UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

              Due to safety concerns I was advised to stay at the capital rather than at a house in the community. Given the lack of water in the town for the past months the collaborating company did not think it was best for me to stay in the town where the nursery is located. For this reason, I had to travel every day almost 2 hours to get to the nursery and back. That meant that whomever from the company was going in that direction, they would be my ride. One of the days I rode with Reydi. He is also in charge of the clonal garden for the cacao germplasm. Taking me to get the measurements was just another list of the tasks he had to do. He told me, be at the company at 8 for we are leaving early. I woke up extra early to have enough time to get there on time….on average it took me 30 minutes from the hostel to the company because of traffic.           I made it on time!! Actually, I made it early…As I am ready to l...

                    Knights Landing is a community of primarily migrant workers who have been struggling to provide health care to both their human and animal members. The Knights Landing One Healthy Clinic with the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine is the first medical clinic dedicated to providing both human medical and veterinary general wellness services.         Through the Blum Center, we were able to purchase and build a storage shed next to the Knights Landing Community Center where the clinics are held.   Previously, veterinary students stored medical and clinical supplies in their own apartments or garages.   This made running the clinics difficult having to carry the supplies back and forth from Davis to Knights Landing for every clinic.   It was also difficult when transferring jobs and titles from upperclass...

          We finally finished both of our prototypes! The prototype below is a passive solar in-trap dryer, which means that it dries bee pollen as it’s collected. The plastic covered sides of the trap fold down to let radiation from the sun in during the day, which heats the metal air duct on the interior.. The sides of the dryer can additionally fold up to make working with bees on these types of hives easier.  My passive solar dryer, my baby.     Our other trap is a hybrid solar dryer, which means that it uses energy from the sun to passively heat air and to actively move air over the pollen using solar powered fans. My passive solar dryer, my baby.          A few days ago we installed both of these traps in the apiary and are measuring moisture content reduction in pollen as well as trap temperature and humidity levels. Sadly, I am leaving the project at this point to explore more of South America, bu...

I`m taking a break from my proper project this post to talk about the innovation center in Bogota. The innovation center, or c-innova, is one of the buildings where we work on our project, and it’s a really cool center of design in Colombia. Its purpose to to help the design and development of technologies and plans to help improve communities in the Colombia that want the help. The center is additionally open to other projects that are in line with cinnovas vision. Cinnova has been a really helpful workspace where we can develop our project. My project partner David is one of the people that helps manage the space, and through him I’ve met the other cinnova stewards. They are really impressive people, and not only help create an atmosphere of innovation by lending their expertise but also make the space feel like friendly and fun environment to be in. Almost every week they host ‘build its’, which is a workshop where the stewards lead groups in the construction of some cool, ...

          This is my sixth week in Colombia working on a bee pollen dryer for campesinos, small farmers in Colombia, that live in an hour to two hour circumference of Bogota. I´m stationed in Bogota and working with entrepreneur, agriculturalist, and friend Salomon Saleh. Were working on two models for the dryer: An in-trap design where pollen is dried real time as it’s collected from bees, and a traditional dryer, where pollen is collected periodically from several hives and dried in mass.     The whole point of both designs is to prevent, slow, or stop bacterial growth as soon as possible. We’re going about this by removing water from the pollen, but this can also be achieved by lowering the temperature of the pollen and increasing hygienic handling processes as well as multiple other methods.  In-Trap Dryer     We´ve been mainly working on this design the past few weeks as we have the space and tools to work on this p...

What if you could save small amounts each day on your mobile phone? What if your savings also gave you a chance to win the lottery?         My research was motivated by the question: How can Haitian passion for lottery be harnessed to open more productive financial services? Given the lack of information available on traditional lottery and financial strategies, we undertook primary data collection to explore lottery and savings behavior in Haiti from June through November of 2015. In partnership with Digicel, the country’s largest mobile operator, we conducted a phone survey of over 700 individuals. Analysis of the data examines lottery play and saving statuses and behavior patterns and the relationship between them. The results suggest there is an opportunity for lottery-linked micro-savings via mobile money platforms.         An important finding in our data analysis is that savings and lotto statuses are complementary. This implies th...

             In lower Delmas, Port-au-Prince, four different lotto booths stand side by side.         Lottery is an enormous business in Haiti, occupying as many or more storefronts than the ever-present mini-market. The lottery stalls ubiquitous throughout the country are a brightly painted indicator of the familiarity and frequency of this transaction. Haitians spend as much as $1.5 billion per year at the over 35,000 independently owned lottery stalls in urban and rural areas. That comes to more than $220 per year for each individual over the age 15, a staggering figure in a country where the per capita GDI is $810. Deeply entrenched in Haitian culture, a wager represents the hope to win a transformational sum, a message from ancestral spirits, or simply the desire to avoid seeing one’s regular numbers drawn without having bought a ticket.         The tradition...