UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

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...

The currency in South Africa is called the South African Rand. On each denomination exists a different animal. The animals on the rand banknotes are called the Big Five and were coined under this term due to the difficulty in hunting them. The Big Five consists of the rhino, elephant, leopard, lion and african buffalo. These can be seen at a game reserve. I was fortunate enough to go to Umfolozi Game Reserve and see the animals in the Big Five. I’ve been told by many that it’s very rare to see a leopard. The landscape in South Africa is one for the books. Durban, South Africa is a coastal city on the eastern side of the country. It’s beautifully located between the beach and the mountains. On my trip, I was able to go to the Drakensberg mountains, where I saw ancient old cave paintings. I was informed that these paintings could be as old as 5,000 years. I was truly in awe with all the beauty that surrounds Durban. It was an amazing experience to be able to visit a beautiful country...

Some obstacles presented themselves during the time I was in South Africa. Unfortunately, the technology I was supposed to test was not working. Many technical difficulties were encountered when trying to operate the viscous heater (VH). The timeframe to get the VH working, was about 6-8 weeks, which by that time I would have already been gone. Instead, I focused on the second part of my project, which was assessing storage conditions of fecal sludge with and without black soldier fly larvae (BSFL). BSFL can be grown on fecal sludge and are currently being used as a source for animal feed because of their high protein content. To evaluate the potential for microbial regrowth in the finished product, storage of the fecal sludge was tested with two different conditions: fecal sludge with BSFL, and fecal sludge without. The fecal sludge without BSFL served as the control. Each container was filled with 500 grams of fecal sludge. 500 BSFL were grown in each designated container with the ...

So, do you? I know I do. I am currently researching at the Pollution Research Group located at the University of Kwazulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, where a team of us work with human poo. Yes, actual human waste. The idea of working with human waste remains a taboo topic today, but it’s one of the biggest global challenges the world is facing. In 2015, 2.4 billion people of the 7.3 billion people on Earth, lacked access to improved sanitation facilities, including 946 million people still practicing open defecation. The two methods of handling human waste are on-site and off-site disposal methods. Local population density often decides which system will be more widely used. On-site systems store and can treat the waste in-situ and are typically used in less populated areas since they are easier and less expensive to manage at small scales. In the case of septic tanks, the waste needs to be transported, once storage is full, to a treatment facility. But how is it being transported...

Here you will find updates on our organization, and blog posts written by each of our Blum Fellows about their experiences abroad. Make sure to check out our website at blumcenter.ucdavis.edu, and like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/UCDavisBlumCenter to get regular updates and see our upcoming events.

Having surveyed for approximately two weeks and called 138 numbers, it was challenging to receive only 35 responses. However, the survey process as a whole reveals a lot about the community and is a jumping-off point for future surveying. In addition to writing a short report and an upcoming final report for the Blum Center, I will have a closing phone conversation with my project manager tomorrow. What has lingered closest to me since the completion of my IRC internship are certainly the profound, though completely foreign to me, challenges pointed out by multiple clients of the IRC. For example, one client impressed upon me the inaccessibility of affordable halal meat. He can only purchase it in specialty food stores and even there the price is unreliable. He noted that he should be able to buy it at large chain stores, where clients may otherwise shop, like Walmart. I had never considered how it may be restrictive to buy only halal meat and how larger stores should take that into ...