Shout it From the Rooftop

By Manali McCarthy 

We have great news! The Resilience Team received word this week that our rainwater capture project will be funded by TGIF. The committee has awarded us a whopping total of $68,865.95! The funds have been allocated for the 2016-2017 school year, and this money will be used in conjunction with the $18,000 the team received last year for the cistern project. That is about $87,000 in total, and we could not be more excited. Our team has been working towards this goal for the past two quarters, not to mention the creation of the idea and groundwork laid by last year’s Resilience Team. I’d like to share my favorite line in the letter informing us that we received funds: “Funds not to be used for bottled water.” My team and I were severely disappointed to find out that we could not use the $68,000 to buy water. We’ll just have to figure out a way to conserve water instead! Please excuse my humor.

Other happenings this week include a brainstorming session surrounding educational outreach for the cistern system. A big goal of ours is spreading awareness about water management and conservation, sharing our efforts, and informing the UCLA community of ways they can save water as individuals. We would love to do some sort of grand opening that involves the art community at UCLA. Our hope is to partner with art students and have them paint or decorate the cisterns in some way to make them even more fun! We also want to incorporate tours of the cistern system at Parking Structure 9, most likely through the Engineering Department. Last but not least, we will definitely be including signage located on street level of the structure to capture the interest of UCLA’s foot traffic. All in all, this week has been a win for the Resilience Team!