Week 7: I am taking a Leave of Absence in the Fall!

* I received a question of how my parents responded to my interest in taking an LOA. The additional information of their reactions and role in this process is written in blue. 

My decision to take a leave of absence (LOA) for the Fall semester 2015:

As many of you are aware, I have summer internship in India working with a social venture called ayzh that focuses on infection prevention and promoting best practices in labor and delivery, as well as infant care, in order to improve women’s health and livelihood.

I have been working on the development of the newborn kit and have also become involved with some of ayzh's research by helping write a research proposal, beginning a mini-study on women's perceptions of the clean birth kit and doing a literature review for ayzh’s monitoring and evaluation work. So far, my experience with ayzh has been great because I have stimulating work, I have been well-taken care of, and I love the people I am working with. Because ayzh is small, I know my work carries significant responsibility. For example, who lets an intern sit-in on really important meetings? Who lets an intern begin a mini-study? I want to stay to continue my current work!

Zubaida and Habib, founders of ayzh, have informed me that I would be valuable for ayzh in the Fall to continue my work on the newborn kit, research and impact evaluation. I realized that I definitely want to take advantage of this opportunity! The leave of absence means that that I will not be at Olin in the Fall to continue working with ayzh. 

Deciding to take an LOA was a difficult decision that I have been thinking about for about past 4-6 weeks. The idea first hit me after a couple days with Sanjukta in Banaglore where I thought, “wow! I really love what I did today! Could I somehow continue?”. Then, I met Zubaida and Habib and had more instances of “wow! I really love this,” as well as “I am learning a lot!”

Of course, I have been discussing this decision with my parents throughout this process. When I first presented my interest in taking an LOA, my father responded, “what?! I don’t think this is a good idea” my mother said, “Gosh Kelly, really? Are you sure you want to consider this?” They were both very concerned about how an LOA would impact my education at Olin with graduation, the scholarship. At the end of our first conversation, I asked them to think about it as I investigate whether or not ayzh would allow me to stay and Olin would allow me to take an LOA. I think that my parents thought it would be too late to request an LOA from Olin and that an LOA would not even be feasible. My parents were very apprehensive about me taking an LOA because of how it would affect my education at Olin, but open to the idea because they are very supportive of the work I am doing.

The next time we talked happened to be on my birthday. I did not bring up the topic then because I was afraid would be sensitive, but we did continue the discussion the following day. By this time I had confirmed that ayzh would appreciate me staying in the fall and I knew to contact Alison Black to get started in figuring out if an LOA was even possible and how to request one. My parents became more supportive as we continued our discussion. I realized that we even had similar concerns about my educational path. 

Overtime, I began to feel that taking an LOA would not be a good idea. Will I continue to enjoy my work for an extended period of time? Is taking a break from my school studies a good idea? How will this impact my studies when I return to school? Will I remember how to “do school” when I get back? Will I feel out of place graduating in December 2017 instead of June 2017?

I expressed my situation and concerns with my professors Oscar and Ben. They recognized that an LOA with ayzh was a very unique opportunity because of the combination of:

•  Good, stimulating work with a diversity of projects (newborn kit, research, monitoring an evaluation, & whatever else needs to be done)
• Great people who have come to love
•  The small size of the organization which really allows me to be directly involved and learn

Ben and Oscar helped me recognize that I was scared of the uncertainty with taking an LOA and it was holding me back.

My parents accepted and began to see the value of an LOA once I told them about my conversation with Ben and Oscar where they encouraged me to take the opportunity. With my professors’ encouragement and my parent’s support, I finally gathered the courage to officially decide LOA! I have received positive responses from Olin. I feel very thankful to have the support of my college and family! After receiving my academic advisor’s support and contacting the school, Olin has accepted my LOA request and it is official! J 

Even though I am taking an LOA, I return to Seattle mid-day on Wednesday, Aug. 12^th! I plan to be home for about 3 weeks. I will return to India in Mid-September and come back to Seattle mid-December!

Monday and Tuesday, July 27 - 28^th 2015: I spent a lot of time figuring out the logistics of my LOA with my parents and Olin.

Wednesday, July 29^th 2015: In the evening, everyone went to a nearby hotel to have dinner together and watch the IDDS talent show! It was great socializing! I felt that I was able to get know many of the participants and organizers better. The talent show was quite also entertaining. We had dance performances from India and Costa Rica, an IDDS parody of the song Rather Be, head stands, etc., After the talent show, we all danced, danced & danced! I loved dancing to so many different kinds of international music!

A few participants and I exploring the hotel

Who's got talent?!

 Thursday, July 30^th 2015: I spent the day helping organize and prepare for participant’s final presentations. I ended up writing Habib’s closing speech for the presentations and helping him prepare. Who knew that I would ever become a speech writer? Lol!

Friday, July 31^st 2015: The final event went well! It was great to see the participants present their hard work with such passion on stage! In the evening, I had a really great time just hanging out on the patio in front of the dorms with the participants and organizers to unwind. We played games, talked, danced and watched the stars.

IDDS Final Presentations are over!

 Saturday, Aug. 1^st 2015: Everyone spent the day packing and cleaning up after the event. It’s been hard to say good-bye to the participants and organizers, especially because I do not leave until next week.

That moment when you are in a foreign country and your credit card expires… Good thing I withdrew a enough rupees to get me through Aug. 11^th.

Upcoming this week:

I will be leaving the university campus on Tuesday to return to the women’s hotel in Chennai. I don’t know what I will be doing this week, but I look forward to attending Zubaida’s sister’s wedding on Sunday, Aug. 9^th!

Manufacturing Begins

A new phase for the bicycle maize sheller started this Monday. We’re shifting from hammering out one prototype at a time in the workshop to sending out designs for medium-scale manufacturing. Unusually long and frequent power outages have thrown a wrench into the plan for the past two weeks, but we had electricity almost all day today. It was refreshing to hear the workshop fill up with happy grinding and welding sounds as everyone worked extra hard to make up for lost time.

The maize shellers that we sell will be made by hired technicians, or mafundi. There are two workshops to choose from just on either side of Twende. Hiring a fundi here is a little different from hiring a machine shop. Instead of making carefully triple-checked drawings and sending them off, I started by walking over to the shop next door with a sample of the part I wanted. After a brief negotiation over price, they gave us a quote. I gave them a jig, a verbal explanation of the details, and a sketch on graph paper in case of any questions. The fundi seemed a little bemused by my insistence that he keep the sketch. Now, if the power stays on, they’ll be making one unit then bringing it by for us to quality check. If everything looks good, we’ll order a larger batch.

I’m not saying there aren’t large machine shops here. Some of my coworkers have gotten jobs done at shops with mills, lathes and all the tools we’re accustomed to. But for the maize sheller, all I really need is a drill, a welder, and a grinder—or a hacksaw if the power’s out and you’re desperate. 

Field Testing Update

Hey hey hey.

Last week’s trip to Babati was educational, but just spawned a lot more questions.

We had arranged to visit our two testers in Singe, but on arrival, we found out they were busy at a political rally. (The general election is in October.) We met with our other customer in Galapo. So far, he’s happy with the bicycle maize sheller he rented from us, but he’s still waiting for his maize to dry more before shelling it all. He tested it once and shelled one gunia (~100kg) in a little under an hour. Apparently his children did most of the shelling, and to them it was a game. Maybe after an hour or more of shelling, the novelty will wear off, but this does support our assumption that the bicycle allows a broader range of people to shell maize. As far as I know, kupiga shelling is typically done by adult men because of the physical strength required. The children were at school when we arrived, so I’m hoping to speak with them next time we visit.

I learned that more farmers than I originally thought might be using motorized shelling services. Our customer in Galapo told us that at this time of year, someone constantly travels around the village with a motorized sheller and anyone with more than five acres of maize is likely to pay 1,300tsh per gunia to have his/her crop shelled. To me, this seems like a large expense since we’ve been told the sale price for a gunia of maize starts around 50,000tsh. But he explained that the cost is acceptable because it saves time that farmers need for taking care of other crops. His farm is around 6 acres, and he’s planning to use the bicycle sheller for all of his harvest. Most other farmers we’ve spoken with have closer to 2 acres. What is clear to me is that I have a lot more research to do before I can nail down a good profile of our target market.

In other news, I'm starting to get some parts manufactured to sell bicycle maize sheller kits at the Nane Nane festival. I'll post more details soon.

Internship at USAID

My name is David Hines. I am interning at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the U.S. Global Development Lab in Washington, D.C. from May to August 2015. I am fortunate to be supported by Olin College of Engineering and MIT D-Lab’s International Development Innovation Network. In May 2015, I graduated from Babson College with a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration. At Babson, I concentrated in Technology, Entrepreneurship, & Design and Global Business Management.

This will be my second summer on the Babson-Olin-Wellesley International Development Blog. In July and August 2014, I blogged about my experience participating in the International Development Design Summit (IDDS) in Arusha, Tanzania. IDDS is a hands-on product design experience that brings together innovators from around the world to co-create low-cost, appropriate technologies to improve the lives of people living in poverty. Two of my favorite blogs from last summer are about design in a developing country context and about the incredible diversity of participants IDDS draws.

Upper Left: On Saturday, May 16, 2015 I received my diploma from Babson. Upper Right and Lower Left: On May 17, I drove 9 hours from Boston to Washington, D.C. The car was packed to capacity. I made sure to bring my bike which has been a valuable asset commuting around the city. Lower Right: May 18, I began New Employee Orientation. I am fortunate to have received security clearance despite being a dual citizen. My badge allows me access to the USAID offices in the Ronald Reagan Building at 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW.

Teaching the Basics

Sorry for the break in updates. I was recently joined in my electrical work at Twende by a Kenyan engineering student from Kenyatta University named Odawa. We have been continuing our work in educational programs, and this week we taught two workshops at two different schools in Arusha.

The workshop itself was a very simple lesson in voltage, current and resistance. We used a 9V battery and a couple of resistors to light up an LED, observing the difference in brightness when the resistors are connected in parallel and in series. For the primary students, this was enough of an introduction. 

They were really excited to see the light come on when they made the connection. For the secondary school students, we wanted to take it one step further and teach them a little bit of soldering. We purchased a few soldering irons and some protoboards from the local electrical store, and created a few diagrams explaining the layout of protoboards. We then guided them through the process of heating up the solder and making connections on the board. It was at this point that a pipe burst in the back of the classroom, and water started shooting 4 feet in the air like a geyser. Needless to say, this was a little distracting but we proceeded as if the back of the classroom was not slowly filling up with water while the teacher found some people to help stop the leak. The students managed to stay focused, and finished the soldering project, which involved a battery, LED and a potentiometer. With the finished product, they were able to control the brightness of the LED by turning the knob, something that they really enjoyed playing with. The students who finished the project early then started helping their friends. It was great to see that they were able to apply their newfound knowledge and help their classmates.

The teacher was very happy with our work, and asked us to come back next week! We are now talking about ways to bridge the gap in teaching electronics. I’ve found that the basics of teaching LED circuits and ohm’s law is pretty straightforward, but to do anything else is sort of a big step. We’re hoping to bridge the gap with the solar charger we’ve been working on, which isn’t very complicated and mostly consists of a voltage divider, capacitor, solar panel and battery pack. We’ve settled on a design that works, but it is fragile and we are frequently having to resolder broken connections. The components are also a tad expensive, especially the rechargeable batteries. Having a solar power bank is very useful, so it could potentially be worth it if we can find a way to make it more rugged. In the meantime, we are looking into other simple projects that people can learn something from, and ideally will be something they can take home and use.

Week 6: Back into the Village!

On Sunday night, my design professors Oscar Mur-Miranda and Ben Linder arrived at IDDS to help support teams as they prototype and determine their final project direction. It was so great to see familiar faces from Olin!

Community Visits II (Monday, July 20^th 2015 – Wednesday, July 22^nd 2015):

At this point, all of the IDDS design teams have their area of opportunity framed are generating ideas for solutions. Here is a list of the eight design teams and their topic. During their first visit in their communities, the teams focused on gather information and identifying areas of opportunity. This time, the teams went back to their community to receive feedback on their solution ideas with users and stakeholders.

There are four different community sites where the eight teams went. I spent most of my community visits traveling with Zubaida and Habib to visit three of the four community visit sites: Kuthambakkam village (~45 min. – 1hr away), Tribal Health Initiative (~5 – 6 hours away), and Chengalpet (~1 hr away, which is where I was located last week).

On Monday, we went to Kuthambakkam. The design team focusing on preventing anemia by increasing iron intake met with Mr. Elango and then interviewed some of the women working in the shop. I sat in on the discussions and saw where ayzh produces their kits!

On Tuesday, we drove to Tribal Health Initiative (THI), a small private healthcare center integrated within the community village. The long roads to THI was so bad a “non-pregnant woman would deliver”; however, visiting THI was worth it. Imagine a hospital in the woods. There were little trails connecting the different buildings surrounded by trees. The air felt so fresh. Acres of fields stretched out just on the other side of wire fence. It was beautiful. The setup was refreshing compared to the jail-like gates separating buildings and areas packed with people in need waiting that I have previously seen.

Tribal Health Initiative Sign

At THI, Zubaida allowed me to sit in on her conversation with a couple nurses who distribute ayzh’s clean birth kit (CBK) to women on their last pre-natal checkup. The CBK is given ahead of time with the intention that the mothers will bring the CBK with them to the institution they deliver at. Because I discovered not many mothers know about infection last week, it’s encouraging that healthcare workers explain the purpose of the kit before delivery to educate the mother about infection and the importance of clean birth.

An IDDS team synthesizes their experience testing their ideas with users in the morning

On Wednesday morning, I went to Chengalpet by myself to continue interviewing new mothers and pregnant women on their perception of their delivery (See “mini-study” in Week 5). This time my translator was Sujatha, previous president of the International Planned Parenthood Association for the South Asia region. I am honored she was even willing to devote a couple hours to help me with my interviews! Could I get a better translator to myself?

We went to a small district hospital that was giving out vaccines for pregnant women and new mothers. There, we talked with 4 new mothers with infants that were just a few days old. During the interviews, Sujatha was amazing at helping the women feel comfortable and translating accurately. Then, one woman we interviewed mentioned that two of her neighbors were pregnant. We hopped in the car with her and went over to her house.

Soon after we arrived, two pregnant women, both who have delivered before and were now around 7 months pregnant, emerged from their houses. We sat on a mat as we talked about how they were feeling about their upcoming delivery. When I asked if they had any complications with their first delivery, one said no and the other said a C-section. When I asked how long they stayed in the hospital, the one with normal delivery said 3-5 days and one who had a C-section said 8 days. When I ask if they had any complications such as an infection, a woman, who was listening on our conversation, mentioned she had an infection after delivering her second child (who was now 2). I asked where she think she got the infection and she claimed to have gotten the infection from a bad apple at the hospital. Then, the women who had a C-section mentioned she got an infection in her stitches and had to stay in the hospital for ten more days. At first, I was really confused because this information contradicted what she previously said of staying the hospital for 8 days. After clarifying, she stayed a total of 18 days in the hospital after delivering her first child because of the C-section (first 8 days) and infection (the next 10 days). Wow! This was fascinating! It surprised me that the woman who spoke up about her infection in the hospital attributed it to a bad apple. Infection seems to be an issue that the women do not talk about because they haven’t been given the information of knowing where infection can come from and how to recognize it.

Let's talk about clean birth!

At the end of the interviews, I gave each woman a clean birth kit and collected their contact information to do a follow-up interview on their experience after they deliver in the Fall.

Thursday, July 23^rd 2015: IDDS potluck!!! We went off-campus to a farmhouse for people from different areas to cook food from their home region. Although the cooking took a long time, the food was delicious!!!

Friday, July 24^th 2015: We had the first ayzh meeting with the entire team in person (10 people in all)!! I felt honored to even be invited as an intern!

Upcoming this week:

It’s the last week of IDDS – Aarogyam. Participants are building prototypes to prepare for their final presentations on this Friday at 3:00pm on campus!

English Vinglish

Hi Everyone!

I was recently tasked with teaching a 3-day entrepreneurship curriculum to volunteers and later on, I will be telling the students all about entrepreneurship but before I begin, I have to give context. I work at Agastya International Foundation, an organization that has its campus based in a village next to Gudupalli. English is the student's third or fourth language and it takes them a while to understand simple English sentences. I love teaching and somehow, I believe that my love for teaching should surpass all other fears I might have; like the inability to communicate because I don't speak the local language.

After watching the movie English Vinglish, I realized that the language of emotion and kindness is more powerful than a common language. I also helped teach entrepreneurship in Tanzania where English was not the primary language but the students understood the concepts especially when they related to their surroundings. Teaching will be a challenge with language being such a barrier but there are methods to overcoming this barrier. However, teaching in Tanzania has taught me that:

• finding the native language equivalent of what your are saying in English is a great way to relate to the children and also the best way to get laughed at for trying. 
• Avoiding slang is also on the agenda of things that I will have to stop doing. 
• Speaking slowly is also very helpful because words are pronounced differently everywhere.

That's all for now. I will update you on whether my attempts were valid or if I failed miserably to convey the gospel of entrepreneurial truth.