Cool new initiative

I'm working on a new project in Arusha to spur rural innovation. Although Arusha has seen significant growth and prosperity over the last decade or so, the surrounding villages have not really benefited from this growth. The idea is to have the villagers identify the problems that they would like to solve and work with them on developing technology solutions. The villagers would work in teams and the workshop staff would provide mentorship as people worked. The teams would learn about the design process through case studies and their projects would serve as an interactive case study.

The program is called the AISE Initiative for Accelerating Innovations and Social Entrepreneurship (AISE is pronounced "I say!" which is an exclamation of wonder in Kiswahili). Sadly we don't have a website yet, but we're working on that. My friend Bernard and I are laying the groundwork and conducting the research and we are planning to get our pilot program off the ground in January. We've been working with Jodie here in Tanzania, but we're also receiving support from Amy Smith, Kofi Taha and Becca Smith (no relation) at MIT in hashing out the idea and accessing resources. In fact, Bernard and I are about to spend two weeks in Zambia with Amy and Kofi doing some background work and then Becca will be in Tanzania in January to help with our pilot.

This methodology is called Creative Capacity Building (CCB). The staff at the AISE Initiative are not employed to impose solutions onto a community, but rather are facilitators who enhance the expertise of others, and, thereby, view meaningful community participation as necessary to social and economic progress. This has been developed by Amy and Kofi in their work with refugee camps in Uganda and has shown remarkable results.

We've just put up a fundraising page [LINK REMOVED OCTOBER 2011], so if you know anyone looking for worthy causes* this holiday season, I'd really appreciate it if you could spread the word. Also, another cause close to my heart is IDDS, which is another initiative that I am part of. You can support IDDS here.

* We are working with my friend Joe Agoada's NGO, the Two Wheeled Foundation for this campaign. The funding tiers are for both AISE Initiative projects and GCS projects.

This is a super low-cost solar water heater that Bernard developed after his experiences in a CCB program.