Charles Newman (left); Jackson Maweu, the town chairman (center); and Matungi, the lead mason (right), in Kenya use a tube level on the foundation of a school classroom they are building in Kenya. Newman and Matt Sisul (not pictured) were technical advisers on the project. Photo courtesy of Matt Sisul

Part one in a two-part series

By Matt Sisul
Special to Engineering for Change

From the engineer's point of view, development work tends to start when someone identifies a need. Engineers like me and many of those at E4C get involved because the need is great, as is the challenge—finding sustainable solutions for alleviating poverty.

So, when we talk about sustainability, we’re often referring to an individual project. We think about that term as the set of answers to questions like, ‘is the design  appropriate,’ ‘was the community involved,’ ‘was it constructed properly,’ ‘will operation and maintenance be performed?’ and so on. This perspective stems from the idea of a project, especially an infrastructure project, as linear operation. We think of it as a time-bound process with a distinct beginning and end.

From the point of view of the community or the beneficiaries, however, a project is only one in a series of many that are all part of an ad-hoc development effort going back, in most cases, over 50 years. A host of different people have probably participated  in that time, too, including the governments, international agencies, missionaries, community members, NGOs, and so on.

Existing Approaches
Now, the development industry has cast aside the linear view of the project. It views projects as part of a cycle, in which the project ends with an evaluation that informs new plans for the next round of project identification.  This creates a knowledge base of successes, failures, and new approaches. It's often an effective way to improve the performance of the agencies working in the communities.  The trouble is, nobody has bothered to inform the communities themselves.  So, from their perspective, there is no link between projects; they remain a series of unrelated, discrete efforts.

Proponents of grassroots development say that the key to ensuring long-term sustainability is to encourage the  beneficiaries of projects to participate.  The benefit, they say, is that it creates a feeling of ownership through contributions to project selection or labor in construction.   In practice, there are different degrees of participation. They can range  from passive consultation to mobilization,   and that usually varies throughout the project process. The trouble then is that outsiders usually dictate the level of participation, and there is no participation at all in the first and last steps of the project cycle. That is, the community only participates in the linear portion of the project, which reinforces the view of projects as a series of unrelated, discrete efforts.

Professionals and volunteers pitched in to build the school in Kenya where Matt Sisul worked as an adviser. Photo courtesy of Matt Sisul

Changing the Approach
It is time then, for us outsiders to find a way to view sustainability from the point of view of the community. We should see each project as part of the ongoing service of delivering infrastructure, and incorporate the knowledge generated through the project cycle into that process.  This knowledge base should be managed by institutions within the communities or at a local level, not by outsiders.

To accomplish this, we first need to change how we think about development projects. Then we have to change our approach, designing projects so that they fit this model of infrastructure service delivery from a local point of view. This will require a lot of extra work on our part – us external technical assistance types – but it may be a more responsible approach to development work.

We can start by changing how we think about development projects. First, let's consider that solutions for poverty alleviation are not purely technical;  rather, they're about people. And infrastructure is people using technology.

Second, we should reduce our optimism bias.  That's the belief that our project will succeed despite a history of mixed results. We do that by acknowledging that the projects that came before ours, even failed ones, were probably executed by skilled people who were doing the best they could with what they had, regardless of how it appears today. And likely, others after us will view some of our projects with derision and consider our conceptions of sustainability inchoate.

With that new measure of humility, we can view each new project as one in a long line and ensure that the process of delivering them will inform future projects. That way, the project becomes a vehicle for development –  the act of delivering a project, and not just the finished product, has an impact.

Rethinking participation
From a local point of view, the goal of service delivery  is to link projects together, through participation  in all steps of the project cycle, and ensure the community manages its own level of involvement throughout the process.

To achieve these goals, we have to rethink how people participate and who represents the community. A local institution must become that representative and incur the responsibility of passing on the knowledge obtained during the project.  That institution then becomes an equal partner with the others involved, one that represents the community, manages participation and negotiates the roles that it and the community will take.

In part two of this essay, I will elaborate on this approach to sustainability in terms of design and practice.

Matt Sisul is a civil engineer and former President of the New York Professional Chapter of Engineers without Borders.  He is currently studying infrastructure service delivery at NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study as a Reynolds Fellows in Social Entrepreneurship. Readers can reach him at this email address: matt (at) ewbny.org, and he would appreciate hearing comments, both positive and negative.

We spoke with Emeka Okafor, one of MFA's founders, just before he flew to Nairobi from his home in New York City. He speaks as eloquently as ever about the event's meaning and potential – both inside Africa and out. Also, he let slip one detail: This year's makers may have open-source wifi and other technical projects on the tables.

These are excerpts from our interview:

Emeka Okafor" "One of the greatest strengths of any community is the strength they glean from each other."

EO: I think Maker Faire Africa will provide a lens into the creativity on the continent that is not commonly appreciated, either among Africans or outsiders. This event isn't just showcasing  African ingenuity to the outside, it is trying to do the same to those who are within the continent. In fact, one could almost consider them to be the primary audience.

One of the key challenges the continent faces is its ability to solve problems. If you look at societies and how they evolve problem-solving capabilities, you'll realize that the tools are usually generated from within. So, it is important to hold up a mirror to [African] society for them to see those very resources that they may be overlooking. But while you do that, also provide a bridge to those elsewhere who, through collaboration, could enable the process and provide insight.

E4C: How do you see Maker Faire’s potential within Africa?

EO: By no means is Maker Faire Africa a static entity. It will be something that is continuously growing, evolving, propagating and replicating itself – in some cases even in ways that we may not envisage or recognize.

That's it in broad strokes. On a more granular basis, fabrication hasn't developed to the extent that it should, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. If you look at the fast-growing economies in Asia, India, South America, one of the major engines of their growth has been the emergence of manufacturing, the emergence of a culture of production that takes everything from iron ore to raw cocoa beans and adds value to it. It allows a society to build wealth they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

A bamboo-framed bicycle, one of the innovation featured at Maker Faire Africe 2009. Photo credit: disterics/Flickr

E4C: Do you think that Maker Faire Africa will plant some seeds for that kind of growth?

EO: It would be overly presumptuous to think that a fair held once a year will do this on its own. I see this as a kickstarter that will seed, to use your term, the creative community to look at how they can feed from the resources that are already there.

This is a very incremental approach. It could take five years or it could take 100. But the thing is, look at creative communities, from today’s Silicon Valley, Massachusetts Route 128, Pittsburgh in America 100 years ago, or similar clusters around the world. What makes any of those communities unique is that they had evolved into self-reinforcing ecosystems that would take the resources of intellect, curiosity and inventiveness and form them so that they could take cotton and turn it into cloth and iron ore or coal and turn it into steel or chemicals or what have you.

We do have clusters like that in Africa, but they're disaggregated, and the individuals who are involved are largely disenfranchised because they don't realize that what they're doing is important. So, we want people from those communities to understand that their work is as important as that of someone who might have an advanced degree in engineering. We would like to give them a sense of equivalence in what they're doing.

We'd like to form a common platform where people feel comfortable, playful, curious and energized, where people don't think that they can't say something if they don't have a certain pedigree.

E4C: Has Maker Faire Africa produced those types of collaborations or inspired people to get together?

EO: A year is too early to talk about results if you're looking for, 'Well, have we spun off five companies in a year or not.' The very first step that we felt was important was validation of this space – validation of the informal, formal, tinkerer and scientist all being one.

When you have people come from across the continent and from outside of it to meet a young man or a woman who may not even have traveled beyond his or her capital city – and we saw this in Accra, last year – it demonstrates to them that what they are doing is important. The value of that is inestimable. You now have people that, hitherto, had not even been written about in their own countries being profiled in The Guardian of England, being written about in the United States. It made people within the countries say, ''Well, how is it that people are flying in to listen and to talk to these individuals and we haven't even acknowledged them ourselves?'

As this community develops, we intend to build self-generated resources that allow these individuals to self-organize and assist each other and work with each other. One of the greatest strengths of any community is the strength they glean from each other. And it's not necessarily finance; it's not that we are going to disperse money. The transfer of experiences is something that is timeless in its value.

A hand-powered oil press, another of the innovations featured at Maker Faire Africa 2009. Photo credit: Butterfly Works/Flickr

E4C: What kind of projects can we expect to see this year?

EO: The projects do have a jury-rigged aspect to them, which some people from the developing world may not understand. [But, to work in Africa,] there's a certain robustness that need to be built in.

Not to say that we're not looking at how to bring aspects of industrial design to the attention of these makers, but that's part of an evolutionary process that many of these societies need to go through while they aim for more polished equipment. So, we see this as, ‘It's okay if it looks rough. It doesn't matter if the weld is showing.’ That was something that was lost upon previous generations in Africa, where they thought that they can buy the best and the newest, but not know how to fix or make it.

E4C: Any surprises?

EO: There are going to be quite a few pleasant surprises, not just in the prototypes being built, but in other areas of invention like open-source wireless networks. We'll have radio engineers who are putting together radio networks working with people who are building high-speed wireless networks. And you'll have metal workers and people setting up solar systems, and, who knows, possibly wind-generating systems as well. That will give the fair a much more connected feel. We believe that that fosters networks that are key to the success of what we're doing.

“Venture catalyst” Emeka Okafor is an entrepreneur, curator, one of the founders of Maker Faire Africa, and director of the TED Global 2007 Conference in Arusha, Tanzania. He publishes two news and opinion blogs, Timbuktu Chronicles, and Africa Unchained. He is Nigerian, by way of the United Kingdom, Canada and New York.

Flooding in Pakistan has affected 20 million people. Photo credit: Edge of Space/Flickr

The Engineering for Change community would like to express our condolences and support for the 20 million people affected by the flooding in Pakistan. More than two weeks after the country's worst-ever flooding began, one-fifth of the country is under water. At least 1,500 people have died, 900,000 are homeless and hundreds of thousands are marooned in their villages and cut off from aid. And now, a new danger looms: the lack of clean drinking water threatens millions with cholera and other disease. As many as 3.5 million children are at risk for contracting diarrhea and dysentery from polluted water, according to Maurizio Giuliano, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Relief agencies are providing temporary shelter, clean water, toilets, medical care and food. They need financial support. The US government has made it easy for people in the United States to donate. Simply text the word "SWAT" to the number 50555. Each text donates $10 to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Call for ideas
Because access to clean water is a pressing concern now, we encourage you to share ideas and insights for water treatment technologies that are appropriate for this crisis in our comments section. Additional ideas that would be valuable to the relief work on the ground are also encouraged.

Here is a short list of agencies that accept donations. Suggestions for additions to this list are welcome. Please make note in the comments section.

To donate online:
UNHCR, for online donations
Text the word "SWAT" to the number 50555 to donate $10 to UNHCR

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

Save the Children's Pakistan emergency fund

UNICEF

Oxfam

Pakistan Floods Appeal
This is an appeal for donations from Oxfam

Flood-affected women and children in north-western Pakistan urgently need life-saving aid
6 August 2010 - UNICEF correspondent Chris Niles reports on the growing humanitarian crisis in flooded areas of north-western Pakistan.

Volunteers make adjustments to the bamboo frame for hauling solar-powered refrigerators on camelback. (Photo courtesy of Winston Soboyejo)

Vaccines and other medical supplies travel to rural Kenyan communities on camel back. They are the chemical contingent of a mobile clinic called Mpala, which serves villages that are inaccessible by Jeep or Land Rover.

The vaccines are fragile and packed with ice into crates. The crates are strapped to wooden frames and borne around the camel's hump. While traveling in the Kenyan heat, the ice can melt and the vaccines spoil.

To stem the waste, the supplies need a better cooling system. Because there's plenty of sunlight, a solar-powered solution makes sense.

Winston Soboyejo and his students of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University hit on that idea. They have experimented with camel-borne, solar-powered refrigerator designs in the field.

They settled on an Engel portable refrigerator that holds about 14 quarts, equivalent to 20 12-ounce soft-drink cans. The photovoltaic (PV) cells are amorphous silicon, a thin-film material on floppy, rollable sheets. Once the cooling system and power supply details were worked out, the design lacked only a frame to cradle the refrigerator and prop up the panels while the camel walks.

Not all camels are created equal
The engineers needed a camel. “Gaining access to camels at Princeton is hard,” Soboyejo said drily. They took their design to the Bronx Zoo, where they fitted a frame to hold the refrigerators around a camel's hump.

That gave the engineers a start, but they still had some barriers to overcome. Camels in New York are heartier and wider than their cousins in Ethiopia, and they can carry heavier loads.

The prototype frame fit the New York camels, but it was too cumbersome for the Ethiopian and Kenyan camels when the team took its design into the field.

Too smart
The second problem involved the frame itself. The aerospace engineers outdid themselves designing a trapezoidal aluminum frame that cupped the camel's hump and supported the floppy PV panels so they'd be parallel to the ground while the camel walks. The idea was to give the panels optimum sun exposure.

Once in the field, however, they realized that the local camels could not support the weight of their frame for long distances. Also, it became apparent that the position of the panels was not as important as they had thought: the sun is so intense that even panels at inefficient angles can generate enough power for the refrigerators.

A local solution
“We went back to the drawing board and asked what do the local people do to make this work?” Soboyejo told E4C after a presentation he gave in Manhattan at the World Science Festival. The people who transported vaccines on camel back already had a frame that they used. “That was the solution. They used a cross bar in front, one in back and left room for the hump in the middle. I said, 'why not make it out of bamboo?'” he recalled.

His students scrapped their aluminum frame and made improvements to the locally-created design. They developed a one-size-fits all feature of sliding poles that adjusts the frame to different-sized camels. And the PV panels hang at 45-degree angles, not horizontal.

“This is from the local culture,” Soboyejo said. “In five minutes the local people can look at this and know what to do. It’s a good case of learning from the local people.”

The Mpala clinic plans to use the new solar refrigerators in its next trip through the Laikipia district in central Kenya, scheduled for this month and next. After that trial run, Soboyejo will begin producing the camel saddles in his home country of Nigeria. They will be distributed there and in Ethiopia, and may be sold later in other parts of Africa and the Middle East.

"Engineering a Difference" on the princetonuniversity YouTube channel

Engineers from Columbia University are working with communities in Uganda to install Lister diesel engines like this one. Photo credit: Alison Ferris

Rain has invigorated cassava crops (and mosquitoes) this year in the Teso region of northern Uganda. The fields are greener, but the weather hasn’t erased the memory of last year's drought, or the threat of hunger to come. Fortunately, student engineers from the prestigious Makerere University in Kampala and Columbia University are developing a tool that could help irrigate crops and perform a variety of other tasks.

Last year, the Columbia's student chapter of Engineers Without Borders helped install two engines for local cooperatives. The versatile engines power attachments for chores that currently include grain milling and electricity generation. The list is growing, however, as designers develop new attachments. In the queue: water pumps for crop irrigation.

The Swiss Army knife of machines
The engines are called Multifunction Platforms (abbreviated as MFP). Their name is clunkier than the noise they make – they are quiet, 6 hp, 750-lb. stationary, Listeroid diesel engines. These engines are durable, easily maintained, and proven – the design dates to the 1920’s. They have a main rotating shaft connected to a flywheel. A pulley system links them to their attachments. The attachments could be anything that rotates, and the engine can drive two attachments at once.

The setup in Uganda costs nearly $9,000 for each engine and attachments, plus $3,350 to train people to use them. Pilgrim, the NGO that established the cooperatives, offers eight-week training programs that meet twice weekly in the evenings.

Pilgrim plans to install as many as 50 machines throughout the region. The first two were donated, part of the EWB program, and the others may be, also. To pay for the rest, Pilgrim is looking at other options, such as loaning the cooperatives the start-up cost and collecting gradual repayment.

This is a multi-function platform engine with a mill and an electricity generator attached. Photo by Alison Ferris

Vegetables, not fossils
A design tweak makes the engines sustainable without the need to import fuel: they can run on vegetable oil. Matthew Basinger, a post-grad at Columbia, developed the trick. The factory-issue engines are fitted with a steel plug next to the combustion chamber. Basinger took a drill to it to allow vegetable oil to circulate through.

Now, with modified plugs, heat from the combustion chamber warms the vegetable oil, reducing its viscosity so it does not clog the injector. Basinger tested his design to make sure that Ugandans could manufacture the plugs.

The problem is where to get the oil. To avoid using food crops as fuel, Pilgrim urges its cooperatives to plant hedges of jatropha. Jatropha is hardy plant that grows throughout Uganda. Its seeds are inedible with a high oil content. With the right attachment, the MFPs themselves can press it into oil.

Putting them to work
Micro economies have sprung up around the engines in Teso. Cooperatives mill corn for consumption and sale. People from neighboring villages bring raw goods to the MFP mills and pay a fee to the cooperatives to process them.

The engines charge 12-volt batteries and energize micro-grid electrical connections. Light bulbs flickered on this summer for the first time in homes that only knew candlelight before.

A crash course in electrical wiring
The Columbia engineers worked with Calvin Esabu, an electrician from the Ugandan city of Soroti, to hook up the electrical generators and lay the grid. The students had trained in electrical work before leaving New York, but Esabu gave them some hands-on instruction in his trade.

One lesson was the grounding rod. To install it, Alison Ferris, a Columbia engineer, helped Esabu dig a three-foot pit in the ground. Then they hammered in a rod connected to a copper wire and poured a layer of coal dust into the hole to improve electrical conductivity. They emptied four jerrycans of water into the pit, waited for it to drain off, then filled the pit with coal and soil.

That was the start of a two-week apprenticeship in practical rural village wiring. “We dug trenches for the copper grounding wire, we helped chisel bricks to allow for the wiring conduit, we nailed and cemented the conduit in place, we clipped wiring to the beams and walls in the MFP structures, we put in switches, circuit breaker boxes, outlets, and light sockets. All done without power tools,” Ferris wrote E4C in an email.

Evram Dawd and Alex Lopez pour coal into a pit dug to bury the grounding rod for the electrical system. (Photo by Alison Ferris)

Lessons learned
The Columbia engineers took stock of the program this year and rediscovered the adage about location and a successful business. MFP mills need to strike a geographic balance. They can’t be too close to competing mills or too far from the communities that would use them.

The Columbia team also discovered that each cooperative should develop its own management strategy, rather than try to adopt a one-size-fits all plan.

On the drawing board
Students at Columbia and Makerere plan to collaborate on new attachment designs. Besides a water pump, some of the projects in the pipeline include mill improvements, better 12-volt lead-acid battery chargers, a biodiesel reactor and a better mechanism for switching between attachments. Both teams plan to compare and contrast their ideas throughout the next year.

For more information

The EWB team members wrote blog entries on their chapter’s web site. Check their site’s main page for updates and general information. Pilgrim posts updates on its site. The organization also accepts donations (click the "Give" button in the upper right corner of the main page).

We posted more photos of the MFP project in our Flickr photostream.

Mohammed Bah Abba designed this earthenware pot-in-pot cooler in 1995 in Nigeria. It is one of objects on display in Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s Design for the Other 90% exhibition. One pot sits inside a larger pot with sand and water in between. As the water evaporates, the warmer air rises leaving cooler air in the center of the pot. It helps keeps produce fresh. Photo credit: Tomas Bertelsen (all rights reserved)

This is a guest post by Cynthia Smith, a curator at the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City.

Traditionally, professional designers have focused on only 10% of the world’s population, but that is changing. Design for the Other 90%, an exhibition organized by Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, explores how designers, engineers, architects and social entrepreneurs are developing solutions for the majority of the world’s population - the 5.8 billion people, or 90%, who have little access to things that many of us take for granted. That includes the nearly half of the world that has limited access to basic needs such as food, clean water, or shelter. The exhibition, and the book and web site that supplement it, explore a growing movement to design low-cost solutions for this other 90%.

As the curator of the exhibition, I am conducting field research in Asia, Africa, and South and Central America, identifying projects that will result in the next exhibition in the Design for the Other 90% series. It is entitled Critical Mass: Design and Urbanization. It will be accompanied by a catalog, expanded web site and public programs and is scheduled to open in New York in 2011. You can follow my research updates via my  travel log on Twitter (the feed is below).

The first exhibition continues to travel since its debut in New York in 2007.  It is on display in Washington DC at the National Geographic Museum, with previous stops at the Walker Center in Minneapolis, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and Mercy Corps in Portland. The catalog is in its fifth reprinting and has just been translated into Japanese this year. We continue to maintain the Webby-award winning website, which includes a blog.

With the expanded web site, we seek to compile vital design resources; connect numerous stakeholders including designers, planners, local end-users and organizations, international NGOs, and foundations working in the field of socially responsible design. It will allow us to link up with others, such as E4C. We look forward to collaborating with E4C to explore and highlight the myriad ways designers, engineers and global citizens are developing solutions to meet the needs of under-served communities around the world.

Cynthia Smith is Curator of Socially Responsible Design at the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City.

The OpenBTS team tests its network at Burning Man in Nevada's Black Rock desert. Photo courtesy of David Burgess

In the developing world, cell phones come before land lines. Why? Because installing cell towers is cheaper than running landlines. But even lower cell phone costs turn telecom companies away from the poorest and hardest-to-reach areas. Where they do provide coverage, it's expensive, especially for the 3 billion people in the world who earn about $3 per day.

A small team of telecom industry veterans has solved both of those problems. The team developed OpenBTS, an open-source, software-based cellphone network. Not only does it cost one-tenth as much as traditional networks, but carriers could charge callers about $2 per month and still make a profit.

To do that, OpenBTS has stripped some of the opacity from cellphone service, turning it into a do-it-yourself project. Now, anyone with some technical chops, a Radio Shack nearby, and $4,500 can make a network that works with a standard GSM cellphone. In sum, this project could change how most of the world communicates.

By lowering costs an open-source network like this one opens doors to small companies that are willing to provide coverage in the world's under-served communities. They couldn't sidestep the world's AT&Ts – operating an unlicensed network is illegal in many countries. But it presents investment opportunities that could lead to fundamental shifts in regulations, especially if it becomes clear that this is a cheaper way to talk.

Here's a look at the OpenBTS hardware. Photo courtesy of David Burgess

How it works
OpenBTS (BTS= Base Transceiver Station) is a low-cost replacement for a traditional cell network. It allows cellphones to connect to each other if they're all within range of the transceiver, and to connect to any other phone in the world through an internet connection.

At its core is open-source software that creates an interface for cellphones to connect to the network. The software is installed on a computer with a Linux operating system. An open-source device, called a Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP), plugs into the computer. Together, they create a signal that looks just like any signal for GSM phones. GSM, by the way, is the most widely used cellphone standard in the world.

To complete the trick, the software plus the USRP hardware links to an open-source PBX called Asterisk. The PBX, a private branch exchange, is a server that acts like a switchboard to place calls.

With that set-up, anyone in range of the signal can place calls to anyone else in range, exactly as if they had traditional cellphone coverage. To connect to the rest of the world, all that's needed is an internet connection.

The OpenBTS team is on a tower on the Polynesian island Niue, where they tested their network last year. Photo courtesy of David Burgess

Low, low, cost
“Our goal is to drive the cost of the service down low enough and operate a profitable business to provide low-cost service to literally billions of people. Because they're out there and they can't afford the current system,” said David Burgess, one of the two brains behind OpenBTS.

A phone company would have to invest about $200,000 to install a network in a rural, off-the-grid village. That would cover a few thousand people in a radius of about nine miles (15 kilometers).  Because there's no power, the company would need a generator. If the generator runs on imported diesel, then fuel, plus delivery and security expenses, could cost $12-18,000 per month, Burgess figures.

A comparable OpenBTS network would cost about $20,000. That includes solar panels, so the power would be nearly free. At that price, a monthly calling plan could cost about $2 per month, Burgess says. And, with future improvements, he hopes to drive the cost to the user down to $1 per month.

Streamlining regulations
Burgess' team is working with carriers in Latin America to install OpenBTS networks in their coverage dead zones. And these arrangements won't be the network's first time in the field.

In the past three years, the team successfully field-tested OpenBTS at two Burning Man events in a (mostly) dead zone in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. The network also went to Niue, a Polynesian island with no coverage.

On Niue, the OpenBTS team learned a lesson about regulations. The island's internet coverage is on the same frequency as the network, so it interfered with the signal. In most of the world, the law has set that range aside for cellphone networks. But not on Niue.

This is the OpenBTS network installation at Burning Man. Photo courtesy of David Burgess

Elsewhere, OpenBTS networks (and others like it) could butt heads with the opposite problem: too much regulation. Legalizing even a small network in the United States requires an FCC license as a first step, followed by other bureaucratic hurdles. If small, open-source networks catch on, Burgess foresees an overhaul of the world's network laws. That could open doors to small businesses that are shut out of the industry now by high costs and strict regulations.

“Certainly there are technical hurdles to driving the cost down. There are also regulatory and political hurdles,” Burgess says. “But we believe that when you prove it is possible and change the way that people think about it, you'll see new opportunities. You really change the whole nature of the business.”

Cell phones for better health
The world is already snapping up cellphone subscriptions. The number should top 5 billion this year, according to a UN study released in February. Such coverage is easing problems of poor development. People in developing regions are using their cell phones for everything from healthcare to financial transactions.

“Even the simplest, low-end mobile phone can do so much to improve health care in the developing world,” Hamadoun Touré, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union said in a statement. “Good examples include sending reminder messages to patients' phones when they have a medical appointment or need a pre-natal check-up. Or using SMS messages to deliver instructions on when and how to take complex medication such as anti-retrovirals or vaccines. It's such a simple thing to do, and yet it saves millions of dollars and can help improve and even save the lives of millions of people.”

Burgess agrees. “There are very few people in the world who would refuse telephone service by choice. But there are lots who can't afford it,” he says.

For more information, please see the OpenBTS site. For the source code, there's the OpenBTS wiki. And Lee Dryburgh posted an audio file and a transcript of his very technical interview with David Burgess at the Emerging Communications Conference in 2009.

This is the command center for the Burning Man test. Photo courtesy of David Burgess

Volunteer engineers helped repair Hands Together's buildings after the earthquake in Haiti. They also taught building techniques to Haitian construction workers. Photo courtesy of Tom Hennessy

Among the wreckage from the earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12 was the headquarters of Hands Together, a small non-profit that builds schools and feeds 6,000 Haitian children. The quake destroyed its base in Port-au-Prince and crippled buildings on its eight campuses in Cité-Soleil, a shantytown on the outskirts of the capital.

In the months since, small teams of US engineers have traveled to Haiti, assessed the damages on Hands Together's buildings, and made repairs. They have also advanced the organization’s other projects, improving irrigation on rural, sustainable farms.

Now, they need new volunteers, both engineers and interpreters, to continue the work in the coming weeks.

Tom Hennessey, of the Los Angeles professional chapter of Engineers Without Borders, is organizing such trips. EWB is not an emergency relief organization, so, to help in Haiti, its members work with other groups, such as Hands Together.

Hennessey already put together two trips for structural, mechanical, and water engineers to work with Hands Together in March and April. Besides their assessment work, they also gave lessons to Haitian construction crews and worked with them on making repairs to damaged buildings.

Volunteers worked to improve irrigation on sustainable farms in Haiti. Photo courtesy of Tom Hennessey

To bridge the communication gap, they traveled with an interpreter, a Haitian immigrant to the United States. “We found that that model worked best,” Hennessey said. He is seeking an engineer who speaks English and either French or Creole to help with interpretations. But, he said, even interpreters who aren’t engineers could be helpful if they’re willing to try.

The volunteers would work on Hands Together’s schools and clinics in Cité-Soleil, or on rural farms. In addition to building free K-8 schools and feeding students one meal per day, the organization also provides medical clinics, adult education, and nutritional programs.

Cité-Soleil is one of the largest slums in the northern hemisphere, home to 200,000 to 300,000 of the world’s most impoverished people. Even before the earthquake, the International Committee of the Red Cross called it  a “microcosm of all the ills that beset Haitian society: endemic unemployment, illiteracy, the collapse of public services, insalubrity, crime and violence.”

Its destitution moved Father Tom Hagan to relocate to Port-au-Prince and work in Cité-Soleil in 1997. Hagan was a chaplain at Lafayette and Moravian Colleges in Pennsylvania before he founded Hands Together. Since then, the organization has become a leader in education and health services in the slum, and one of its biggest employers.

Hennessey is looking for interpreters, mechanical and structural engineers and experts in irrigation and solar energy. He is planning two trips with tentative dates: one could leave by the end of June, and the other some time in July. For information or to volunteer, please write Hennessey at tvhennessey (at) gmail.com.

For more information, or to make monetary donations, please see Hands Together's web site.

A volunteer assesses the damage to a hospice building. Photo courtesy of Tom Hennessey

Patricia Scheidewind taught children l in Izinga, Tanzania, as a volunteer last year. Now, she is opening a new school for girls there. Photo courtesy of Patricia Schneidewind

When Patricia Schneidewind taught classes in Izinga, Tanzania, two years ago, she saw that the girls were less educated than boys. The gap was especially wide among impoverished girls and single mothers.

“I quickly noticed that there was no real possibility for young, single mothers to really help themselves become more financially stable, as they are often disowned from their families and remain unmarried” she wrote E4C in an email.

In response, Schneidewind has founded a non-profit secondary school for girls. But it wasn't her idea: it arose from talks with the women of Izinga.

World's lowest attendance
Education for young women is not a priority in Tanzania, according to a UN report. The cultural emphasis is on domestic chores and early marriage. At home, the women cook and clean rather than study. Girls from impoverished families often work as maids in upper class homes.  Consequently, they perform worse than boys in primary and secondary school, especially in science and math.

School attendance in general is lower in sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else in the world. There, only 63 percent of boy and 59 percent of girls go to school, UNICEF reports.

Schneidewind would like to change that with the Bakhita Girls secondary school, a non-profit that she and her partners founded. Within the next year, she hopes to have completed a school building for up to 240 young women. In five years, she  believes that she can fill most of those seats. By then, she hopes to add a primary school as well.

Brought to you by cocoa beans
For now, there's a “Donate” button on the Bakhita web site's menu bar, and the project depends on the generosity of others. But the school may not always have to operate as a charity.

To cover its costs, Bakhita will also manage a non-profit cocoa company. Tanzania happens to be one of Africa's leading cocoa producers, and Bakhita will harness the local industry to pay bills and provide jobs for the local community.

“If the model works, we would love to build similar schools in different regions,” Schneidewind said.

This young mother did not graduate from high school. She is not alone. Many young women in Sub-Saharan Africa end their education prematurely. Photo courtesy of Patricia Schneidewind

Seeking volunteers
A pilot program for the school begins this summer with 10-15 students. At the same time, Bakhita is working with volunteers to design the building. Schneidewind guesses that construction with locally available materials could cost about $400,000.

She is also designing a curriculum aimed at empowering women to work and become leaders in business and politics. She could use the help of talented volunteers in that or any facet of this project, including fundraising and building the school.

There are so many things they might need, she explained. “People themselves always know better what they can offer,” she added. She would like potential volunteers to speak to her directly about what they would like to do.

For more information, and to inquire about volunteering, please contact Schneidewind at patricia@bakhitagirls.com. To see more of Schneidewind's beautiful photos, please visit our Flickr photostream.