The Trip Begins!

Welcome to my blog! After a crazy week of flying from Atlanta to Boston to New York City, I’m now on my way to Spain. I can’t believe my fellowship is finally beginning!

You may have noticed that this blog is titled Tumaini Cycles with the subtitle of “Tumaini. Hope. Bringing Appropriate Technology to Tanzania.” This summer, I will bringing appropriate technology to Tanzania, in a country whose primary language is Swahili. In Swahili, Tumaini means hope, and it is my hope that this summer I will help the vocational students of Global Alliance for Africa Vijana Centre create Tumaini Cycles, using bikes as a resource to bring local technology to their surrounding community.

So why am I off to Spain? Well, I will be attending IPIDAT, which is a conference that was founded to bring together university educators who work in the field of international development and appropriate technologies. Its purpose is to create an opportunity to learn about each other’s programs and find ways to work together to improve what we do.

Previous conferences have led to many programs/projects, including:

• University to University (U2U), a project led by MIT and Harvard Medical School that sends a multi-university, interdisciplinary team of students from the US to work with students from the University of Zambia on public health projects in a village in Zambia for the summer.
• A role play about gender and water issues.
• The development of an appropriate technology class at Cal Poly.
• A National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) workshop on how to teach classes on appropriate technology.
• A collection of hands-on modules about manufacturing techniques and appropriate technologies.
• Collaborative field testing of the Humdinger windbelt technology in Guatemala.

For me, this opportunity is truly exciting, as I hope I can develop an appropriate technology curriculum that can be used in Tanzania and other countries that are interested. In many regards, it is like spreading what I do at MIT to Tanzania. In the end, my goal is to leave the students feeling empowered that they too can design devices to help their community. In the long term, my vision is to see this become a partnership with MIT and to eventually see appropriate technology courses springing up all over developing countries.

As this is my first fellowship, the coming days will be quite the adventure, and each week, I will be writing a few entries to tell of my adventures. Get ready for a great summer ahead! One week in Spain! And then eight weeks in Tanzania! Talk to you soon!