Future Without Poverty ( FWOP ) Summit
Sustainability, Poverty Reduction, and Technology
Summit on
Feb. 10th
and 11th , in 2011
Denton Independent School District – Advanced Technology Center , 288 Highway,
North Side of Denton, Texas 1504 Long
Road, Denton Texas was the location of
first day. First Panel n : Technology for Sustainable Communities had
James Bauer from Texenergy, Inc, and Patrick Kelly, EPA,
Next was a competition where three teams of
high school students in pre-engineering from the Advanced Technology Center-DISD
competed. Their instructor, Tom Babb,
introduced the students and the audience was asked to rank presentations and
give feedback to the young students. One
project focused on creating a thermal water car. Solar Logic in Munster, Texas had been
assisting them in the project. A second
project was designing a system to make sure a model plane or drone would return
back to base using a GPS system. A third project dealt with a punkin cannon to
compete in national event. They have managed to create rotating barrel to improve the outcome and they may be able to secure a patent for their
invention.
At noon Stan Ingman discussed how the Mujeres Vigilantes are Building Low Income Sustainable Housing Communities
in Mexico. www.renamuni.org.mx
In the afternoon , various visitor
focus on the progress of partner program in various nations Serif Esendemir from Istanbul presented on
the progress that had occurred in the village of Findik, Turkey , Soni Rao, told us about special school near Bangalore
India, Dr Oluwayemisi Obashoro-John
from Lago, Nigeria and a visiting
professor at UNT demonstrated how she
had created a plastic mat using plastic bags. This was based upon project of
the Wesley Student Center at UNT. She
will return to her university in May and create a student FWOP chapter at the University of Lagos.
Rev. Laud Brown from Family Studies Doctoral program at TWU gave us an update on
how the senior center project in Ghana is moving forward. Samuel Muwanguzi from Uganda and doctoral student at UNT next explained how he was transporting solar lamps to a remote village and how the demand was going up. So FWOP
in partnership with Samuel will attempt to raise funds for more solar lamps.
John Hernandez and David Carrizales
from Fort Worth explained how they will
working on Mexico-USA joint business deals to promote employment in both
countries. Amanda White then explained
how the International Office at UNT was becoming a partner with FWOP to expand
the network of sustainable communities
across the world.
Tom Benjamin from his recent medical
service trip to Haiti gave us an update on Haiti. Unlike many media reports he was quite
positive about the progress that has been made.
The conference moved to “ La Milpa” for dinner in the evening of
further discussion and planning .
On Feb. 11th we moved to the Discovery Park
at UNT on Highway 77
We had
a speakers from Mexico City, Kenya, Taiwan, Guadalajara and Ripley, Ohio by Skype.
Mr Gilberto Huitron, Special Assistant from
Mujere Vigilantes office in Mexico City reviewed the new housing-resort project
in the State of Hidalgo. www.renamuvi.org.mx .
In the coming months some of the associates from FWOP plan to travel to the
site north of Mexico City. www.ceasmexico.org.mx
Amos
Wemanya from Sustainable for All-Kenya
gave us an update on the new sustainable village project being developed. They recently held a conference on Climate
Change and Sustainability in Narobi . Our colleague Raanan Katriz in Israel was
able to do lecture for them by skype on sustainable agriculture.
Wesley
Ye-jhong Cai from Taiwan from a shoe corporation in Taiwan discussed social
responsibility and fair labor issues. We learned how the International Fair
Labor Association operates around the world.
From Guadalajara, Mexico, Julio Saucedo , the Director of SuBire,
discussed the operation of a new school
as the school moves toward sustainability In partnership with UNT, U-Cincinnati,
FWOP. This private school has some 1600
students, in K- 12 grades. SuBire
opened in 2010 is a School of Business and is Bilingual,-English and Spanish school. www.SuBire.mx
.
By summer a second school will be
built in the northwest Guadalajara and will enroll some 400 elementary working
class children. The name of the second
school is Colegio Union Mexico . A
third l rural school will also start in the Fall of 2012 on an experimental farm and start with 15
students staying on the farm during the
week. The farm is near Lake Chapala.
Finally, Syl Flores, President and
Founder of FWOP spoke the conference
participants from Ripley Ohio and encourage us to move forward. We learned about the new student chapter of
FWOP at UC-Clermont in Ohio.
Non Skype presentations were next on
the agenda. Dr Iftekhar Amin from
UNT-Dallas presented the work on a non profit group that works on issues of
health and poverty in Bangladesh. www.spaandanb.org/nt/ He also reviewed how the famous
Grameen Bank in Bangladesh operates to
give out micro loans and develop many businesses to support poor people.
Greg Bohl , President , Solar Logic,Inc. ,
Munster Texas and UNT Discovery Park www.solarlogic-csp.com provide us with details on a new approach to
solar power using glass tubes.
Finally, Tom Benjaimin out-lined a new
approach to FWOP membership and this lead to a good debate and our current
model of free memberships was implemented two week ago.
Finally we walked out to see the Zero
Energy Lab House nearby.
