UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

We had multiple coding projects. We taught teachers, 5th standard students, and hostel girls basic programming through the software scratch. The goal for each group was to make the cat (scratch) dance. This was very user friendly, I’m a history major and can tell you I do not know how to code, but this program was more centered on fun-game-like activities that even I understood it. 5th standard boys listening to instructions It was endearing seeing one of the teachers excited in making her cat move, I saw her dancing a little bit and she was very flustered when I caught her. We are thinking of expanding coding for next year, possibly having a coding day and creating some curriculum for the teachers so the students can really hone in these skills. This was extra beneficial for the hostel girls because when they start applying to college they can see that coding is an option for a career path. This was my second favorite activity. Seeing everyone’s faces after completing their t...

I gave the hostel girls (which range from 6th to 12th standard) a reproductive system talk. This was hands down one of my favorite activities of all time. I drew a diagram of the reproductive system and explained the importance of each part during the making of the period. I could not talk about sperm or sex since that was not approved by the staff, so I had to focus on only menstruation. The girls listened but you can tell they felt a bit awkward and were very VERY shy. No one wanted to volunteer for our labeling game so we had to pick and even then they were reluctant to move. I did my research and knew this was a sensitive/shy/taboo topic to discuss but never realized how shy all the young girls were. For me, it put into perspective the cultural differences. After the event, these two girls (the cook’s daughter and the translator’s child) wanted to play the labeling game at our guest house. For thirty minutes we played. We are slowly making strides and raising awareness. It felt ...

This year I was blessed with a grant provided by the UC Davis Blum Centre to go to India. From August to September I worked alongside my school club/ngo and various other non profits. For an entire year I have been working on this Diabetes workshop. I felt prepared, but I didn’t account for potential changes to our plan once we were in India. This is our second year working on diabetes in the village, the first year was gathering research and this year was to implement some field work. A private village doctor, let’s call him Dr. X was our main contact in the area. According to him, he estimated that 30% of the village of approximately 20,000 people are type 2 diabetic/borderline. During our discussion, he said the problem in this area is that people use ayurvedic medicine to replace insulin or simply do not go to the doctor and only listen when they’re finally diabetic but not enough people focus on prevention. To summarize, lack of diabetes education. Our workshop was to raise awar...