NTERA’s founder, Dr. Ron Lantz, always set a strong standard for stewardship within the company and in his community. To recognize INTERA’s corporate commitment to stewardship, we created the Ron Lantz Stewardship Award in 2018. The mission statement of the award is: To empower INTERA employees to act as stewards of the environment for the betterment of humankind.
INTERA is excited to announce that Michelle Pedrazas has won the Stewardship Award for 2023-2024! Congratulations Michelle!! The award will contribute $10,000 towards Michelle’s project and allow her to use 160 hours of her work time to complete the project.
Michelle’s proposal exemplifies INTERA’s stewardship mission with a goal of increasing the success rate for sustainable water development projects in East Africa. Michelle will be working with the technical team of an established non-profit organization, Well Aware, using her proposed strategy to enhance their geophysical survey instrumentation and aquifer characterization approach for water well drilling campaigns. A few highlights from Michelle’s project proposal are provided below–
- The primary beneficiaries of the project are the communities in Laikipia County that currently lack reliable access to clean drinking water.
- Through the implementation of geophysical surveying and data acquisition, the project aims to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of aquifer characterization prior to drilling water wells.
- For sustainability into the future, the project prioritizes training for the Well Aware on-site technical team, empowering them with the skills and knowledge to perform geophysical surveys independently.
- To integrate more of the local population in the project, the project funding includes hiring two geoscience students for surveying assistance from the University of Nairobi.
