Summer in East Africa!

I'm spending this summer in Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya working on the plan and pilot for Worldwide Mobility. For more information and to see what I'm up to, visit my summer/Worldwide Mobility blog: empoweringmobility.blogspot.com

Danielle

Camp Kesem ("kesem" = magic)

This year will be my second working with kids at Camp Kesem. On the outside, it looks like any other summer camp. Working with the kids tells a different story. To apply to the camp, the kids have to have a shared experience: a parent with cancer. Often in difficult situations, it is easy to identify the people who need help: the person in danger or poor health. What is less observed are the effects on the kids and people close to the person.

I love working with the kids at Camp Kesem. They are wise beyond their years and are a joy to work with, even if they don't always want to sleep. It's amazing being able to take them to a different world for a week, jammed with fun, new names, and opportunities to connect with other kids who truly know what they're going through.

This year I'll be helping plan Space Day and PJ Night, so it sound like another awesome camp week is in the works =)

tinyurl.com/kesemmonkey

Top Ten Reasons You Should Major in Aerospace at MIT

10. At the end of Unified, the class designs and gets a t-shirt, paid for by the department. Just so everyone knows how baller you are.
9. Wind tunnel.
8. The lounge has a hammock. That's right, a hammock.
7. Which means you can go right from sleeping to lab! (wait...)
6. Your professors teach you how to rip phone books in half.
5. You get to take randomly awesome classes like 16.64
4. You're automatically awesome and hardcore. Just because you make things fly.
3. "Why yes, I suppose it is rocket science"
2. You have the best, most supportive group of classmates. If you can get through Unified together, you can get through anything.
1. You get to fly in small planes and the end of the year and experience zero g!!

MIT Love #2

So the other thing I love about MIT is the ridiculous opportunities. I was fortunate enough to receive $5K from two awards this year so that I can work on an international development project in Africa this summer. Right now I'm calling Apollo-era legends that will be coming to speak at a conference I'm helping organize. It's pretty ridiculous.

And at the end of a day, I can go to our very recreation friendly sailing pavilion and take out any boat I want, because I just got my provisional rating today!

MIT Love

One of the best things about MIT is the de-emphasis on race or ethnicity. It gets to the point where there is just so much diversity that you don't notice when majority and minority roles become switched. I was in a meeting for Camp Kesem last night and someone made an off-handed comment "Right, because you're the only Indian here." It took me a few minutes to realize that she had been completely joking because the group was in fact comprised of four Indians, one Asian, and me (white). When it was brought up again, my Asian friend said she hadn't even noticed and I realized that the thought hadn't crossed my mind either. It was such a non-issue.

One of many reasons I love this place.

Why the Name

The name starfish globalization came from my first post, but today I was thinking about what I want this blog to be about and does the name really fit? At MIT, I can major in aero/astro and minor in applied international studies and make it all work out. There's such an emphasis on work play balance that it's possible to do that. So for now, I'm content with the name. "Star" has a double implication here. For now, that's good enough.

Why I'm Aero/Astro

This past weekend I spent twelve hours cutting foam for our team's wing in the basement of the aerospace lab. While this probably sounds terrible, it reminded me why I'm in this major.

1. I do really, really like this stuff.
I just broke two English rules is one sentence: never say "stuff" and never say really, and definitely not twice. But at the end of the day, seeing the finished wing, knowing that I understand one piece of machinery extremely intimately is still a satisfying feeling. I get that feeling after finishing a difficult piece of code and it somehow works after all the hours of coding and debugging. I was worried for a long time that I should be in comp sci instead or somewhere else entirely.

2. The people are incredible.
Twelve hours is always a huge amount of time to spend with anyone. But I see these long lab sessions as an opportunity to *really* get to know someone. In twelve hours, you may walk in strangers and walk out good friends. I have been very fortunate in my groups and have found all the people I have interacted with to be fantastic people. If nothing else, this major gives you plenty of opportunity to get to know people.

Social Change

This week and weekend I'm at the Global Engagement Summit at Northwestern University. I'm proud to say we have four MIT students, all people who applied independently. With our "iPod" generation, it's easy to get caught up in the media's pin of our generation as disinterested and unable to make social connections as our lives become increasingly online.

The conference started with a keynote address by Nathaniel Whittemore of change.org. He is a senior at Northwestern University who has traveled all over the world working on international development projects and is the founder of GES. When I heard a senior was giving the keynote I was politely unimpressed. His introduction made me realize that this was no mere senior and his speech... well, eloquent was not the word. The passion and conviction with which he delivered his view of students of today made me proud and inspired.

With nods to a few forgotten heroes, including Jane Addams, the founder of the first homelessness shelter - Hull House, and Thomas Clarkson, who won the Nobel Peace prize for his essay about the injustice of enslaving fellow humans and subsequently organized the movement that turned the British Empire from the largest human trafficking nation to the most passionate antislavery task force in the world - all in one lifetime.

Going through the conference today, I had the opportunity to speak closely with an Australian delegate and one from Tanzania. Meeting other students interested in social change is an entirely unique opportunity. We have so much to learn from each other. It is amazing to see how not only are Americans interested in the development of nations (and I say not only because only in America is there such a "volunteering" spirit), but also students from the very countries we might go to aid are actively involved and trying to solve the problems as they see them.

As much as I would love to copy the full text of his speech into here, in the name of space, here is a part. Right before this excerpt, Nathaniel described how he and twelve friends went on a global expedition looking for the natural leaders in communities, the change makers. He simultaneously felt inspired and humbled.

This was the context in which the Global Engagement Summit was born. What had started as a training event quickly took on a much bigger meaning. I wanted to believe in my generation. I wanted to believe that we were smart enough, self-critical enough, committed enough, pragmatic enough, innovative enough to change the world.

But I still remember feeling so nervous the night before the very first event. My team had poured themselves into building an incredible program, but still I worried. My great fear was not about capacity but about flippancy. I was terrified that these students that we had brought from all over the world would take this as a chance simply to see the city, drink a bit, and congratulate themselves for their wonderful intentions. I worried what this would suggest about my own commitment.

What I found instead was the generation that I had been looking for. That first group of delegates and indeed, each since, were, as I had been, humbled by the magnitude of the poverty, injustice, and inequality in the world. They were clear-eyed about their own limitations, indeed, the limitations of the nonprofit sector on it's own to truly change the structures of oppression that deny talented, passionate people around the world the opportunity to thrive and create meaning.

But from the very bottom of their being, they were unwilling to accept the world as it is as the natural state of things. They were unwilling to accept that injustice should be anything other than aberrational. They were unwilling to accept incapacitation and were hell-bent on discovering the power in themselves and in others to make the world a place where all could thrive. They understood, as Jane Addams did, that in today's world, "Action...is the sole medium of expression for ethics."

For the full text, I highly encourage you to check out his blog on change.org.

In all of my interactions with other delegates, I have been extremely impressed by their passion and dedication no matter what stage their project is in. I have learned so much about other countries problems and social stigmas by talking to the delegates from Australia and Tanzania. It's an amazing opportunity to give an receive feedback from students focused on amazing projects who have thought extensively about social change. In the small group discussions today after the workshops, I was completely blown away by our discussion. Everyone was respectful of each other's views, even when sometimes they had very different viewpoints.

We discussed Ian Illich's 1968 speech "To Hell With Good Intentions" in which he (summarizing) says that well intentioned people in foreign countries with the intent to help should get the hell out. We live in a different world in 2009, but the idea of needing to be absolutely sure you are doing the good you intend is just as poignant now. My friend Kristen once talked about one of the most memorable moments in her life. She was helping out in a soup kitchen where the helpers also eat dinner with the people who come through. She sat down with a homeless man and talked about an international project she was working on. He said, "what about us?" She said that moment hit her hard, and I understand why. The other sentiment that popped into my head was a story another friend told me. She was helping out with a habitat for humanity organization in an area that had been devastated by a horrible natural disaster several years prior. It was a week long trip and on Wednesday, nothing had been done. The people of the region were uninterested and the volunteers didn't know how to best help. On Thursday, the group leader called a town meeting and gathered all the people of the region together, possibly for the first time. He asked simply, "What needs to be done?" and "What can you do?" The next two hours were filled with people weighing in on important projects and the following three days were incredible. With the community empowered, more work got done in a few days than had dragged on for months.

Self ownership of a solution is the difference between success and failure.

A few other interesting ideas came out of our discussions. One student believed that the goal of any non-profit organization should be "always work to make yourself obsolete." When a community has become self sufficient in the way of social change, they have fully taken charge of their situation. It's a nice soundbite, and an issue I will thoughtfully consider as I work for the international community. Today was very much about how to consider all the people being affected by the work you do. The women, the children, the men, and the natural leaders all have to be part of the change. Even with the increasing awareness and thought of people as global citizens, it is important to pause before blindly charging through the "best" solution.

Despite a desire to "save the world," it's good to step back and ask how to empower people to save their own community themselves.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Danielle DeLatte

Starfish

I always liked the star fish story.

An old man walks along a beach and sees a young boy throwing something into the water. As he approaches, he sees hundreds of starfish lining the beach, washed in from the tide. The young boy is rushing around, throwing the starfish back into the water one by one. The old man asks why he bothers, it's pointless. There are too many starfish to help them all. As he flings a starfish deep into the water, the young boy replies, "It mattered to that one."

This story reminds me of how great things start small. Yes, he's just a kid, making a difference one starfish at a time, but it mattered to that starfish. A lot of non-profits find themselves collecting statistics and trying to make quotas and goals. I love goals. I think they push you to do better, be better. But it mattered to that last person that non-profit helped. Non-profits, or NGOs, starting out are like the little boy. They have big goals, but start with a small impact. Maybe they'll grow up and build a starfish collecting and throwing machine, but right now they are throwing them in one by one.

I'm helping start a non-profit called Worldwide Mobility. Today we met with the founder of Good2Gether. I'm excited. Good2Gether is trying to make sense of the vast space of non-profits and help connect them with people who care about issues when they care about them. It got me excited for the future and really thinking. If this gets big, he will have a very profitable business model, and non-profits will have more traffic. In an era where everyone is in information overload, it's easy to forget that you want to google how to help with the tsunami that just occurred. It's much easier to click on a link with an appropriate non-profit that's right next to the article. It's a call to action, focused on what people can do, supplies they can donate, how they can volunteer. I'm excited to incorporate that into our future plans.

Worldwide Mobility fills a niche that has been unaddressed thus far in Africa. The quality of the donated, well meaning chairs is low. The chairs last a few months instead of the years that they are needed. NGOs come in and donate in mass hundreds, thousands of wheelchairs, but ultimately, they end up in junk yards. When a part breaks, it is impossible to fix. Fortunately, there is something that does work: local workshops. Local workshops provide assessment, fitting, and instruction to people who need wheelchairs. Designed for Africa use, these wheelchairs often last five or more years and are made from local materials. Of course, funding is an issue. Worldwide Mobility connects donnor funds to the local workshops. Even though these chairs cost more, when you consider the cost of the number of donated chairs it would take to last as long as one locally made chair, local is better.

It's like the starfish. Worldwide Mobility flings them deep where they can thrive. It takes more effort to help one person, but it matters so much more to that one.

Posted via email from Danielle DeLatte