online platform what they're doing to
improve people's lives around the world
and how all of you as makers are needed
it can help Jana thank you thank you
anuradha welcome everybody hard to
compete with a giant mousetrap but we're
gonna give it a go so thank you for
taking time out of your busy days I'm
here to talk to you a little bit about
engineering for global development and
what that means for the maker community
and how you all can contribute and how
are you probably contributing already
without even knowing it so what is
engineering for global development it is
the application of technology to solving
humanitarian development challenges and
these are simple things that we take for
granted here for example to just access
to clean water sanitation access to the
grid or electricity engineers technical
people makers all have a part to play in
developing solutions to these challenges
so the objective for engineering for
global development is to develop
affordable sustainable accessible and
reliable solutions to these kinds of
challenges another way to describe it is
humanitarian engineering so I'm here on
behalf of engineering for change we're
an organization of various communities
global community of makers technologists
engineers as well as societies and
socially conscious companies who are
dedicated to promoting these kinds of
sustainable solutions our mission is to
empower this humanitarian engineering
community to serve the underserved
better so who's a part of the coalition
of organizations currently we have a
number of organizations the founding
organizations are the american society
of mechanical engineers or asme
engineers Without Borders USA as well as
Institute for electronics and electrical
engineers or I Triple E since our
inception about two years ago we've
added a whole roster of fantastic
organizations the United engineering
foundation supporting us along with asce
ashtray they'd be a lot of alphabet soup
but for those of you who are in the
technical world you might be familiar
with some of these folks in addition to
that we have an online platform which we
launched
publish a forum for these kinds of
conversations to aggregated disseminate
knowledge about existing solutions for
underserved communities worldwide share
lessons learned and best practices and
to advance this work so on this platform
and I'll give you a little bit of a
virtual tour of it at the end of this
presentation you can actually
collaborate with individuals and
organizations throughout the world to
further develop solutions as well as
learn about all of the amazing
discoveries and developments that are
happening in this sector our job with
this platform and with our work in
general is to really advocate in advance
the collection of this kind of content
nurture this community and also nurture
collaboration so I'm going to share with
you a little bit of the good work that's
come out of launching this platform some
of the innovations I'm gonna share today
I have been person and some of them or
we're gonna kind of picture in our minds
if you will so the first and it's going
to be a little rough i'm going to try to
do this some simple tools so in
communities worldwide where there is no
access to your local home depot out and
you need to make things what's a great
way to kind of take what's available the
most available resources and develop
these tools so one of our makers Larry
Bentley actually found a way to capture
this he used scrap parts pipes and other
things washers and put together this
show press as an example which goes well
with this Jake leveraging some of these
engineering principles wedges amazing
tools which you've not here and you can
actually use a screw to create a
platform that goes up and down attach
drill bit here and voila you have a
drill press very simple very low-cost
very effective and very critical in
places where tools are not readily
available and you need to make things
and this is exactly what we're all about
making things so this is something
that's available on engineering for
change as an example there's an entire a
toolset demonstrated if you have some
pliers you have this awesome hammer it
gives you all of the step-by-step
instructions and every time on one of
these slides where you catch a little
MakerBot on this case on the top left
hand corner I mean it's also available
on instructable so we're
kind of sharing this information not
only on e4c but also through other
platforms another technology I want to
talk to you about that's that we've kind
of actually featured on e4 see is the
concrete laid so lay the fundamental
part of any machine shop but also
incredibly expensive and this is a
technology that's been around for a long
time this is not necessarily news but
it's a very applicable and these kinds
of again low resource settings so it is
um originally come out of World War one
where well in this case weapons need to
be made really quickly and not enough
machines were around so there is a
method that was developed to actually
use concrete to develop machine to make
these weapons now in peaceful times
hopefully we're inventing this
technology as a way of creating parts
necessary machinery in underserved
communities so we've developed with two
of our members an entire step by step
instruction guide and how to make a
concrete lathe what is necessary what
kind of technology you can use to
actually build this it's an open source
project which means that anybody can
contribute to the betterment of this
concrete lake design the design is
available on sketchup and you're all
welcome to to check it out and let's
play around with it another area that's
fundamental and that's really critical
and in need of maker influence is in the
area of health devices one of the things
that we often see in underserved
communities is that well-meaning our
organizations companies deliver a
machinery for whether it's diagnostics
or actually conducting therapies that
although useful in most developed world
areas just doesn't function well when
you have brownouts or lack of
electricity consistently when you don't
have the components that need to be
replaced so you really can't maintain
this kind of equipment or where you
actually just don't have the training
you you have folks and clinics that are
not able to actually maintain and
operate these systems so one example of
a really innovative solution comes to us
from engineering World Health which is
one of the group's we've worked with and
what
he recognized that is that
electrocardiograph machines which are
prevalent and every kind of health
clinic throughout the world actually
have a small fault which is the little
pads and you see this image right here
the pads that attach to a person to
actually capture the signal and take it
to the machine are generally disposable
oh great easy to get here where there's
a supply chain but in underserved
communities where supply chains are not
that robust these kinds of pads are not
available so they're trying to find an
alternative solution it seems like at
such a very simple piece but actually
took some significant thought and
material science to understand that the
linings inside of bottle caps like you
see here in this case of bud light not
tried plug for them but those caps are
actually have the same material
properties as same pads and the
advantages that they're no longer
disposable in a way because you can
sanitize them you can actually just boil
them and use them over and over again
and with the simple process that they've
developed they have a step-by-step
process they've outlined again
instructables you re welcome to see it
on our site you can actually manufacture
these easily in country with some snaps
snaps up hold youjizz together and one
of these pads so simple effective and
fundamental when you're looking at
health care another great example is
this water powered bucket generator that
comes to us from the appropriate
infrastructure development group design
group apologies which is essentially a
micro hydro system you at create you get
a bucket one of these buckets that
you've probably seen around you can
punch some holes in it put it into a
running body of water and there you have
it you have with a few more things I'm
leaving out oh you're actually able to
generate electricity charge your cell
phone plug in stereo more radio it's
it's a fantastic tool that a IDG
developed with the community this was in
Guatemala in order to not only develop
this design but also to build local
capacity which is so critically
important to ensuring that horn groups
don't have to be in these countries
anymore but it can actually behind some
big lessons extracts and lessons
themselves and advance the fields of
humanitarian development another
fantastic technology that some of you
who may have been around the fair
earlier would have seen is a kite aerial
photography our group of engineers
Without Borders who was
zip it in here all weekend actually
demonstrated it it's another innovative
tool that they developed while they were
working at a site in Cambodia building a
dam to support local agriculture offers
before the advent of google earth that
they were unable to get full aerial view
of the work site which is incredibly
important when you're building a dam so
they actually have to part a
remote-controlled helicopter bought a
kite attached to the motor so there's
servers to be able to tilt in y'all and
got that bad boy up there with a little
human effort of running up and down the
field and managed to get a perfect
aerial view of the work site with some
software you can stitch the images
together and actually have something
even more fantastic than what Google
Earth was able to provide because often
rural areas such as this are just not of
deep enough interest for for these
organizations so what you see here at
the bottom right hand which i think is
how you guys are seeing at a bottom left
hand the the young gentleman that's
holding the string to the kite where the
cap is attached it chai he worked on on
this project and he was originally the
tuk-tuk driver that worked with a team
but got so enthused by this worked and
was so impressed by this ingenuity and
this collaborative effort and designing
the solution that ultimately he went on
to get his engineering degree in
Cambodia and is still closely attached
to the chapter and project and Steve
right here is also with part of the
project and nodding along and to us
that's that's a tremendous success story
something that demonstrates the power of
engineering and the power of technology
and makers to advance this kind of work
another great example that we're looking
more into the ICT or information
communication technologies for
development world is a comes from bio
games it is something that came out of a
lab out of UCLA where they start to
actually apply their innovations to tell
pathology so one of the things that you
find especially in sub-saharan Africa
it's a misdiagnosis of malaria folks
that are coming into clinics and you
know demonstrating some classical signs
of malaria but are ultimately poorly
diagnosed whether it's lack of capacity
at the clinic
lack of equipment lack of understanding
of the imagery that you're getting
through microscopy and that's a
significant issue because that means
that the treatment that they get isn't
appropriate for for their illness so the
folks at UCLA developed this game as a
way of crowdsourcing pathology and what
they've seen is that in these binary
binary diagnostic decisions of whether
someone's affected or an infected non
professional gamers were actually able
to get an accuracy which is within one
point two five percent of the diagnostic
decisions made by trained professionals
so it's a powerful tool a powerful way
of spreading out the work just in the
same way that you have folks looking for
extraterrestrials well now we can apply
this to our challenges here at home that
are killing people so it is really
really a tremendous achievement some
other examples from the agricultural
sector in this case comes to us from
both the maker community the DIY
community and also from a market based
organization so in the case of
agricultural productivity maize or corn
is a fundamental staple in many regions
of the developing world how you get
those kernels off surprisingly a lot of
times women will sit in a circle and
just pop them off manually which is a
laborious process oftentimes inefficient
and naturally could could benefit from a
little ingenuity and a lot of maker
creativity so on the top left hand
corner what you see here is a corn
sheller that's made from cans that you
can just bend in a particular way that
you can run along the cob and boom boom
boom boom boom there you have it all
your kernels are popping off and it's a
little tool that makes the job that much
easier but normally unlike us where we
have fancy tools in our kitchen gadgets
for picking pickles out of jars and and
coring apples and what have you not in
these underserved communities the kind
of tools are not developed because there
is a lack of recognition above the
market that's available there but this
think this is a great case of a
technology that's simple and effective
and goes a long way to ensuring
communities prosperity the it's a little
hard to see but the bottom underneath
that the market-based solution that I'm
demonstrating here is comes to us from
global cycle solutions and it's a maze
shell or bicycle kick butt
basically a kit that attaches to a
bicycle again very important technology
everywhere which you can actually pedal
with and push the corncob through and
then we'll d sell at a really tremendous
rate amazing cost about two dollars
maximum and if farm collective or
cooperative get together pulls money
they're able to purchase this increase
the productivity and actually advance
their own economic status so more
examples another example here we have
it's a very fundamental one that very
few people know about in the case of the
developing world about three billion
people cook food and key their house
with traditional cook stoves a lot of
times these are three stone fires three
stones you put what in the middle fire
all this has done indoors and this leads
to huge amounts of upper respiratory
tract infections a lot of premature
deaths primarily a woman and children
it's something that has been solved in
the developed world but not being
addressed anywhere else as much as it
should be so the Global Alliance for
clean cookstoves clean cookstoves group
that we're working with with engineering
for change has been advocating for
improved cookstoves for a number of
years and here we demonstrate an example
of an institutional cook stove in
schools throughout Africa of you if you
visited what you'll see is that children
get their meals out of school and
although the food is cooked in a small
usually Hut that's by the school or so
also in clinics other parts of the world
news you're not ventilated and this is
two or three women that are sitting
there cooking massive amounts of food so
inhaling that smoke consistently getting
all those particulates in so in this
case we demonstrate a design that was
brought to us by one of our makers which
is an institutional cook stove that is
both efficient because it's closed in it
contains all the heat it also uses less
wood and bent out to ensure that those
particulars are not trapped and are
being inhaled so we want to demonstrate
that this is an amazing solution and
there are many more and makers such as
yourselves I've been instrumental in
developing these designs but a matter of
recognizing the need is is the hard
partier as the crux of the matter so
what we're trying to do with you foresee
is to share
share these amazing success stories
share the lessons learned from the field
advance some of the solutions by
inviting collaboration amongst makers
this is actually a screen capture of the
new story that includes the instructions
to this institutional stove construction
we also have a topical topical pages for
all these crucial areas water health
sanitation infrastructure our structures
agriculture information systems all of
these and energy most of all all of
these are very very important and have
their own communities of practice you
have reports from the field new
developments that we want to share with
anybody who's interested in wants to be
engaged in this work to get you off to
the right foot get you informed about
what are the advances that are happening
some tools publications and case studies
that might be a value as well as some
screaming children all of them are good
that we want to share with you in
addition to that but we've built out as
our solutions library which is basically
all of these different types of
solutions that exist out there we're
trying to aggravate them bring them all
together so that when you come and you
actually start to look through different
solutions you could recognize what are
some of the different ways that we can
approach a particular problem is it a
drill press or is it something else so
the value of collecting this information
providing this rich rich dialogue is to
ensure that we can advance and go beyond
what currently exists because without
all of this being collected while we're
kind of reinventing the wheel constantly
all over one of the things we're working
on with the solutions libraries building
an entire program to start to also
evaluate and understand which of these
are the best performing we're not
without faults Engineers go through an
iterative design process consistently
and in the case of appropriate solution
these low-cost accessible solutions the
same kind of process is necessary the
same kind of engineering burger needs to
be applied to ensure that what we get is
absolutely the best for the users and
gets the job done effectively we also
have provided a learning lab where we
actually advance some of the lessons
kind of generalized opportunities for
further education whether it's through
academic routes or online free of charge
share our design principles and one of
the features that we have added to us as
a webinar series this webinar series
where we invite thought leaders in this
field to share what are their
experiences what processes they followed
what are some of the failure modes of
the experience in developing their
solution and we invite anybody from
anywhere in the world to come and join
the conversation ask questions because
questions get us two solutions faster
and better so I'm hoping this invitation
next one we have is on October 18 we're
going to be talking about water
sanitation and hygiene with some of the
folks from the Pacific Institute come
free of charge join in join the
conversation you can't make it we
capture everything on youtube so that
you're able to actually act with the
information afterwards so without I want
to invite you to join our community of
solvers and makers to share your ideas
share things that you've seen in the
field and join us get inspired through
our storytelling get connected to us or
social media and through our platform
and get naked because making is going to
make all the difference in in this field
so I'd like to thank you my my contact
information is at the bottom of this
slide and invite you to share any
questions you may have if you hopefully
I'll be able to hear you you will see no
promises I I guess I've answered all of
them so in that case or just oh you have
one okay then the name of our next venue
oh it's our next webinar our next
webinar is an October the 18th it's
going to be online where online platform
so we are physically physically I am em
in a sofa station today but normally we
are all online yes yes sir the
challenges so oh the way that so the
question was how do we find out these
problems or challenges so we have a
pretty large community actually right
now of over 11,000 members so folks
bring them up to us we get contacted all
the time with
friend solutions or challenges that
they've experienced their work we also
partner with a lot of organizations that
are doing work on the ground NGOs share
with us their stories we also actively
seek out and harvest this information so
through our network we've managed to
actually identify a lot of amazing
stories if you go on e4c news you'll see
we publish stories twice someone about
some of this work yes sir sure so so for
how do you get involved with with our
organization and how do you contribute
to the solution making process so first
and foremost I do invite you to become a
member of the site you'll receive all of
our newsletters you'll see information
about upcoming opportunities we actually
highlight which groups are looking
actively for volunteers or I have
employment opportunities where you can
engage in this kind of work where you
can become a humanitarian engineer
that's probably the best way we are not
just to be very clear we're not the ones
on the ground conducting this work this
was sent to me by one of our makers who
is a member of you foresee I want to
share this work and fun to provide me
with some show-and-tell items but we
highlight the organizations that are on
the ground and then we hope you will
connect with and and do the work with I
guess in that case I'm going to invite
David up to for us to do a little
conversation one more yes I didn't
actually get done Oh on our side we have
over 11,000 I believe its 11,400
something to that effect and their
international so it really does enrich
and dialogue when you have perspectives
from all over the world contributing to
the conversation hi David I got some
today okay um hi my name is David so I
guess I'll tell you a little bit about
myself before we started composition for
those but the people who don't know me
I'm a PhD student at MIT Media Lab where
my work is focused on designing
prosthetic devices how do you make
comfortable prosthetic devices or people
who are here and for people who are in
Sierra Leone where I come from but
outside the lab one of the things I do
is we organize this innovation challenge
in Sierra Leone where we ask high school
students from all over the country to
think about what problems that they find
in their communities and tell us how
they will solve those problems and then
we give them about 500 bucks to develop
a prototype and we then link them up
with mentors from MIT and have it for
now and local community members as well
in the country who and then they develop
their prototypes and then we invite
these finalists over to summer
innovation camp in Sierra Leone as well
and we then go through their prototypes
critique their prototypes have them
interact and then at the end of the day
we have winners who we give another one
thousand dollars during the school year
to develop a product and then people are
the way to have them implement their
product in actuality and one of the
finalists actually hear the audience
Kelvin and he designed his own so there
were 300 students who applied in this
competition this was the first year
within six weeks and the submitted 72
project ideas and we chose a jazz finals
and Calvin's idea for example was he
wants to build a community radio station
and so he made his own batteries on
generators and his own FM radio station
which he used to transmit in his
community and which he which serves his
community so when there's some issues in
the community people come to his radio
station and called and sent text
messages to participate and so we have
been able to see that young people from
the ground in Sierra Leone wanna make
they are excited about making
am i listening to you um Jana was
awesome and my question was how how do
you what's the balance between having
engineers from the u.s. from the
American Society us interested goodwill
people who are working here um what's
the balance in have enough go to places
like Sierra Leone and Guatemala for a
week to a month and develop a product
versus having young people within the
country be brought up to be the ones who
do the building from scratch absolutely
I was about to grab the microphone when
I realized I had my own so what I've
been a stereo okay that's that's a
fantastic question David I really
appreciate that one of the things I
didn't mention i feel like it could have
told you all a lot more but bringing
coalition of these organizations means
that we're actually changing that
dialogue one of our design principles
behind engineering for change is
actually advancing local innovation
indigenous innovation really empowering
local communities to design and develop
solutions so with these organizations
we've actually started to change the
perception of foreigners entering a
local context and trying to develop a
solution to more also advancing some of
the local communities within our own
networks so although I used to me its
american society of mechanical engineer
it's actually an international
organization our Triple E is an
international organization who has
membership that it's actually growing
much faster in India and China than it
is in the United States so all of these
groups all these professional
engineering groups have reached into
local communities and by highlighting
some of this work and highlighting some
of these opportunities some of the great
organizations both local and from abroad
that are doing this work we're trying to
nurture these groups into bringing
students along so we not reach into
universities and and so also other
institutions throughout the developing
world African academies of science that
actually have mechanical engineering
professors who are hungry for more
examples so that they can share them
with their students in the classroom one
of the things that we're building our
again around the
webinar series is an entire dialogue of
questions and answers inside the
classroom to really nurture young people
and to show them the value of making to
elevate making because a lot of times
actually this kind of work is not
considered advanced or high tech but
it's invaluable and necessary so by
bringing it to the forefront elevating
its value we're trying to actually get
young people enthusiastic all over the
world about this work and about the
critical needs that they can meet by
going through whether technical
education or not and engaging with the
maker movement the informal economy
throughout Africa and India is huge
that's trapped knowledge that we are
trying to release and share with with
everybody to cross pollinate those ideas
that's really fantastic and I am at some
other thing which I mean will lead to a
question but it was enough sufficient
was a Kelvin when he is in Sierra Leone
he uses a soldering iron which is just
an iron he puts in the fireplace until
it's hot enough and then he uses it to
solder until we hear he had to hock one
of his systems the other day so we gave
him a digital soldering iron right
because obviously there's no fireplace
around and he was excited and he used it
but one thing that was inspirational was
he had this role of saw that I was
laying down next to him and there was a
tiny little saw that I was broken it was
like about an inch right out or
something and they were laying on the
table at the same side by side and he
had to do some more so they're in
instead of going for the role he went
for the tiny little one and try you can
see he's really trying hard to not burn
his hand but also make the last use of
the soda and I am at the media lab where
we have a lot of tools and cool
resources to do everything and I'm sure
the engineers who come from the US also
have those resources so how when we are
doing this co-creation how do we and and
have you thought about the culture of
left
yes order so that way and not think
about the fact that the people who were
creating with by Calvin has think about
every little bit of solder and what
impact that affluence and resources and
tools with which we start co-creation
with does impacts the culture of
innovation that they have that's such a
another great question actually there's
a term for it that Anil Gupta from the
honeybee network in India who is one of
our collaborators has kind of advanced
which is that notion of frugal
engineering those exact we're talking
about not making waste just using every
single resource and being very conscious
of what what resources you have
available to you in fact when you talk
about MIT I immediately think of Amy
Smith and this is one of the stories we
share something that backs up our design
principles around really understanding
the community that you're working with
one of the things that Amy Smith does in
mi tease d-lab which stands for
development lab it's it's a lab that
students can join and do course work
with to understand how to build
solutions is she forces them or snap
forces them she requests for grade that
they try living on two dollars a day for
a week which will really force you to
think about what it is that you're
wasting where your money is going and
what kind of circumstances you're facing
when you're actually trying to get a
solution so it's it's it's a it's a
culture that we recognize and we're
trying to address by also sharing these
different lessons that I've already been
learned by bringing them to the
forefront by by giving them a name
frugal engineering by again elevating
their value and bringing them into the
conversation also highlighting through
all of our solutions in our solutions
library what resources are used what
materials were used in why I why pipes
why not something else but this is the
minnows locally available why bicycle is
not something else because bicycles are
readily available so thinking about that
in bringing that into the consciousness
of designers and young engineers is part
of the process of ensuring that the
kinds of prod
x or solutions that we're bringing to
bear make sense and are frugal useful
desirable have good design sense but are
appropriate for the context in which
they are being used I just wanted to add
to that people in the audience can
participate and you can ask questions
and give observations up yeah how do we
overcome the language problem so
actually one of the things you mention
is that our community is international
although right now all of our
information is in English you're
absolutely correct one of the things
that we're looking to do is actually to
work with our community to translate
some of some of the content that we have
on our site and also to encourage the
community to start to share information
in their own languages wherever possible
so it's it's a it's a hurdle that we are
still facing if that I hope I've
answered that question I hope that's
what you meant by language barrier maybe
some other way we talk more about this
afterwards if you like so yes the
workspace area of engineering for change
is actually designed to do just that I'm
not suggesting we found the silver
bullet and designing the best way
possible this is where we're still
evolving ourselves that we are very much
a work in progress if you will and we
invite all of you to contribute to that
to that evolution but yes on the
workspace area the emotion is that you
propose a challenge you indicate I am in
need of this or I have a challenge with
this or something here's now working I
need the expertise of such and such
community and we try to cultivate that
collaboration having said that um that's
not necessarily a suitable solution when
you have parts of the developing world
which have no access to the Internet so
mobile phones are much more prevalent
than computers laptops with you know
Wi-Fi
so one of the things that we're
exploring is how can we create that
accessibility whether it's through our
your partners are partnering with
another organization that has an SMS
interface that can work with our site
that's a again a problem that we're
tackling and trying to understand a
solution to but we're very aware of the
fact that these challenges are need to
be harvested and identified and it's a
process that needs to also be
appropriate sustainable and frugal so I
think for our end right so I'm from
Sierra Leone and I go back to Syria and
all the time but I live here for school
I still do not understand the problems
as well as Calvin wolves because he
lives in Sierra Leone and thus he breeds
the problem and the issues in his
community but the opportunity to solve
is available to him not necessarily to
me I don't so it's it's I think it's
it's obviously laudable that um we do
try to have those problems for the
communities be shared with us but for me
the the question the answer to your
question really that I think about is
how do we create a platform for Sierra
Leoneans with in Sierra Leone so I
understand the challenges and the
resources and tools that are available
to them to solve those right and it can
be through co-creation it can that it's
a different question a little bit
different from how do I explain that
problem and make it available to the
engineer who's in Brooklyn or MIT
classes how do I have a serial Union
whose instantly on free trial understand
his own problem and directing to the
resources for him to solve the problem
that they experiencing absolutely
absolutely agree that completely and
that's part of ensuring that global
dialogue so that kind of perspective
gets into the mix as opposed to all of
us just talking to each other all the
time and keeping it insular so breaking
some of those barriers and inviting that
viewpoint is is incredibly critical
oh well we haven't encountered any
issues of that sword but those are very
much kind of unique to each project or
each challenge that is being featured on
84 c and we discuss them and we know
that you know some countries are not as
welcoming as others and there might be
barriers to entry that you know creators
designers and generically to be aware of
and understand and that's part of the
discovery process that's part of the
design process is understanding your
boundary conditions your constraints
whether they are environmental cultural
political you name it so we report on
that we highlight those those issues and
how they were overcome but we are again
we are engineering for change itself we
are a knowledge aggregator where
knowledge disseminator were a forum for
bringing these connections together for
capturing the knowledge for advancing
the field and advocating for the field
but on this kind of on the ground issues
are actually dealt with by the parties
who are working on the ground whether
it's communities their local or NGOs are
working with them their individual so
for us the organization we run called
global minimum and the website is
actually GM i ended up which i founded
with some friends out of high school we
we worked we've worked in sierra leone
now over many years and it's actually a
pretty interesting relationship between
the government the some private
companies and some civil society
institutions so the the Ministry of
Education opened its doors to all so
that the applications that are submitted
for our competition is through them so
all the dish the different inspector
rates at schools in every district
receives the applications and we get it
from them the National Youth Commission
uses its youth volunteers to go out and
tell other youth the body composition so
they also very involved and part of
kelvins trip here to world make offences
first time leaving Sierra Leone was
funded by a cell phone company one of
the major cell phone companies I
Frizzell to come here and be and he's
actually going to be at the dlab and
he's gonna participate in some be lab
classes at MIT
and so is that components this is an
example of where you have different
groups both the government or the
government some private institutions and
some civil society groups coming
together but like you said yeah it's
about I think it's about having the
confidence interest of a local
institution that understands how to
navigate the system well enough to be
able to do something meaningful so that
we're not just go in there and saying we
we're here and we put their pain on the
wall that says one of the other
countries I went to work at that defeats
the purpose of why we exist as other
musicians absolutely and part of it is
also storytelling telling stories of the
successes talking about our position
such as yours highlighting their good
work and demonstrating their best
practices that's helpful it helps it
helps to advance other groups who are
looking to do something similar like
like the African robotics Network where
they're trying to advanced robotics
programs within high schools throughout
Africa it's phenomenal work and if more
people know about it then more people
will support it and hopefully it'll grow
and nurture young makers like Kelvin two
more of them to come droves we want more
of you not just one how do we start can
you people you financially
self-sustaining for your organization
that's a great question so part of the
objective of forming a coalition with
all of these other major societies is to
help actually pull our resources to
collaborate just as we advocate
collaboration we are looking to
collaborate so that we support and
nurture the growth of this sector so all
of the groups that you saw on that slide
for the ether see coalition actually
also provide financial support where
applicable engineers Without Borders is
a more mission oriented support but the
other groups actually do provide
financial support to ensure the platform
is working well and can can evolve
so engineer for change we are an online
platform for in terms of online presence
we're initiative we support programming
that brings together thought leaders to
to develop methodologies to evaluate
solutions and other types of programs
we're not on the ground that's the
biggest difference we are not the ones
that are building solutions we are
working with the group's capturing their
stories sharing their methods starting
to actually create this living library
solutions and those NGO groups that are
working to develop them or individuals
or larger multilateral organizations
whatever they may be so engineers
without borders on the other hand is on
the ground building building the dams or
or the bridges or the schools or the
water systems so that that's a that's a
major difference between our
organizations I think your first
question was where can you find
information of all these different NGOs
there are numerous platforms that exist
we're one of the ecosystem where one of
the groups that's trying to actually
share and advocate for these individual
groups that are out there developing
solutions so i i'm personally comforted
by the fact that there's a lot of
initiatives in this sector that there's
a lot of focus on trying to kind of
bring efforts together share resources
share ideas and I'm personally proud to
be a part of the effort to do that
advance and VAT network I think we are
done with questions unfortunately I
think we've what what's my position my
I'm a Senior Program Manager which quite
frankly little meet a heck of a lot to
most people outside of my job but
yeah that's my position but um this is
my full-time job correct and I also
volunteer port time with engineers
Without Borders New York I'm the
president of the New York professional
chapter so I kind of two hats yeah yeah
so I think thank you very much for your
efficient i mean my closing statement is
really that's awesome that the app
platforms and there there are people who
want to teach who want to help young
makers when I it's in the US on Sierra
Leone and that it's really our
responsibility to empower those young
people to understand that you as I mean
many of them say it's their
responsibility to change their nation
their communities and that's through
making it through hacking absolutely
thank you so much at step forward shirt
thank you all for joining us