We are very excited to announce the two awesome Fellowship Leaders that will be helping us run the 2012 Summer Fellowship Program: Ben Powell and Hudson Cavanaugh! We are so happy to have these two guys join our team this June – the Summer Fellows are going to be in great hands! Without further ado, meet Ben and Hudson:

There’s a good chance you’ll see some Virginia gear around the CWS office this summer, since Kate and I are both Wahoos! I was born and raised in Austin, Texas, and am now Fourth Year at UVa. I’ll be graduating this May with a degree in Computer Science, and am so excited and honored to be given the opportunity to return to Ghana as a Fellowship Leader this summer.

It’s been nearly two years since I traveled to Ghana as part of CWS’s first Fellowship team, and I’ve been able to tell that the Fellowship Program has changed quite a bit since my Fellowship Program in Summer 2010! My team consisted of five people instead of four, and we were the only CWS Fellowship team in Ghana that summer. Peter and Shak worked closely with us to help my team open CWS’s 7th water business, located in Wambong. The World Cup was on TV just about every night we were there, and we adjusted our schedules whenever possible to see either Ghana or the United States play a match. You can imagine how much fun it was when the two teams actually played against each other in the Round of 16!

Since my Fellowship, CWS has expanded to 35 villages, changed offices, and hired several full-time staff members and fellowship translators. When I heard CWS added the Fellowship Leader position, I was excited and anxious to return to Ghana to play a bigger role in an organization that has not only affected me personally but also 20,000 Ghanaians who now have a permanent, safe source of drinking water. Watching CWS grow has been fascinating, and I’m convinced that the CWS model not only works locally but is sustainable, which is a key attribute of successful global development. I can’t wait to be a part of the growth this summer as CWS expands to even more villages.

I couldn’t be happier to return to Ghana with the new Fellows and be a part of the Summer 2012 Fellowship Program. I will never forget my experience in Ghana two years ago, and cannot wait to see what the Summer 2012 Fellowship has in store. Enjoy the next few months, and see ya’ll in June!

-Ben

It has been less than a year since I’ve been back from Tamale working with Community Water Solutions, but I’m eager to go back. I’m a rising junior at Middlebury College with a major in Political Science and Latin American Studies and, after the CWS program is over, I will be working with an organization called Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), a student founded group dedicated to lowering the price of life saving drugs by working with research universities across the United States.

The reason I’m proud to be working with CWS is not just all the incredible people I’ve met through CWS, but because the structure of the fellowship program accomplishes two important goals: it creates sustainable clean water projects around Tamale that provide clean water to entire communities, and it helps create waves of informed, responsible global citizens who I hope will go on to do great things. I believe it is our responsibility to be aware of our privilege and use the power and access that circumstance has given us to fight against global injustice such as extreme poverty and lack of access to clean water. One way I intend to do that is by working to ensure that this year’s fellowship program is safe, fun and, hopefully, as impactful as my own fellowship program.Ben and I are going to do our best to make sure that everything runs as smoothly as possible throughout the program. If any of you have any concerns, questions, or simply want to trade some emails, please feel free to shoot me an email at hucavanagh@gmail.com I’m looking forward to meeting all of you!

-Hudson

We’re only 8 days in, but so far March has been a very exciting month for Community Water Solutions! As many of you know from our constant emails, Facebook updates, tweets, and blog posts, the applications for our 2012 Summer Fellowship Program were due on Monday. We’ve got a big stack of applications from some pretty awesome people. We can’t wait to learn more about these potential Fellows!

But thats not all that’s been going on behind the scenes at CWS…we’ve had some other major changes in the works that we have been dying to share!

First, this awesome lady as officially signed on as our new West Africa Regional Director!

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/37308505 w=400&h=225]

Rules of the Road from Kathryn Padgett on Vimeo.

For the past 9 months Kathryn has volunteered for CWS as our Ghana Country Director and has done such a wonderful job. This June she will officially join our full-time staff to help CWS plan and manage our expansion to other regions and countries in West Africa (and beyond!) We are THRILLED to have Kathryn join our team full-time. We know that she is the perfect person to be leading our operations in Africa!

This month we also welcomed Mr. Amin Mohammed to our full-time field staff!

Amin has been a Fellowship Translator for CWS for the past two Fellowship Sessions. He has an incredible work ethic, a passion for helping his country, and a great attitude! He has always received rave reviews from his Fellowship Teams and from the villages where they have worked. As a member of our full-time field staff, Amin will be responsible for monitoring our villages, finding new communities to partner with CWS and translating for Fellows when they are in Ghana. He is a great addition to our team!

Amin is taking the place of another Fellow Favorite, CWS field-staffer TJ.

Last summer TJ graduated from Tamale Polytechnic and and this month he is started his national service year. In Ghana, students who graduate from an accredited tertiary intuition are required by law to do one year of national service to the country. We are SO PROUD of Teej for his academic accomplishments – he is the first member of our Ghanaian staff to pursue higher education! He finished his degree while also working full-time, which is no easy feat! Lucky for us TJ will still be based in Tamale so he’ll be helping us out from time to time when we need extra help translating, monitoring, or doing other work in the field. We are very sad to lose him for the year, but we are confident that he is going to do great things for his country!

-Kate