A RENEWABLE ENERGY PARK PROPOSAL

The project i'm working on, is for a Renewable Energy park, that will contain different energies or potential energies. The park will be located on the East cost of England in a little town called Lowestoft. This location of the park is infact The most Easterly point, the first point in England to greet the mornining sun. It has a fishing history, like many other coastal towns and is the place where the discovery of a set of stone tools, was found.

Anyway, when i visited the area, it looked very deprived. Plans are underway to regenerate the town so that its a place that will attract a substantial amount of tourists. Lowestoft has one of the best beaches in the country, and the town can be a great holiday spot.

The 3 renewable energy parks that will be on the site are wind, solar and biomass. An additional site will be the Tropical Avenue which is a colourful pedestrian and cycle path with palm trees on either side, leading to the beach.

Off shore wind farm. The colourful stuff in the middle is actually wind socks telling people the direction of the wind.

The structures running across the site are solar panels harvesting the energy from the sun and forwarding it into the national grid.

The tropical avenue is meant to have red orange and yellow paving, palm trees and marram grass. It is designed to create an exotic feeling as you walk to beach.

The biomass park is a field of industrial hemp. Hemp has very many uses and grows in most conditions, thats why i choose it.

WHO SAYS BERLIN IS THE ONLY COOL CITY IN GERMANY??

The story of the Dresden district of Neustadt, literally "New Town", is a peculiar one. First, it has the anachronistic privilege of being older than Dresden's baroque Altstadt (Old Town), which was all but wiped out by Allied bombing during the second world war. As the GDR authorities set about reconstructing the city with their customary architectural flair (big, square and grey please), Neustadt's late-1800s Gründerzeit townhouses, spared by the bombing, were largely ignored. The rent dropped, the gifted-but-broke moved in, and things started to bubble.
Since the fall of the Wall, Dresden has mimicked Berlin's frenzied creative emancipation, but while the German capital can sometimes feel like an avant-garde labyrinth, Neustadt seems to have taken the whole city's quota of cool and crammed it into a handful of streets.

Gaurdian 14.04.07 Benji Lanyado

LIFE RETURNS TO A DEAD SEA
The Independent

The Aral Sea, located between Uzbekistan and Kazakstan, was once the fourth biggest freshwater inland sea in the world. It was a bustling resource providing a healthy livelihood for several hundred thousand people. In the 1960's the Soviet Union had a plan to use agricultural crops to boost governmental revenues. The plan called for replacing food crops with fiber crops which required more water. The plan called for damming two major rivers which supplied water to the Aral Sea. Over the past 30 years, the Aral Sea has drained to less than half of its original size.
map from cnn www.umaine.edu/.../irrigation_disastershtm


go to link for clearer image

shows pictures taken from space in 1964, 1987, 1997 and 2002
www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/CTW.html













In 2007, however, the North Aral Sea was enjoying a renaissance, due the construction of a dam in 2005 that prevents water from flowing into the South Aral Sea. This image, acquired by the MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite, shows the recovery of the Aral Sea between April 14, 2007 and April 15, 2005. A close look at the lake’s borders show a general rise in water level throughout the lake. Much of this recovery actually occurred in the first year after the dam was completed.

http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2007-05-07#

NAIVASHA HIGHWAY PRIMARY SCHOOL PROJECT

UPDATE ON THE PROJECT

First of all i would like to thank everyone who contributed to this project, your efforts helped it to be a success.

The fence was built over 5 day in December during the Chrismas break. Everyone physically contributed to the building it. We camped in Naivasha for 3 days while constructing the fence.

The before and after pictures are amazing. The change is very evident. We received further funding from Safaricom after the fence was built so now we move on to other aspects of the school. Here are some before and after pictures for you to compare.


Vegetation was able to flourish mainly because the fence prevented intrusion from animals looking for food. it also reduced both people and vehicle traffic from cutting across the school to get to the other side.
This is what the school used as a fence


This is the fence we constructed.









Some of the team from Nairobi University and Rotaract Westlands.

LAKE NAIVASHA

In southwestern Kenya, northwest of the city of Nairobi, is Lake Naivasha. Naivasha is one of many large and small lakes that occupy eastern Africa’s long Rift Valley.

The increase in agricultural development, particularly the flower industry is blamed for the rapid decline in water levels in the lake. The lake also experiences wide year-to-year fluctuations in surface area because it is shallow and highly dependent on rainfall. Indeed, the apparent general decrease in “greenness” around the lake’s perimeter in the 2000 image may be linked to year-to-year variability, since much of the surrounding terrain is less green as well.
The increasing development of the land surrounding the lake is evident in this pair of images from the Landsat satellite from 1986 (top) and 2000 (bottom).

Vegetation appears green, bare ground or low vegetation appears in shades of pink. Urban development appears purple, and water appears deep blue.

Images by Jesse Allen, based on data provided by University of Maryland Global Land Cover Facility

NAIVASHA HIGHWAY PRIMARY SCHOOL


During the summer holidays of 2006, i went back to my country (Kenya) and got involved in a project to help a derelict primary school. The primary school is located in a little town called Naivasha, which is some 80 km from Nairobi, the Capital city of Kenya.


The Nairobi University Actuarial Students Association, N’ASA, and the Rotaract Club Westlands have joined hands to undertake a fencing project for Naivasha Highway primary school in Naivasha town, as an annual community service project. The project is to put up a perimeter fence around the school and its compound. Other smaller projects will also be undertaken in order to make the school a more fitting learning environment . map from BBC.




NAIVASHA HIGHWAY PRIMARY SCHOOL

SHORT HISTORY

Naivasha Highway was established as an annex of Kabati Primary School which is a double stream school. Kabati Primary catered for a large number of students and with the coming of free primary education it eventually became overcrowded. Matters at the school were made worse as there was no room for expansion. This resulted is the formation of Kabati Annex Primary school later renamed Naivasha Highway Primary School in 2003. It presently has a total of 522 students registered with it from std 1 to 8 with Mr. James Ndegwa as headmaster posted in 2000.

THE PROJECT


CONSTRUCTION OF A PERIMETER FENCE


On visiting the school and talking to the staff it became abundantly clear that further development of the school hinged on the provision of a perimeter fence. The school stands on 1.173 ha of open barren land.

The staff created a boundary by lining up stones, however, this hardly offers any protection or a sense of security to vulnerable children. The boundary is constantly violated especially by animals.

OBJECTIVES FOR CONSTRUCTION OF THE FENCE

Our main objective is to increase the security of the school by constructing the fence. As it stands the school is vulnerable to robbers who would take advantage of any supplies the school was to get. The security of the children is at risk because the schools ground is open to all and sundry as they walk through the school.
- Due to the lack of any trees or bush around it the children age between 5 and 15 have to play in a cloud of dust raised by he wind. It is difficult to maintain utilities for example the latrines, as they have turned into public toilets, making them difficult to keep clean.
Overall other projects intended for the school would not be feasible due to insecurity of the materials and ultimately the finished project as well such as running water, desks and chairs.

VEGETATION ON SITE

Because there is no fence, animals ate all the plants that we planted.

BUDGET OUTLINE FOR THE NAIVASHA HIGHWAY PRIMARY SCHOOL PROJECT

As students we have come up with a few activities that will help in raising some funds towards the project. However we would appreciate any assistance that you can afford us, financial and otherwise, that will see this worthy cause succeed. Figures shown are in the Kenyan currency, shillings.




SUMMARY
We believe that this project is worthwhile in terms of the long term benefits to the school and the community at large. Most of the parents of the students earn less than a dollar a day and are in consensus about improving the lives of their children. We propose that we all join hands in helping this community realize their dreams through their children.