Sustainable solutions for Southern Africa

Sunday 25 JAN 2009         22:30  - 01:00

Session Attendees:         Nishi Andra, Vivek Nath, Aditya Subramanian, Olivia Campos, Taylor Hickem

Conclusions

Chat ettiquite

assign a moderator with large groups to ensure that conversations do not diverge 
and everyone feels included in the discussion

type what you want to say ahead of time in notepad 
so that it doesn't show up as "so-and-so" is typing - 
if you want to speak up, just type "spacebar" in the google chat.

Personal Statements:

Nishi - help build sustainable solutions for developing communities
Vivek - engineering solutions for sustainability in developing countries
Taylor- making a positive impact on the quality of life for underprivileged societies
Olivia- devoting my time to improving quality of life in developing nations
Aditya- engineering solutions for global sustainability

Project Objective and Focus Areas

• We want to provide sustainable engineering solutions for improving the quality of life and a viable future in developing communities
  
• Build with the community and not just for the community
  
• Projects focused on infrastructure will require a great deal of collaboration between many organizations and institutes
  
• Political stability is a key factor in selecting our focus region
  
• Southern Africa is a good place to start
  

Types of organizations that will need to be engaged

governments
NGOs
Universities
local community resources - farmers
for-profit corporations
banks
etc...

Reasons why Southern Africa would be a good start

• Opportunity to demonstrate the full potential of sustainable technology in "green field" projects
  
• Relatively stable economy - potential to grow
  
• Others who have tried projects in these areas have been successful
  
• Ability to make a large impact due to the size of the need
  

Open Questions

What is the name of firm that supplies medical equipment for the professor? - for Nishi 
Who are some contacts of people involved in the projects in Zambia? - Aditya

Group Discussion Topics for future sessions

Current focus projects

Sustainability (Energy)
Infrastructure

Current focus countries

        Botswana
        Zambia
        South Africa
        Lesotho
        Swaziland

Other future possibilities

Health Care
Fertility
Education

Topic Questions:    How will we 

Gain the commitment from the underprivileged communities we are trying to help?
Be able to clearly state what we want to do and how we intend to do it?
Be able to demonstrate that our project will be effective at accomplishing its objective ?

        Next scheduled session:

               Sunday 01 FEB 2009     22:30    GoogleChat

Affiliated Organizations

Volunteer Morocco

Organization in Morocco that Nishi's Professor contact is involved in 
Schools
Heath Care
Orphanages / Childcare
$300,000 medical equipment

http://www.volunteermorocco.com/

Barefoot College

http://www.barefootcollege.org/enroll1.htm

Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW)

Helps to coordinate engineering talent within the US to 
apply sustainable technology to the developing world

http://esw.affiniscape.com/

Engineers Without Borders (EWB)

Similar to ESW, appears to be more focused on 
having the engineers involved in the implementation of the projects.

http://www.ewb-international.org/

University of Texas
University of Zambia

Conversation Transcript: (available at Discussion Summaries under Project Documents)

Why GDP per capita (PPP) ?

Why GDP per capita (PPP) ?

GDP per capita (PPP) is a convenient number to use as a way to measure average quality of life. 

Other variables may prove more effective; I suggested this specific one for a few reasons:

Familiarity

It is well known variable that is available for many countries, 

and is a variable that government leaders are not only familiar with, 

but usually have a vested interest in raising for their own political purposes.

Unifying Focus Towards a Common Goal

I saw it as an opportunity to attract the attention of not only NGO's and international organizations, 

but also the political leadership and individuals within the community. 

Since having multiple variables could cause more confusion and open the possibility of conflicting agendas, it seems like a good way to focus all stakeholders towards a common goal.  

Given that the actual projects may only be focused on variables that merely correlate with GDP per capita, 

such as health, fertility rates, and literacy -  one may ask why the goal would not to be simply to focus on those variables instead of trying to tie them into GDP per capita.

The idea is that if any one particular project looks like it may conflict with other agendas that the stakeholders have. 

It allows for more flexibility to shift the attention to other projects (ex: infrastructure or health care vs fertility education), while still making progress on the overall objective, which is to improve quality of life.                        

Good Measure of Standard of Living

It does appear to correlate well with other variables that are typically associated with quality of life.

ex: infant mortality, education levels, etc..

My personal experience in various parts of the world led me to develop my own subjective, qualitative intuition as to

what the relative quality of life was for any particular place I visited.

Once I had a list of places ranked by quality of life in my head, 

I researched around the web for lists of countries ranked by a single economic variable. 

GDP per capita (PPP) struck me as the closest way to reproducing this ranking in my head.

 The list --->                   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

Economic variables that correlate with GDP per capita (PPP)

Oil consumption            +76 

                        

May also be negative at times, but still highly correlated.

  http://cvjugo.blogspot.com/2008/03/gdp-per-capita-and-oil-imports-strong.html

                       

 This is a good measure of the industrial progress of a country.  

 Projects that should impact this variable:        traditional capital investments, manufacturing, infrastructure, etc.. 

                       

Life Expectancy          + 0.63

               

 Does not correlate above 30,000 (GDP pc) because life expectancy appears to caps out around 78

    http://www.indexmundi.com/g/correlation.aspx?v1=67&v2=30&y=2003

 Projects that should impact this variable:        targeting health care, such as AIDS, water quality, etc..

Total fertility rate           -0.55 

Varies with GDP per capita, -0.79 for <>

suggesting that high fertility rates are bad for poorer societies, but good for wealthier ones.  

 http://www.indexmundi.com/g/correlation.aspx?v1=67&v2=31&y=2004        

                        

Projects that should impact this variable:        women's rights, fertility education, women's health, planned parenthood

                    

Literacy                       + 0.55

                        

Does not correlate above 30,000 (GDP pc) because literacy caps out at 99% 

 http://www.indexmundi.com/g/correlation.aspx?v1=67&v2=39&y=2003

Projects that should impact this variable:        education initiatives - English, Math, Science, etc..

HDI                            +0.77

                       

Human Development Index - mathematically combines life expectancy, literacy rate, 

and GDP per capita into a single variable.                     

 http://www.erin.utoronto.ca/~w3psyuli/WellBeingScience/WellbeingHDI.htm              

list of countries by HDI

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index

Mission Objective

Mission Objective

To positively impact the quality of the lives of citizens of an underprivileged African nation and to increase the gross domestic product of that nation

Mission Strategies

Implement needed and desired engineering practicalities in citizens’ lives

Educate citizens on the sustained operation and maintenance of these practical implementations

Expose citizens to fertility education and birth control options.