I haven’t been able to devote lots of attention to the blog lately (sniff). That said I’m going to try to toss up videos/media until I can plow through a backlog of posts I’ve been wanting to write.
Right now I’m trying to learn more about finance in Latin America and the Caribbean. If you want to do business incubation, you gotsta know about finance and local markets. It’s also important to know how the American financial crisis is going to effect people in the places we work, especially given that “when America sneezes, Latin America catches the flu”. For instance, the communities we work with like La Florida, Nueva Alianza, etc. depend on the production of coffee and other commodities whose prices are very volatile.
Duration: 3 min 53 sec
Jeff Dayton-Johnson, Chief Economist for Latin America at the OECD Development Centre talks about the effect on the financial crisis on the region. Around 1 min 48 sec, he talks about fiscal policy and how it relates to reduction poverty and inequality. Over the past several years, Latin America as a whole has increased spending on public services like education, but they still are not seeing the same benefits for the amount of money spent as other countries in Europe per se.
Dayton-Johnson mentions the OECD PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) studies that look at how 15 year olds around the world perform on standardized tests that cover reading, math and science. If you’re interested in playing around with the data and learning how the mean math scores between boys and girls vary in Chile compared to the US, click here [PISA Country Profiles]
Topics discussed include the Albedo Effect, changes in carbon absorption capacity of natural carbon sinks as well as the impact of uncondensed water vapor and methane on the Earth’s ecosystem. They do a nice job of explaining how the Earth’s current climate is very sensitive to seemingly small changes in temperature. They contend that a 1 degree increase in the Earth’s temperature could push us past a critical threshold that will cause widespread desertification, mass extinction of plant and animal species and much doom, i.e. war, uncontrolled migration, starvation, etc.
Their call to action to CONSUME LESS falls a little flat after their dire warnings. Worldchanging suggests that this might have been a more appropriate call to action, though consuming less would of course be step 1:
What we need is to completely reconstruct our civilization. For starters, we need better cities, smart grids, innovative architecture and wilderness preservation. We hope that one end result will be a society in which we consume less not because we all make the altruistic decision to abstain, but because we actually need fewer resources to support prosperous and attractive lifestyles.
Scientists light methane gas trapped underneath ice in a lake near Fairbanks, Alaska
This video, recorded in November of 2007, on a lake near Fairbanks, shows Katey Walter from University of Alaska at Fairbanks and a research team drilling a hole through lake ice, then lighting the escaping methane. This video was shot by Carla Browning of University Relations at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Take a tour through the world of the light-emitting diode and learn - who invented it, how to use it, and how to make your own.
A far more sciencey version
Duration: 5 min 19 sec
In this edition of Rad Science, Dr. Kiki explains the science inside the LED, or “light-emitting diode.”
LED Tutorial
How to Build an LED Light - Part 1
Duration: 4 min 20 sec
Casey gives step by step instruction on how to build your own light fixture of light emitting diodes. Check out the site at http://www.allenergies.net/ledlight.html
60 Years of Human Rights: the Idea and the Reality Date: Human Rights Day, Wednesday December 10, 2008 Time: 6PM (Ticketed event) Location: JFK School, Harvard University 79 John F. Kennedy Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Speakers: Amartya Sen, Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and
Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Harvard University
Paul Farmer, Co-founder and Executive Vice President, Partners in Health;The Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Social Medicine, Harvard University Medical School
President Drew Gilpin Faust (Moderator), Harvard University
Post-Forum concert:
Oumou Sangare, Oumou Sangare is Mali’s great diva, champion of women’s rights, and one of the world’s most astounding female voices
Go to WWW.IOP.HARVARD.EDU between Monday, December 1 & 12:00 noon on Monday, December 8. Winners will be notified via email on the evening of Monday, December 8. Winners must be available to pick-up their tickets on Tuesday, December 9 from 9:00 am-5:00 pm at the Institute of Politics.
I wanted to invite you to join me and the rest of the AIDG team for food, drinks and conversation at our 4th Annual Holiday Party. It's time to celebrate the good works that you helped make happen. As an added bonus, two of our teammates based in Guatemala will be in town for the festivities. Don't miss the chance to meet the crew. Click here to RSVP online.
Can’t wait to see you.
Warm Regards,
Cat Laine
Who: The AIDG team and you
What: Our way of saying thanks to the people who make our work possible
When: Sunday December 14, 2008 4 - 7 pm
Where: AIDG's Office at Encuentro5
33 Harrison Avenue
Boston, MA 02111 (Chinatown)
Why: Because fighting against poverty and for environmental sustainability is a team effort. We couldn’;t do it without you.
To save cash and trees, we're doing mainly online invites this year instead of our normal paper ones. Please pass this message on to any friends you think might be interested. The more, the merrier!!!
If you want to volunteer at the event (you know you want to!), email me at claine@aidg.org. That goes double, if you have questions or problems RSVP’ing.
AIDG starts small businesses in Haiti and Guatemala to help underserved communities get affordable renewable energy, sanitation and clean water.
* FYI: the bird on the invite is the quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala, and the namesake for the town we’re based in, Quetzaltenango.
A lot of people in the tech community were moved by the recent 60 Minutes piece, the Electronic Wasteland, which showed how our toxic e-waste is being shipped to developing countries namely China. Tom Merritt from my favorite podcast, Buzz Out Loud, gives advice on “how to recycle responsibly or maybe even make some cash” from your old gadgets.
Duration: 3 min 26 sec
From making a few bucks to making sure you don’t poison people,we give you comprehensive tips on proper gadget disposal.
What was your intern project?
Outreach and Facilitation Officer, with direct participation in the Ram Pump Group, Water Group, Micro-hydroelectric Group, and Biodigestor Group.
Describe what your normal day as an AIDG intern in like.
My normal day as an AIDG Outreach intern starts off with an early morning ride to a remote community for a follow-up or initial assessment visit. The scenery on the way to any given community is without a doubt the most mystifying experience one can have in a country covered in majestic mountains and endless valleys. Upon arriving to the community, I am greeted by cheery women in traje tipico and men armed with field machetes. They instinctively take me to their central building where we discuss the nature of my visit and their needs and expectations. Accompanied by the AIDG site surveyor Dave, we then take a tour of the community’s terrain, reviewing the potential landmarks where technologies could be adequately installed. By the time we have finished hiking down extremely steep cliffs to get to the river, feeling as though we have survived an episode of ‘Extreme Adventures’, a nice steamy lunch is awaiting us back in a local woman’s home. A pile of tortillas are accompanied by a delicious bowl of black beans and drum sticks with red tomato sauce.
After a lunch filled with discussion about where we are from and what activities the community does, a meeting with all community members is called, so as to discuss the objectives of a possible project that could be executed in the future.
The patio where we had been first taken for introductions now becomes a classroom dynamic, with Dave and I at the head of the class, explaining the project. The faces of these 30 men, women and children light up with excitement and with the efforts of understanding our explanation. Questions and concerns are raised directly from the attentive listeners as we get into the details that they want to address. When this meeting is adjourned, Dave and I say our lengthy goodbyes and are on our way back to Xela on his motorbike. The next day will give me the opportunity to write up the details of the previous day’s thrilling visit.
What has been a crucial moment in which you have felt that AIDG is truly succeeding?
I went with Maricela Chan, XelaTeco’s Administrator, to a workshop at a Woman’s Association called Pop Atziak, in Quetzaltenango. On behalf of promoting XelaTeco’s most popular product, efficient stoves, Maricela and I took a stove to the Association as a demonstration so that the women could test it out for themselves. The presentation that Maricela gave, as well as the way she encouraged the woman to use the stove to boil water, was engaging and informative. I was truly impressed with the way she presented XelaTeco and the results she had from the members at the workshop. Most women were interested in purchasing the stoves and some were able to. XelaTeco’s ability to reach out to its audience and inform them so eloquently about the benefits of their products in relation to the environment, health care, and the money they will save shows me that they are able to go forward in sustaining their own business.
What has been the most rewarding moment for you?
The most rewarding moment for me was when I was with Dave in a community near El Tumbador, called Plan de Arena, on a site visit where we wanted to identify their potential to be the host of a micro-hydroelectric system. After determining that the river they had was adequate for this project, we told them that it would be good to have a letter of interest and involvement from them, confirming their motivation to take part.
Without another thought, the community leader, Don Ovidio, sat with Dave and I, took out his typewriter, and began typing the letter. When the letter was completed, the community members came to sign it one by one. The ones that could not write left their fingerprint on the paper. Their contribution to our visit felt fulfilling and priceless.
Who have you met who has inspired you the most and why?
The team is measuring the river’s flow to determine the potential for a
micro-hidroelectric system. Pictured: Dave Goosen , Don Carlos Cano (Community representative), and Jose Guzman (Ana Cafe)
The group of people who have inspired me the most are the members of Comunidad Nuevo Eden in San Marcos. The sixteen families in this community had until recently been refugees, having fled to Chiapas, Mexico to escape violence during the Guatemalan Civil War. They returned to Guatemala by choice after ten years with the help of the government. Many of the families that fled with them, however, preferred to stay in Mexico. Upon their return, they took to repairing and utilizing a coffee beneficiary and began working the dryers and other machinery. They also cultivate macadamia nuts.
What is most astounding about this group of individuals is how extremely well organized and interconnected they are. We came for a site visit because they were interested in a micro-hydroelectric system that would let them take advantage of the three rivers that run up to their community. The reason Neuvo Eden doesn’t have electricity like some of their neighboring communities is because at only sixteen families, their community is too small to qualify to receive power from the main supplier DEOXA.
Household members spoke to us about what motivated their desire to generate their own electricity. It almost always came down to one main objective: to have light so that their children could study at night and not have their eyes damaged by the dimness of candlelight which they currently use. In Nuevo Eden, not only do all the children attend the primary school located in the community, but families in neighboring communities also send their children there.
This community’s value of education and their children’s need to stay awake studying inspires me to help them gain the tools needed to create a better future for themselves.
Why did you choose AIDG?
I chose AIDG because its direction and presence in the NGO world is so unique and exiciting. While searching for jobs, I began learning more about the organization and was immediately inspired by its method of ensuring sustainability by incubating businesses administered by nationals of a country. AIDG’s solution to the challenges that the developing world faces through the development of technologies that take advantage of natural resources is a promising goal that I am so happy to be a part of.
Two liberal think tanks, the Center for American Progress Action Fund (DC) and the New Democracy Fund (NY), proposed that the Obama administration create a White House Office of Social Entrepreneurship.
Here are a few of their suggestions:
Create an annual multimillion-dollar prize for the most creative, high-impact solution to a defined social problem. It could also make “smaller, daily efforts” to boost innovative nonprofit groups, for example by creating a weekly “Changemakers” award.
Explore changes to the tax code that would reward partnerships between nonprofit groups and businesses, and encourage charitable giving that would help successful nonprofit groups grow.
Work with the U.S Agency for International Development to create an Innovation Investment Fund to support new approaches to global development, such as the Acumen Fund, which provides money to entrepreneurial anti-poverty projects.
Coordinate with the Commission on Cross-Sector Solutions to America’s Problems, a new entity that has been proposed by the Serve America Act, a bill to expand the country’s national-service programs. The 21-member commission would suggest ways the federal government can help nonprofit groups work more effectively.
Well, it’s one of the most effective health preventions you can make. And the World Bank and the World Health Organization has calculated that if you invest $1 in sanitation, then you reap $7 in health costs diverted and in labor days that are gained. Your workers are not off sick from diarrhea. So, it’s extremely cost effective. It’s actually a bargain.
the western world luxuriates in flush toilets; in toilets that play music or can check blood pressure, where the flush is a thoughtless thing, and anything that can go down a sewer - nappies, motorbikes, goldfish - does. In these times, Japanese women routinely use a device called a Flush Princess to mask the sound of their bodily functions; while in China millions of people happily use public toilets with no doors. The Big Necessity - as one Mumbai toilet builder called the toilet - is the account of my travels through the profoundly intriguing but stupidly neglected world of the disposal of human waste, which houses characters like Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organization; Wang Ming Ying, who is attempting to alleviate environmental devastation and deforestation in China by persuading rural Chinese to install biogas digesters, which produce cooking gas from human feces; Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, whose NGO Sulabh has built half a million toilets in India, as well as the world’s only museum of toilets; and the flushers of London and New York’s sewers, who scoff at roaches but hate rats nearly as much as they hate congealed cooking fat and tri-ply toilet paper.
One of the best things about conferences is when you get to meet people who’s work you enjoy/admire in real life. Erik Hersman of Afrigadget documents low-tech entrepreneurialism in Africa. Specifically he looks at ingenuity born of necessity, “tech that keeps economies on life support”. Raised in Sudan (until the war got bad), Kenya, and then again Sudan, he’s a bit of a tech anthropologist searching for Africans solutions to African problems.
Because I haven’t done an appropriate tech roundup for a long while and because Erik’s Better World By Design talk showcased tech featured in his blog, I’m just going to pick my fave 10 posts from Afrigadget.
[A] local organic farming company Green Dreams has been documenting the progress of transforming a garbage dump [in the Kibera Slum] to an organic farm on the Green Dreams blog. They are working with a local youth group comprising reformed criminals in converting garbage into organic manure, and garbage dumps into organic farms.
Not to be a wet blanket, but I do wonder what sorts of chemical may have leached into that soil.
A pilot project placed an electonic collar containing GPS and GSM units on Kimani, a bull elephant who was the last surviving member of a 5 elephant group with a penchant for raiding farms to eat crops. This collar allowed park rangers to track the elephant’s movements using Google Earth / Google Maps. The project also allowed park authorities to monitor animal locations at all times and acted as a deterrent against the poaching of this important resource.
Just the other day on a visit to Kibera Slum I came across this interesting bio gas latrine which is being set up for Kibera people as a response to lacking community toilets. The sanitation situation in Kibera is really really poor! There are a couple of community toilets which where set up after the shooting of the Constant Gardener but only a few years later these are in bad shape! Again, they cost 3/= per visit which is really above of what a typical Kibera inhabitant can afford. Just sum up what it will cost for 5 visits per day for a family of five! So the bio gas latrine is a really good option, since it will generate a little income to make the toilets free of charge.
Morris Mbetsa, an 18 year old self-taught inventor with no formal electronics training from the coastal tourist town of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean in Kenya, has invented the “Block & Track”, a mobile phone-based anti-theft device and vehicle tracking system.
Phillip Isohe is a metal fabricator in the jua kali, non-traditional industrial sector, in Kenya. In his spare time he builds models of airplanes and buses. This seems to be an extension of what many of us did while growing up in Africa - building wire, or tin can, cars. What’s most interesting is the excruciating attention to detail that he puts into each one. In fact, they each have motors with working lights, steering, engine and interiors.
Because I’m one of those people who love director’s commentaries and behind the scenes sneak peeks.
How does Afrigadget find all these innovations?
People send them a lot of stories, but also the Afrigadget bloggers walk into a welding shops, go scouting in industrial areas and pay close attention to what others might not see. It would be a very interesting/useful exercise to try out in Haiti or Guatemala.
A very noteworthy thing Erik mentioned is that folks are working on a Maker Faire Africa in Ghana in 2009. Maker Faire is a 2 day festival of arts, crafts, wild inventions and amazing sculpture that takes place in the Bay Area and Austin, Texas every year. The African version would have a slightly different focus however.
The aim of a Maker Faire-like event is to create a space on the continent where Afrigadget-type innovations, inventions and initiatives can be sought, identified, brought to life, supported, amplified, propagated, etc. Maker Faire Africa asks the question, “What happens when you put the drivers of ingenious concepts from Mali with those from Ghana and Kenya, and add resources to the mix?”
According to Afrigadget:
The focus here is not on high-tech, but on manufacturing. Specifically, fabrication, the type of small and unorganized businesses that pop up wherever an entrepreneur is found on the African continent. It gets exciting when you think about gathering some of the real innovators from this sector into one place where they can learn from each other and spread their knowledge from one part of the continent to another.
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