of citizen scientists continues to expand, and as we progress into the monsoon season, we are looking for phone donations that can be used by our team to collect this important data. All phones that are able to be used in Nepal will be given to citizen scientists to record data observations; all other phones will be recycled and 100% of the funds generated will go towards continuing work in Nepal.
For SmartPhone donations in Nepal, please use the contact information above to coordinate your donation.
Phone donations from the USA or internationally can be shipped to the following address:
USA
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