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EWB International Conference 2009
From EWBNEU_Wiki
EWB International Conference, Milwaukee WI
March 26th - 29th, 2009
OUR MISSION IS TO SEE THAT ALL COMMUNITIES HAVE THE CAPACITY TO MEET THEIR OWN BASIC HUMAN NEEDS
- Through sustainable and community driven design
General thoughts, questions, observations
- Our mission is to see that all communities have the capacity to access their own basic human needs.
- What about an EWB exchange program (we take a student from another chapter with us on a trip, they take one of ours on their next trip). Both chapters learn about other ways of doing things, other types of projects. Could strengthen both Chapters (and communities worked in).
- Would Carrizalito benefit from a road?
- We should bring rebar caps for safety on the next Honduras trip.
- We should pull together historic costs from all EWB-NEU trips.
- Will our pictures in Africa have too much contrast?
- Rosetta Stone language software available from some local libraries.
- Rotoplas is a source in San Pedro Sula for HDPE tanks (carry at least 1,400-gallon size), need to check this out on next trip.
- Always double-check all the compartments of your travel bags to make sure you didn’t leave a knife in one of them. The TSA people don’t like that.
- Trust in your community partners (ACTS, SHI, Patti, Ronis & Dionisio) to mitigate the short time we spend in the community.
- We need to spend more time in Carrizalito.
- Can we get a hold of Marquette U’s Spanish-language water system manual?
-Dan Saulnier
Keynote Speaker: Jacqueline Novogratz
- Wrote 'The Blue Sweater' - Bridging the gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World
- Dignity is more important to human spirit than wealth
- Charity and aid alone does not solve poverty alone
- Markets alone will not solve poverty problems
Discussed weather water should be viewed as a human right or a privatized good
- People view it as a right, since water is a result of God
- Has indirect influences on way of life, productivity
- A non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty. Our investments focus on delivering affordable, critical goods and services – like health, water, housing and energy – through innovative, market-oriented approaches.
Model:
- Measure progress by social as well as economic indicators.
- Communicate successes and failures to donors, and what we learned from failures.
Introduced Drip-Irrigation Systems - produced 3x - 4x yields
- Quality is not the focus of the system; price and invariability is more important
- Inexpensive systems that allow farmers to repay within a single harvest
- Incrementally Expandable systems (allow farmers to add after each harvest)
Ambulance system in India
- Created under Public - Private partnership enterprise
Cataracts Surgery in India
- Massive movement allowing thousands to gain access to vision via cheap (10$ surgery) using intra-ocular lense.
- They were able to perform 80 operations per day per doctor (US only performs 6 per day)
Important Notes
- Better to be interested than interesting
- People moving themselves up bring others with them (self-help)
- Very important to listen to the end-users (people you are trying to serve), as well as financiers, doctors, builders, designers, etc., not just the engineers
- Create a learning and supporting role rather than a leadership role --> promotes growth and development after the group has left
- Create relationships, develop understandings, and form community relations
- Dignity is more important to the human spirit than wealth.
- Charity and aid alone will not solve the problems of poverty.
- The market will not solve the problem of poverty.
- Acumen exists between these two spaces.
- Communicate your successes and failures to your donors, and what you learned from those failures.
- Measure things!!!
- WaterHealth Center in India – working with Ideo and others to examine whole water use chain.
- Cataract surgery in India - $10 occular lenses – 80 operations per day per doctor (compare to rate in U.S. of 6).
- “1298” ambulance company in Mumbai – refuses to pay bribes (EWB-NEU needs to decide if this will be our strategy).
- D-Lite solar LED reading lamps.
- Poverty is a lack of freedom and choice.
- It is expensive to be poor and living in the slums. Everything is expensive.
- “Your are not dead.” Jane (HIV+) message to other HIV+ers. Take the antiretrovirals and prosper. Live your life well.
- Look for first steps, but look also for next generation solutions. Look for what is more sustainable and what humans are capable of (a lot).
- Don’t forget to LISTEN. Listen to financiers, doctors, engineers, designers, artists…
- There is a cool Bollywood movie about a woman who builds a drip-irrigation system because her dead-beat husband gives up on the family farm.
- Examples and storytelling is the way the world changes. Whoa.
- Jacqueline has her children set goals every year. What is the goal you are most afraid of?
- A short trip should not be focused on leadership, but on learning and support.
Assessment Trip
- Survey Data
- Water Quality
- Community Health Assessment
- Cultural Info
Phase 1 Project Design
- Pipelines (profile and land views)
- Constructed spring box (local masons) and distribution tanks
- Cost of materials analysis
- Connected 5 separate springs to same pipeline system
- Design for change: allow for fluctuations
- Construction Reports
- Record 'As-Built' designs
- Recorded Daily Progress - allows for review of construction capacity and abilities in day to day work
- New-site surveys for future projects
Issues
- Only 1 water access point for entire upper village (at end of first phase)
- Fecal Coliform in spring water
- Unsanitary latrine systems
Phase 2 Design
- Constructed distribution network --> tapstands
- Chlorination for purification of water (fecal coliform)
- Hand-washing stations
- Community latrines
After speaking with community, they determined that a pedestrian bridge was insufficient, and a vehicular bridge would be best fit to aid the community in future development efforts.
- Design for needs of end-users
Also had to determine best location along river for placement
- 2 Locations chosen
- 4 Bridge designs (Truss, Composite Beam, Box Culvert, Concrete T-Beams)
Cost analysis and Construct-ability were deciding factors for what type would be optimal
Design Challenges:
- Cast beams in place (generally use precast beams, but moving equipment is unavailable in rural areas)
- Soil characteristics vastly different from 1 side of river to other
- Created different needs for excavation, consolidation
- Gabion Baskets for erosion control
Breakout Sessions
Questioning Assumptions and Framing Cultural Inquiry When Designing for Host Communities
- Culture is:
- a complex whole that includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, laws, customs, habits as members of society
- all knowledge and values shared by a society
7 'Pithy' Anthropological Truths about Culture
- Culture is pervasive (everywhere)
- Culture is 'made', yet virtually invisible
- The natural-ness has become everyday, normal
- Culture is not rational, but is relative
- The only way to judge culture is by its use, and experiencing it
- Standards are made by the people within the culture
- Culture is a SYSTEM --> hold each-other up
- Culture is very good at perpetuating itself
- Humans are ethnocentric; we tend to think our way is 'best'
- Everything we do is culture-bound; All existence is formed by culture in ways we hardly recognize
'Know thyself and you shall know the world' - Socrates
- We design solutions that are rooted in our own sense of culture
- Users also respond to designs corresponding to their own values, cognitive models, aesthetics, ethics, morals
- If it doesn't fit, it wont work!
- We must consider 'all' different people's needs in the community at the same time
- Some people have different needs/wants than others, and than we think they might want
- EX: Women in one community enjoy the short walk to the water, as it acts as relaxation/social time
- Cultural Fopas:
- Don't want to make changes to a communities ways of life, norms
Important to ask questions to Community/End-Users concerning their situtation
- How do the people conceptualize themselves/the current situation?
- How do you see issues from their perspectives?
- How do they define the problem?
- What does the community see as the root cause(s)?
- What are their values for current ways of doing things?
- What would specific types of change require? How possible is this desired change?
- What are the threats to the people, values, institutions, social relations, ideas, etc.
- Will the system reproduce old patterns to prevent successful changes?
- Who are the sources of the information?
- How are they positioned in community?
- Context within way of info gathered..
- What is added/subtracted from info given?
- What did they 'not' tell you?
- Any additional meanings to the answers obtained? (outside of literal meanings?)
- What cultural ideas are invisible to the people in the community?
- How can we find them out?!
- Questions to ask ourselves:
- What are my own cultural bound assumptions?
Assessing Community Assets to Improve Water and Sanitation: Using Community Capitals Framework for Community Initiatives
- How can we use partnerships and capacity already in place to build upon?
The UN-declared initiative - International Water Decade
- Did not work because of:
- No social organization
- Set mandatory goals (ex: 40 boreholes per year)
- Multitude of other reasons dealing with failure to understand issues and work with end-users in mind
'How do you engage in social policies (engage the communities)?'
- Priority of communities --> all sectors of community
- Relate memories to engage community
- Try to pull people together from different coalitions
Water and Communities
- Water acts as a venue to look at a community and its structure
- Within the context of the situation
- Economic development --> market assets
- Decision-Making Capacity
- Governance and Management Options
Assessing the Community
| NEED BASED
| ASSET BASED
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| Comes most naturally
| Focus on what community HAS
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| Focus on Community Problems
| Examine Community Goals
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| Creates DEPENDENCY
| Match Goals with existing skills
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| 'Rewards' for greater deprivation
| Build on existing skills to meet needs
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How to Identify Community Assets
- Social Capital: Leadership, groups, networks
- -Reflects connections among people
- -Bonding Social Capital: Close ties that build community cohesion
- -Bridging Social Capital: weak ties that create/maintain bridges
- Human Capital: Self-esteem, education, health, skills, leadership
- Cultural Capital: Ways of viewing world, value of culture
- -Heritages valued, who is speaking out and being listened to
- Natural Capital: Assets that abide in the location (resources, amenities)
- Financial Capital: $$ resources, business development
- Political Capital: Ability to influence standards, rules/regulations, access to power/leverage/gov't officials
- Build Capital: Infrastructure, Community Development efforts
Tools for Assessment:
- Appreciative Inquiry
- Turning towards existing assets
- Recent Improvements
- Resources that can be built upon
- Long-term community vision
- Short-term steps towards achieving vision
- Community Survey
- Survey key informants
- Key questions about each capital (above) --> what actually exists?
- Develop indicators of progress over time for each capital
Tools For Assessment
| | Indicators (Quantity/Quality/Time) | How to Collect / Who Collects Info | Assumptions
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| Outcomes (purpose) - Impact of Short & Long Term | | |
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| Output info (goal level) - Goods and Services | | |
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| Throughput - Activities (objective level) | | |
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| Input (Resources: $, materials, land, labor, etc.) | | |
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Context = Vision
Process = Inputs
Breakout Session #1 – Three Chapter Presentations
University of Maryland / College Park – Solar Power in Burkina Faso
- Retrofitted a hand-operated water pump to be driven by a small solar motor.
- Shipped solar panels by boat
- Concrete embedment and breakaway bolts for panel theft deterrent.
- They have a map of Africa by solar productivity.
- Solar panels are still economically problematical, but people want this technology. A common sentiment is “Solar power is good for Africa.” Is there an opportunity here?
- Group has done 24 trips in 5 years. Is the University providing funding?
- BP solar has donated their panels – good relationship.
University of Wisconsin / Madison – Biomass Energy in Rwanda
- Team is enabling villagers to build simple machines that produce fuel briquettes.
- Briquettes are made mostly of leaves, with some compost to create cohesion. Whole mixture is cooked before being pressed into briquettes.
- Villagers figured out that making little metal “DVDs” would allow them to produce four times as many briquettes with same amount of work. Brilliant.
- Will using all these leaves degrade the soil over time? Probably, but less than chopping down trees for fuel.
- Adding beeswax reduces water component.
- Also working on rainwater harvest system.
- Whenever they advertise their website, they use the “donation” page: www.ewbuw.org/donate
- Lots of technical information on biomass energy production available (for a fee) from Legacy Foundation (located in Washington State or Oregon)
University of Maryland / College Park – Distributed Solar Charging Stations
- A sophomore will be leading Phase 2 Implementation.
- Car batteries are common in peoples’ homes. They currently bike 15 miles to a charging station weekly.
- Idea is to provide one or two solar charging stations in each village. 22 stations installed so far.
- Faculty Advisor applied for $150,000 grant from World Bank for distributing solar charging stations. Idea was to set up a self-spreading system whereby part of fees collected from charging stations goes to fund that builds additional stations. Engaged business school and other experts for help. Grant denied (but still a damn fine idea).
- Solar Now! Is a Dutch firm educating people about solar panel distributors in Africa.
Breakout Session #2 – The Art of the Story-Teller – Harold Scheub
- Stories take us to the essence of our beliefs.
- In Africa, a story doesn’t have a bunch of morals tacked on at the end. The meaning of the story is most often in the rhythm.
- There are no original stories. Only retellings.
- Learn to do this by telling, and by listening to audience response. Keep telling and polishing.
- How can we use stories to communicate with our village? Don’t. Takes years to understand the nuances and traditions of your audience.
- How can we use stories to communicate with our local American communities? Tell what you’re doing. Tell about what happened to you on trips. Link stories to traditions of your local audience. You must first understand completely the traditions of your audience. This is a powerful way to touch people. Think about different subsets of the population.
Breakout Session #3 – Unintended Consequences and the Art of Managing the Unexpected – Walter and Tannie Eshenaur
- Just by being there, you change a community (be careful).
- There are ripple effects from everything you do.
- Communities are very complex, with many interpersonal relationships – you cannot avoid unintended consequences.
- You can, however, mitigate unintended consequences.
- Know your community. Be a good guest. Be humble (we blow in and out, but others remain, and others came before and will come after us). Enter the village as a learner.
- There are formal and informal power structures everywhere.
- Find the leaders, gatekeepers and trial adapters.
- If people don’t have ownership and involvement in the work, they won’t protect it. Is this what happened to the community pila in Los Planes?
- Community leaders can help people deal with change.
- Move at the community’s pace, even if you only have a ten-day trip.
- Every call for change comes with a call to stay the same. Listen for this.
- NGO partners and local Water Board help to mitigate the problems resulting from EWB team turnover.
- Engineers have certain dominant traits and certain less-comfortable modes. You need to aim for these less-comfortable places. Examples:
- Instead of solving problems, raise awareness of the situation.
- Instead of interpreting, just listen and observe.
- Instead of saying “what they have to do”, ask “what do I need to do?”
- Instead of being outcome-focused, be process-focused.
- Instead of seeing what’s wrong, see what’s right.
- Warning sign of upcoming unintended consequences: People not showing up to work.
- Sample requirements to consider to allow a project to proceed:
- Request from village chief
- Request from both men and women
- Raise $1,000 USD (or some other amount)
- Form a Water Board
- We are TIME oriented. They are EVENT oriented. So time becomes elastic. Presto!
- How do we know we’re not doing more harm than good?
- EWB is young, but development is not (Unicef, Oxfam, CRS are great resources).
- Better to try to do good than to be paralyzed by fear.
EWB-USA Bridge Curriculum: EWB and Engineering for K-12
ASME and ASCE have been working with EWB-USA to develop a curriculum for the K-12 classroom through the support of a United Engineering Foundation grant. They have developed a number of scalable lesson plans that introduce engineering to young students. A copy of the presentation can be found here.
The goal of this work is to show engineers aren't always socially inept geeks as portrayed here (Funny Dilbert video). The curriculum uses a DVD mini-series with specific hands-on lessons. These movies were created from actual EWB projects and can be requested for free from ASME.
Host Chapter Presentations:
Quejchip, Guatemala – Water supply, U. Wisconsin Milwaukee
- Village of Adelente water source is lower than village.
- Sampled water temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen and pH
- Designed for maxes and mins to allow for in-field flexibility (great idea).
- Tank construction (lots of rocks for foundation) included roof over to keep the sun off.
- Daily construction reports help determine labor efficiency and timing. This provides great learning for the future.
- Group passed around Petri dishes to the villagers to help explain about e.coli.
Cuarto Centro de Estanzuela – Bridge production, Milwaukee School of Engineering
- Reading a prepared speech doesn’t go over so well.
- Designed eight bridges before choosing best design.
- Used a 1/6 cubic yard mixer.
- Took 7 hours to pour bridge deck (rotating lunch breaks for the team).
- 5 rebar used.
La Garrucha, Guatemala – Water Supply – Marquette University
- 80 liters per person per day
- Village knew that solar and pump maintenance would be difficult.
- Produced a Spanish language manual with lots of pictures, including air and cleanout valves.
- Built a springbox and very long transmission main.
Lecture: Mike Shawcross, Antiqua, Guatemala
- Everything is possible – just ask.
- Villagers invited police and congressmen to bridge dedication. Even though they didn’t do anything, this builds goodwill for the future.
- It takes a lot of time to know if a village is ready for a project. They need to really need it, need to know how much work is involved, and be more than just a vocal minority that want it.
- Try suggesting things – as in: “it might be better if…” there’s no trash laying around everywhere, or the wastewater goes away so kids don’t get sick, etc.
- Tom Stook, former ambassador to Guatemala was from Wisconsin and was awesome. Look him up.
- People everywhere are getting girls into schools. Female EWBers are an inspiration to them.
- Strategy to avoid bribery: Insist, insist, insist.
- Sending “stuff” south is not nearly as good as sending a check.
Panel Discussion – Transforming Education Kurt Paterson, Mark Bryden, Ron Kander, Beth Mercer-Taylor
Opening/Moderated by Kurt Paterson
- The theme of this discussion is developing a "knock out" method of engineering education.
- The current method uses the bucket model of dumping a whole lot of information onto a student and hoping they retain something, but usually its only a drop here and there.
- Motivation
- Although the total number of engineering students has increased recently, the overall market share is down
- More engineering students are coming from overseas
- There has been little progress in enrollment for domestic minorities
- The number of EWB chapter has been growing nearly exponentially
- Current method is 20/200/2000 model (see details below)
- EWB Forensics
- Why is EWB successful?
- How is EWB creating better engineers?
- What parts of it's DNA can be transplanted?
- How can it be incorporated at universities?
Mark Bryden – Iowa State University
- Service is not serving on committees; service is changing the world.
- Preparing students to change their world by:
- Building leaders
- Making a difference
- Being a role model
- Critical question:
- How to work in the developing world?
- What is the mechanism?
- Model for education could be like art class: professors are present to critique what the students are creating.
- What is the basis for what we are doing now?
- Six courses provide a minor in appropriate technology and design, sustainability. Every course has a waiting list. Each course takes up to 30 people, with implementations taking 8.
- AgE/CE/MatE/ME 220 Sustainability
- Introductory course which sets the stage for later courses.
- AgE/CE/MatE/ME 388 Sustainability in International Development
- AgE/CEMatE/ME 389 Applied Methods
- This would be a course dedicated to the implementation.
- Implementation are usually 8 students.
- AgE/CEMatE/ME 486
- Also graduate work on projects that is then transferred to undergraduate curriculum
- After a need is identified the project is sent to one of three areas to be further developed.
- System Thinking
- For example, a course like ME388 could be used to look at the current situation and come up with possible general solutions. The results of this course would be then be output to a design course.
- Detailed Design
- This course focuses on developing a detailed design which can then be implemented.
- Graduate student
- Graduate students are used at various points in this process. They can help identify projects for undergraduates to work on or review past projects to understand their impact.
- Try to provide an “unbrokered” learning opportunity: no one is between the students and the villagers. No need for the professor to say “do this, do that.” The University is there to provide resources and safety.
- This is "all real stuff". The results of the students' work actually impacts the lives of others.
- One project is trying to develop non-leaky valves.
- There is very little crossover between these classes and Iowa’s EWB chapter.
- EWB is still used, and provides opportunities for more leadership.
- Interestesing note: Not the same people as in classes
- We need more professors doing this, since student demand is so high.
- Better to work with villages than cities, because they're easier to get in and get things done.
- Research facilities in Mali and soon Latin America.
- Goal is to touch 500 villages in five years. (Wow, these people are getting it DONE).
Beth Mercer-Taylor – University of Minnesota
Minor Website
- Have a minor program (300 students from 5 colleges)
- Developed with initial grant
- Started as a couple of courses and interested faculty meeting to discuss.
- Sustainability is the intersection of economy, society and environment.
- If you think about a university, the sheer number of students and staff make it equal in size to a small city – so sustainability efforts on campus are important.
- Building the program, pulled in people from economics, political science, biology, forestry, geology, civil and other engineering…. Focused on shared understanding, workshops, goals for the curriculum. Team cohesion was critical.
- These people are thinking a lot (but not so much doing?).
- Minor is faster to implement than major.
Ron Kander – James Madison University
- Redesigning engineering education with a blank slate.
- First freshman class was Fall 2008
- The Engineer of the 21st Century is molded by:
- Flat world
- Wikinomics/open source
- Popular literature
- A focus on problems, not specific engineering fields
- The need:
- Swiss-army-knife-engineers
- Human problem focus
- Open source
- Sustainability focus (cradle to cradle), creativity as applied science, human factors, open source collaboration.
- Result is a single degree in engineering. 50 students per year (750 applied). FE required, 4 year program, 120 credits, ABET accredited.
- Seven semesters of design starting 2nd semester Freshman year.
- Vision is to educate enlightened citizens to lead meaningful and productive lives.
Kurt Paterson – Michigan Tech
- Current model of education is to use a 20-year old curriculum at a 200-year old university using 2,000-year old teaching method. Why?
- EWB’s prime objective is our direct program work.
- Objective #2 is creating better engineers.
- One word change in Michigan Tech’s mission made a big difference: from University goal to be the best in the world to goal to be the best for the world.
- Michigan Tech has D-80 program
- 20 programs focusing on international problems
- Each independently run
- Partnerships with poorest 80%
- Students can choose to participate in any of the programs
- Grassroots efforts
- 52% female enrollment (national average is near 20%)
- Disease Theory of Education
- Education is a function of concentration, time, and uptake
- Traditional education(20/200/2000 model): Students are resistant
- EWB: Students will be infected
- D-80: Students are incurable
- When looking to build committee at university, look for people who have done Peace Corps or other development work (“if you don’t go, you don’t know”).
- Would students be employable after getting an EWB degree?
- How are EWBers better/worse/different than non-EWBers?
- What to people do after EWB? Need to start following alumni in greater detail
- Can there be a degree in EWB? These questions need to be answered:
- What would it look like?
- Is anybody interested?
- Will you be employable?
General Discussion, Q&A
- EWB as a course kills it. Too much faculty involvement. Needs to be student led, student decisions.
- Something similar to EWB may be fine, but it depends on student interest.
- Remember the power of storytelling. What did EWB do for you (students) and them (villagers).
- A common sentiment is becoming: If my firm doesn’t let me take time to do what I want, I’m going to find a place that does.
- Think outside the “job” box or “career” box.
- Sony has a 200-year strategic plan. Technology changes quickly, but human behavior and societies change much more slowly.
- Strategy to get potential movers/shakers to go with team on trip: if you pay plane ticket, we’ll take care of all your ground expenses. Can we get folks to come with us for fundraising objective? And should we attempt this?
- Don’t maximize teaching, maximize learning.
- Service learning and co-op transforms “students” into “engineers.”
Other Notes
- Michigan Tech, Tufts, University of Colorado have a 16 month NSF grant (~$400,000) to study international service learning projects like those sponsored by EWB.
- James Madison will be conduction a longitudinal study of there students to compare their educational results with other universities.
East Africa Working Group Lunch
- Started a forum for communicating with other groups working in this region.
- See wiki, facebook for more information.
- Be aware, everything will be done on Africa Time.
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