Averting Starvation
charity
March 29, 2004, 08:27 PM
An old article on the Atlantic discusses the work of Norman Borlaug, one of America's three Nobel Peace Prize winners, though you've probably never heard of him. He has devoted his life to developing and disseminating high-yield farming techniques to the developing world, an effort that may have saved upwards of 1 billion lives. The article also makes a good case for why "non-natural" technologies aren't necessarily harmful to our world, and how opposing them can sometimes do more harm than good.
Truly an inspiring example of a technologist who has affected meaningful change in this world.
Ayole's Water and Technology As a Catalyst for Change
charity, society & sociology, systems
July 11, 2003, 10:50 PM
First off, a quick apology for the recent slowdown in posting frequency. I've taken on way too many projects this summer and thus haven't had as much time to update this journal as I'd like.
Today I partially taught a lesson in the TCinC class I'm co-teaching with Matt. Matt has put together the lesson plans for most of the sessions we're redoing for Joe's class, and today he had us show a video to the students called The Water of Ayole
.
The Water of Ayoleis a video used by the Peace Corps to communicate the important concept that technology must be introduced into organizations along with the skills and systems necessary to maintain and develop that technology. The video itself is about a program to introduce water pumps into many third-world african villages. The basic problem this program is trying to solve is that many villages are reliant on water sources that are unsanitary, disease-ridden, far from the village (and thus take a lot of time and effort to collect), etc. This lack of potable water is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Africans every hour. To solve this problem, the program funded the construction of water pumps that are capable of drawing water from deep underground that is pure, potable, and close to the village (and thus much easier to gather).
Unfortunately, although the intentions of these programs are good, the execution was flawed. Here's what generally happened:
- The government came in and funded the construction of the water pump. The villagers were overjoyed.
- A couple of years pass. The pump breaks.
- The villagers complain to the government, but the government doesn't have the money to maintain the pumps for free.
- The villagers attempt to raise money to fix the pumps, but they are poorly organized. The money is never collected and used appropriately.
- The women of the village go back to the time-consuming task of gathering the unsanitary water they drank before. Disease and death returns.
The exception to this rule is the village of Ayole. When the interventionists brought the pump to Ayole, they didn't simply build the pump and leave. Instead, they helped teach a mechanic who lived in the village how to repair the pump. The villagers themselves formed committees who were responsible for discovering problems with the pump and raising money for repairs. They even engaged in communal farming to help raise money for pump maintenance as a common good for the village.
Clearly, this video demonstrates the importance of organizational change when incorporating new technology. But I took another message away from it as well. I've always believed that true, lasting change can only occur if it happens in the hearts and minds of the people, and thus technology cannot, by itself, create change. However, technology can be a catalyst for change. The villagers in Ayole remarked that their community had grown stronger as a result of the pump, that the presence of the common good brought them together, even in ways that were not related to pump maintenance. They now took a greater interest in each others' affairs, and were more willing to help fellow villagers in need. Of course, this change did not come from the pump per se; it was the result of the organizational change that swept through the village as a response to the need to maintain the pump. But the pump undoubtedly spurred this change. Introducing a new technology can, when other conditions are right, tip the scales in favor of a new, better social order. And I think that's pretty exciting, especially for a budding technologist who hopes to do some good in this world.
Posted by Tom Rudmik on April 01, 2004 at 03:46 PM
I am trying to get a copy of the Water of Ayole video. The UN is no longer producing the video. Since it is out of production you can make a copy of it without violating copyright. If someone can help us it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Tom
Posted by Daniel Scott Owen on July 27, 2005 at 09:23 AM
I am trying to track down a copy of this tape as well... Any hints?
Posted by sshan on March 16, 2007 at 12:29 AM
I want to buy the vedio for my class.
Would you please tell me where to buy?
Thanks very very much!
Email Rob:
The Community Technology Forum
charity, teaching & learning
May 05, 2003, 03:49 PM
"Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you will feed him for a lifetime."
The old saw has never held more true for me than it has today.
Today was the Community Technology Forum, Joe's end-of-the-semester meeting where all the community partners and student technology consultants to present the work they did throughout the semester. It was quite an encouraging event, due both to the benefits the community partners are getting out of the consultancies and to reaffirm that Joe's vision of the course is moving it in the right direction.
Joe, unusual for a CS professor, emphasizes introducing appropriate technologies through developing an understanding of the organization and ensuring those technologies are sustainable. The spirit of the class at least is less about the technology and more about improving the technological capacity of nonprofits. And sure enough, the most enthusiastic community partners repeatedly emphasized that the biggest benefit for them was the increased understanding of technology they received as a result of working with their consultant. They appreciated when the consultants paid attention to their work and taught them technological fixes that helped them do that work, even when they were as simple as helping them sort emails in Outlook.
Many service learning classes hope to teach students new skills while also helping charitable organizations, but often don't succeed because they have "ulterior motives". For example, if the class is about database system design, then the students are going to develop a database system regardless of whether that's what their community partners need. Joe's class is unique because they focus on these needs rather than predetermined solutions.
This focus on the needs of organizations also relates to my earlier point about the need for usability in open source software. There's been a lot of talk in the open source community about the potential for open source software in nonprofit organizations. The reasoning is that since open source software is free, it is ideal for nonprofits with small budgets. Additionally, since open source projects aren't tied to a particular company, they're more sustainable since nonprofits won't have to worry about the company who provides the software going broke, upping the price, etc.
Although these are both valid points, I am skeptical about this potential for open source software as it currently exists. For example, one organization had a student group (for another class) develop a system for them the previous semester that was intended to speed up their reporting process. The students developed a MySQL / PHP web system that was delivered as promised, but wound up not doing everything the organization needed (a common situation, if you know anything about software development). Unfortunately, no one in the organization was technically sophisticated enough to fix the problems with the system, and the original team was long gone. After getting over a month behind on their reports, they wound up scrapping the system and reverting to their old paper system. One of the student consultants this semester worked with the organization's technical lead to develop an Access-based system that they could maintain.
I'll agree that this problem was due in large part to the failings of the previous student group to adequately understand the needs of the organization, but even so, it's hard to imagine how one could build a database system that was usable and modifiable by nonprofit workers who, while very smart, are not willing to spend months learning SQL, Linux, PHP, etc. We need to start creating systems that are usable by these types of people before open source can make inroads in the nonprofit arena.
In short, my impression is that Joe's class is doing good work and is taking the right approach to the problem. Merely putting the student consultants and the community partners in the same room with each other seems to accomplish a lot, and Joe helps them along by focusing their attention on the organization's short and long term needs. Hopefully the work Matt and I are doing will help improve the student's and community partner's understandings of their organization so that their work can have an even bigger impact in future classes. I guess we'll find out in December at the next Forum.
Email Rob:
CHI Report, Service Learning in HCI
charity, teaching & learning, usability
April 09, 2003, 06:49 PM
After lunch, I attended an Informal SIG (Special Interest Group) on HCI Service Learning. There were only three other people there (their names were Jonathan, Carol, and Anne), so it was a nice, small discussion group. We talked about experiences in teaching service learning; I discussed some of our findings in our TCinC studies. I would have liked to give a full presentation on our results and redesign ideas so the other members in the group could comment, but I had no suitable presentation prepared and didn't want to dominate the discussion. One interesting problem everyone else was running into that we don't seem to have is that students were having difficulty implementing the project designs they came up with. Our problem has been the opposite; students have no problems understanding the technology but are lost when it comes to understanding the organization.
Jonathan did ask how we could spread the concept of service learning to other academic institutions. I mentioned we were working on reusable lesson plans that should help integrate service learning into the curriculum, but that we were more concerned with solving our own problem at the moment and hadn't yet given a thought to everyone else's. We exchanged business cards at the end; I plan to bring them back to Joe and Matt to hopefully start a dialog on how to spread this stuff.
Email Rob:
Email Rob: