Construction to Combat Climate Change

Dear friends and supporters,

Hope all is well!  A quarter has passed and so much has happened since our last report! 

It's been an intense, really busy, summer!

This report is in four parts :

1. Update on the Building work
2. Update on the Staff, Projects and Admin
3. Update on the Lab
4. Update on Tomatis 

Please DO look at the attachments which include :

1. Building - Work on the Outlet shafts has started.  You can watch the preparation in this Stop Motion film!
2. Building - 3 Deans from an Engineering and Technology College in Dindigul, Tamil Nadu visited.  You can watch what they say after their visit.
3. Lab - Flip through the pdf with collages of photos to see the Lab in action.
4. Tomatis - No photos of the kids and adults for privacy reasons, but the brochure of a major conference I attended with some photos, and the most heart-warming poem a child wrote at the end of his first block of listening training.
   
   
   

 UPDATE ON THE BUILDING WORK

• The Second Floor East Roof (mentioned in the last report) was finished! Thank you, all! This roof offers protection from rain and stops leakages. It is also transparent, letting light in, so the building remains full of light and still has lots of cross-ventilation.
  This means that we have completed the West, North and East sides.  Only the South is left.  
• What we could not do: We were not able to buy the Hobo Sensors and get our old Elitech sensors working again.  Rather, we got the Elitechs working again but did not download the data yet.  Data is very important to show the efficiency of our building. It makes doubters into believers.  However, this is very difficult to follow on top of our daily work, and needs a person.  Some other tasks have been shifted to the next quarter.
• MOST IMPORTANT : Work on the Outlet Shafts and Mechanical Ventilator installation started!  You will remember that our building is famous for its system of cooling without air-conditioning. Key elements are the outlet shafts, which are topped by mechanical ventilators (which don't use electricity) that let hot air out of the building, and suck in the cool air from the towers and underground tunnels.  We bought two mechanical ventilators and are deeply studying all the intricate details of how to build up the shafts and fit the mechanical ventilators on top.  This idea dates to 2010!  We've only been able to begin its implementation now in 2024. Thanks again to all of you. 
  Please watch the Stop-Motion film on the various stages of preparatory work.
• A team of 3 Deans from the PSNA College of Engineering and Technology in Dindigul Tamil Nadu, who had heard about our building when they were in Jaipur on a field trip, came on a study visit to our building. One was the Dean of Civil Engineering, another the Dean of Mechanical Engineering and the third a Dean of Administration and also an Energy Consultant and Certified Energy Auditor.  It was an excellent visit, and you can see their reacrtions in the film attached. (In brief, they were amazed by it!).
• Besides these major milestones for the building, other work continued : The Ground Floor was polished (hand't been fully done since we opened to the public in 2017), we constructed a new gate against the cows. Selvam and Kadhir have made a new garden just at the entrance.  Now our ebonies and bananas are protected from the cows! The yellow laburnum that we planted back in 2017 has grown. It is in full bloom right next to the building and is absolutely gorgeous.  The Waste Water system with its vortex was cleaned and it received a new coat of paint.  The Karaikudi tiles work is ongoing. They are our salute to Auroville's host state, Tamil Nadu, and look gorgeous laid out.
  
  
• The most important thing to note is that almost the entire world is suffering from extreme heat - the likes of which many have never experienced before in their lives - and therefore seems to have - finally - woken up to the realities of climate change. Auroville also suffered from extreme intense heat combined with humidity.  BUT, in our building, we managed quite well, without any air-conditioning.  People still heave a sigh of relief on entering the building from the outside; the temperature difference is palapble.  And this is without our cooling system being complete. 
  
  So thank you for supporting this model building! We are proud to be a real example for the whole world!

UPDATE ON STAFF, PROJECTS AND ADMIN

STAFF

• Anita from Iran joined us as our newest team member.  She's in charge of social media and has started teaching a fab class on Persian culture and language.  She's also the team clown making all of us laugh! Agila joined for accounting and picked up our system admirably. 
• Vishnu the watchdog passed away but now we have Jacky and Kutti, both abandoned Indie pups we adopted.  Foxy's like a grandma next to these two!
• Selvi had to take leave for a major operation and just got back.  Everyone is going on staggered paid leave for a week. The entire team has worked so hard, this is the minimum we can do!

PROJECTS

• Accounting Experiment: Some of you might remember supporting an accounting experiment that we started with a new accountant in 2022.  This was to shift from a mixed to an accrual system, have better compliance, and find ways to do the accounting job more efficiently. We bought a program called "Suvit" which imports data from excel and does bulk exports to Tally.  This has made the accountant's job much easier.
• New website : Our new website is finally online. Please have a look and tell us what you think!

We have wonderful news on the Lab and Tomatis fronts, but will finish reporting on that tomorrow. Also, there has been a technical glitch and I couldn't upload all the attachments today.  I will do so tomorrow.

Best wishes,

Mita