UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

Fig 1: Hygiene Day excitement at READ school I would lay in bed until the birds began to chirp and the sun began to shine through my window. Although this sounds like a storybook sentence, I indeed woke up to this every morning in the village. And mind you, the goats bleating and the dogs barking indeed compose a rhythm, far better than those classic alert sounds on your iPhone. Fig 2: Income Generation - Handmade cards for women employment For the most part, we had power cuts towards late night, due to which the motor wouldn’t run all night, and hence the water tank would never fill up. As a result, there was no water to bathe or brush with. We would drink Filter Coffee before getting ready for the day. Traditional south Indian food with some aromatic spices and freshly taken out coconut water would greet us at our dining table. We would quietly overeat every day and pack our bag with notepads, laptops in case we had to show videos, game materials, internet modem for our data never wo...

Fig 1: Menstruation Education for girls of Grades 4 and 5 Working or doing social service in a community that is new to you, is an entirely different experience from a study abroad program. Yes, both expose you to new cultures and give you a platform to evaluate your choices and live your life better. I say this because studying in the US for the past year has taught me a lot. Be it, regarding how the culture is so different from Dubai, where I grew up, or by showing me about different tastes and hobbies. However, as a north Indian, traveling to South India for the first time in my life, I realized very early in our trip that language was not the only barrier I was going to face. Fig 2: Computer Programming class for teachers I speak 5 languages - Hindi, Punjabi, English, Urdu, and basic Arabic. None of these were going to help me converse with the school students or the elderly members of the HIV+ community that I was going to be working with so closely. As a north...

Fig 1: RISHI Team with teachers and Headmistress at READ school I am part of a non-profit on campus called Project RISHI, and this year I was fortunate enough to receive funds from the BLUM Center for Developing Economies to go out into the field and live with the community that I was out to work with. Every interaction I had with the community leaders to the small children in the village, has gained a particular spot in my memories and I hope to go back very soon to further strengthen the connections I was able to make in the last month. When we arrived at the guesthouse in Andimadam (a village in the South Indian of Tamil Nadu), we were greeted by several smiling faces, we couldn’t recognize. Over the days, we were given the opportunity to know these community leaders who were taking out time from their busy schedules to welcome us, live with this and make us feel at home. Indeed, when we had been in conversation with the primary correspondent and head of Rural Education and Action D...

Since ntroducing the stoves in August we have been besieged by constant inquiries from excited residents as to when the stoves will be for sale. As we only imported 50 stoves we've had to turn away many interested buyers on the principle that these stoves are intended only for research and as we can't guarantee fuel supply there's really no point in buying one since it will be useless unless ethanol becomes available in the market in Sierra Leone. The third and largest problem with offering these stoves for sale is that they simply aren't affordable. The South African CleanCook stove we specified for this study retails for $55. In partnership with US NGO Project Gaia we were able to negotiate a discount but still ended up paying loads for shipping and the worst expense was the 30% import fee charged by Sierra Leone customs. This ridiculous fee alone makes any scheme to import stoves impractical thus creating the need to design a stove for local production. For this mi...

Sunbird Bioenergy is a London based biofuel company interested in producing bioethanol in Sierra Leone. To accomplish this mission Sunbird bought a massive ethanol production plant in Makeni which was built and operated by the Addax Corporation until their recent bankruptcy. Sunbird is in fact a very metaphorical name as this company (like the Phoenix of mythology) is rising from the ashes of the Addax project, and the name Addax still bears a negative connotation for the more politically aware residents of Salone. The key problem for Sunbird is that Addax built their ethanol plant in the wrong place. The plant uses sugar cane as the feedstock for producing ethanol and in the time of Addax had a massive sugar cane plantation surrounding the site. However, rather than placing the project in a region suitable for sugarcane farming, Addax chose to build it in the North for shaky political reasons - a plan which never worked out as the expenses and reduced yeilds caused by growing sugarca...

After over a month in Bo we have finally made our way to Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital city and center of development. Bo is fondly referred to as The Second City by most salone residents but next to Freetown it seems a mere village. Freetown benefits from 24 hour reliable electricity supplied by a Chinese powership and a constant influx of imported goods from global markets. Freetown's level of development has a lot to do with the colonial history of the city and it's enduring relationship with foreign countries providing access to aid programs. Our propose in the city was in part to accompany Martin to a meeting at the US embassy where he was meant to give a debriefing on his experience in America. Martin Kailie is the founder of the Desert Water NGO and the recipient of a recent Humphrey fellowship to study in the US. It was during this fellowship that Dana and I were connected with Martin and we first began to frame this project. I'll paraphrase the project descr...

Knights Landing is a farm worker community of approximately 1,000 residents located 20 miles north of UC Davis. Initially, residents of Knights Landing established contact UC Davis Chicano/a Studies researchers regarding their perceived elevated risk of cancer and environmental exposures. Our subsequent analysis of existing health risk monitoring data in addition to preliminary discussions with residents, UCD medical clinic staff, and county health officials revealed individual risks like smoking, diet, lack of exercise, substandard housing, and occupational exposures are pervasive in Northern Yolo County. In a community with substantial environmental and social risk factors, prioritization for health interventions is an important task (CalEPA 2015, EPA 2016). Rural communities are known to have higher rates of smoking although similar knowledge of the adverse health effects of smoking exists relative to urban communities. One proposed reason for the elevated risk of smoking in rural...