University of Virginia Students
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Ambassador Garvey meets with University of Virginia Students
On November 28 Ambassador Garvey and Deputy Chief of Mission Stephen R. Fox met with a team of six students from the University of Virginia School of Engineering who were in Cameroon to work as volunteers on a clean water project for the town of Wum in North West Cameroon. The students were accompanied by Thomas Dunnells of Charlottesville Rotary and Mathias Ofron of the Rotary Club of Bamenda. The University of Virginia is teaming up with the American and Cameroonian Rotary clubs to build a sustainable water system to deliver clean water to the 50,000 people living in Wum. The three-phase project, which will occur from 2008-10, is estimated to cost $200,000. With the support of the Rotary clubs and Rotary International the students have raised $32,000 for phase 1 of the project. The six University of Virginia students were in Cameroon from November 22-28 to work on the project which will carry water for six miles from a volcanic lake on top of a mountain down to Wum. As part of phase 1 of the project 3,800 residents of Wum and neighboring villages turned out to dig a trench 2.5 kilometers long, 30 millimeters deep and 6 inches wide in 5 hours, an accomplishment that Dunnells said would have taken heavy equipment one week to accomplish in the U.S. Ambassador Garvey complimented the students, the University of Virginia, and the Rotary clubs on their support for the project and for their spirit of volunteerism. Dunnells was a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon in the 1960s after graduating from the University of Virginia.