Hello BWB Family-

I have been on the ground here in Peru for 18 days now and want to keep everybody in the loop about progress. We are making a huge impact thanks to the support of our volunteers and our community back home. Thank You!

As the only grassroots organization here in Pisco, we doing what we do best, filling in the gaps of established organizations and acting as a conduit for money to come in from outside funders that would not otherwise be available to the people here. And this time around, we've got the attention of the big boys and girls including the U.N., UNICEF, the Director of Fur Sur (Peru's FEMA), the Mayor of Pisco and the Happy Hearts Fund.

What We've Been Up To:

It has been 5 months since the earthquake hit and very few people are receiving benefits from the government. Much like our experience in Mississippi, any benefits people do receive are only temporary solutions which create many permanent, complex problems.

One of these problems is the lack of proper sanitation. According to the doctors here, more people will die in the next year from improper waste disposal and the diseases associated with it than died in the actual earthquake. We can certainly attest to this with every volunteer here getting sick for at least a week due to all of the nastiness the flies and mosquitoes are spreading. We are here bridging the gap with ingenious solutions that will enable people to begin to reclaim their livelihoods and rebuild their communities.

We are very excited about a little project we lovingly call "The Shitter Project". This brilliant idea is the brainchild of Sam Bloch who was the first volunteer on the ground here in November. He came up with an innovative idea to provide a permanent cement cornerstone for residences that includes, a toilet, shower, and kitchen so that people may build permanent homes off of it while having the necessary plumbing to keep them safe and healthy. Currently the established organizations do not have a plan to address sanitation and are looking for a solution.

This project is so ingenious that the U.N. and the head of the Department of Sanitation is chomping at the bit to see how they could spin these out into the thousands. We are putting together a proposal that involves teaching Peruvians to build the forms and are then paid by the government to build the structure. This design could potentially be used all over the world to address the sanitation issues that emerge in the wake of a disaster. We pour the cement tomorrow and will keep everyone updated on the results.

And this is just one of our projects. Here are a few more.

Last week we hosted super model, Petra Nemcova, who is the President of The Happy Hearts Fund. We showed her around to school sites in shanty towns that have largely been forgotten in the aftermath of the earthquake. The meetings went really well, and it looks like they will be funding several of the projects complete with a sustainable business attached to these schools so they will be financially sustainable well into the future. Again, we will be helping Peruvians to work on these projects so that they may receive the benefit of the money coming in.

Debris removal came to a halt when the beautiful beaches here became full of rubble. There was a mine across a reservoir that was inaccessible due a destroyed bridge that linked the town to the mine. True to BWB form, we just happened to have five engineers here at the time and volunteers were able to build the bridge in two-fourteen hour days. The government was stunned and asked us how were able to accomplish this feat when it would have taken them over two months due to their own bureaucracy. Well, we don't believe in bureaucracy and somehow always have the right people with the right skills to get 'er done.

We are also partnering with UNICEF to build classrooms in Chincha, a town 1 hour north of Pisco, which received even less attention after the earthquake than Pisco did. The students are currently on Summer Break, and we hope to have the schools completed by March 15 when they return.

And there is a lot more. I will do a better job of sending out announcements, but please keep updated on our progress at www.burnerswithoutborders.org website. And look for our blog that will be up in a couple of days. I will post the URL on our front page.

Every dollar we raise goes to the projects here and due to the exchange rate, the dollar goes really far. If anyone has any fundraising ideas, shoot'em my way. We will be here at least until June and we want to make the biggest impact possible.

And I will leave you with this quote from Micky Mucus, one of our wonderful Pisco volunteers. An alternative Sacramento paper interviewed him and this is what he had to say. This is his first encounter with our fine Burner community.

It's [BWB] an incredible organization. they're not punk rockers, but they kind of have that ethic...It's like, you're expected to take initiative for yourself, for any ideas that you come up with--a kind of do-it yourself attitude."

Thanks for all of your well wishes and support. It means a lot. And oh, get down here if you can, we'd love to have you.

Carmen