News • Wednesday, February 5, 2014
THE DAILY WILDCAT • 3
THIRST PROJECT
Community Chatter
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people walking on this planet.” The Thirst Project was formed in Los Angeles in 2008 by a group of eight college students. They began with simple grassroots campaigns to raise money to build freshwater wells in developing countries. They also formed local water boards to help maintain and regulate those wells. Wesley’s talk was organized by the UA Thirst Project Club, founded in the spring of 2012 by Ashkan Rastegar, a physiology junior and club president. The club currently has 30-35 members and five officers. Rastegar said the club is helping make a change. “We make a lot of difference with social media,” he said. Rastegar said it is important to have an extension of the Thirst Project on the UA campus to get students involved. “Unless there is someone dedicated to bringing this to a college campus, nothing is going to happen,” he said. “You have to have a club and have an incentive for people to join and to make a difference.” UA Thirst Project Club officer and nursing junior Tori Kinion said she became involved with the organization after seeing a presentation in high school four years ago. “It really hit me hard,” Kinion said. “We just take for granted the water that we have.” The Thirst Project began outreach and fundraising programs in Los Angeles and now works nationally as a nonprofit. In addition to raising funding to build wells, it also runs outreach programs to get youth involved. “We thought, ‘How can we be different than all the other water organizations?’” Wesley said. “‘Let’s use young people.’” Wesley has been working for Thirst Project for a year. He began working in the organization after graduating with a degree in environmental science. He speaks at multiple events a year, mostly at schools.
NOTE BOWL FROM PAGE 1
automatically in one place,’” Chaifetz said. “Students already have enough on their plate. Why can’t we just automatically organize this stuff for them and make education more about the learning and not about organizing technology?” Hope Towne, an adjunct instructor with the Center for English as a Second Language, said NoteBowl could especially benefit students in CESL because professors use two
Wildcats, what makes you happy? Lily Ghafari, psychology freshman “Friends, family and getting good grades.”
Will Sim, mining and engineering sophomore “Music; you can just get lost in it.”
Thomas Bello, biomedical engineering sophomore “I enjoy getting to share things that make me excited with other people — seeing them get excited about things I care about.”
Jason Mijangos, engineering freshman
EVAN WESLEY GIVES A PRESENTATION on the Thirst Project, the largest youth-founded water resource program, in the Student Union Memorial Center on Monday.
The UA club organizes fundraising events throughout the year, such as percentage nights at restaurants and booths at club fairs, and also brings in speakers from the Thirst Project every spring. The club’s outreach isn’t just limited to campus — the UA Thirst Project also attends art festivals around Tucson. “We kind of try to raise awareness to the greater Tucson community and let them know that there is something like this going on,” Rastegar said.
— Follow Hannah Plotkin @HannahPlotkin
different systems: Desire2Learn and Jupiter Grades. “I know for our students it can be confusing,” Towne said. “They can kind of get mixed up between the two [systems]. I think integration is very helpful.” Last spring, the company was named one of the top 15 college innovations in the nation by Microsoft, and the team was invited to Silicon Valley. There, team members met startup founders from Yelp, Flixster and TaskRabbit and participated in a startup bootcamp. The team is also competing
By Trisha Walters BOOKSTORES EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
“Seeing other people happy, just making people laugh and smile — that’s what makes me happy.”
REBECCA NOBLE/THE DAILY WILDCAT
COMPILED BY KATYA MENDOZA
LGBTQ
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opportunity to meet the staff and interns who help run the center, as well as become familiar with the new space, said Katie Kilby, co-director of Pride Alliance. Many students still haven’t had the opportunity to spend time in the space and make it their campus home, Kilby said. “We hope that this open house will help break down that barrier,” Kilby said. “It’s really an opportunity to talk with people, to ask questions and get to know more about
in the Venture Madness pitch competition, which is run by the Arizona Commerce Authority and Invest Southwest. Chaifetz said the NoteBowl team represents some of the youngest members competing. This summer, when the cofounders graduate, they plan to move to the Scottsdale/ Phoenix area, where they will analyze the pilot program and see how successful it was. Chaifetz said his hope is that NoteBowl will eventually serve as the platform for universities across the nation and become the future of education.
what we do.” This event helps highlight the work the LGBTQ community is doing on campus and showcase the new center, according to HoefleOlson. “Definitely getting a physical space that we can call a center has been at the top of my list,” Hoefle-Olson said. “I really see this as a result of years and years of advocacy, and it’s really exciting to be able to offer this to students, staff, faculty and alumni.”
— Follow Adriana Espinosa @adri_eee
“Your college is not just about your courses,” Chaifetz said. “It’s your entire university experience, and that’s what we’re trying to capture with NoteBowl. We feel a more connected campus will produce more efficiency and more effectiveness and allow students to be more successful and understand everything that’s going on at the university.” KYLE MITTAN/THE DAILY WILDCAT
— Follow Brittny Mejia @BrittnyAriel
ANDREW CHAIFETZ is the CEO and founder of NoteBowl, an upcoming desktop and mobile phone application that acts as an automatic planner system in conjunction with D2L, organizing homework, quizzes and tests.