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Published: June 20th 2014
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It is worth mentioning repeatedly that we are creatures of our environment, and that the situation on Agua Campus is no exception. For a few months, I spent time interviewing over 70 applicants for the International Sustainable Development Internship, and approximately 14 are coming over the course of this summer. Although we currently have three international interns, I can see the potential of structuring such environments with decorated, passionate, and intelligent individuals with the intent of producing some of the most productive behaviors towards innovation.
Franco, the first to come and is now leaving today after 1 month, has shown me a lot about what it means to be on the receiving side of valued experience. As a finance and anthropology major, Franco has proven to be a fun-loving, driven, and globally-infatuated individual with changing the world on his mind. In his short time here, he has proven to himself and others that learning has no limits. He came with little scientific experience, yet developed a water quality grading scale that could replace the current WHO guidelines, influenced improved efficiency in government microfinance programs, reached out to local experts in biology and physics, led a social change initiative to stabilize
the economic fluctuations of a vital fish market, and found immense directive for his future career in social change.
The second intern to come, Bobby, is a physics major looking for purpose and culture. He is here for the length of the summer, and has taken an interest in local music and alternative fuels. It will be interesting to see the transformative process in someone who is impressionable and open to inspiration as he.
A recent arrival is Aubrey. A fellow personal trainer and international studies major, Aubrey demands respect for taking time to come to Gambia despite the responsibilities of being a mother. I have not quite met someone as young, self-starting, well-rounded and sympathetic as her. In just her first week, she applied her previous research of the Gambia to various social situations we were operating in, identified major issues in agriculture with a particular interest in women, built a cheap drip irrigation system as an alternative to their laborious bucket-dumping methods, and organized meetings with various government groups to take action regarding the operational deficiency.
Between these interns and our employees, the environment is quite incredible. With our security guard Musa to have late night attayah (tea) and street beans with, to discussing international development with our journalist friend Saikou, and spending too long trying to pronounce “Hawaii” correctly with our personal assistant and to-be-lawyer Lamin, I have cultivated quite the family.
Excellent advance this week have been a plenty. Bobby and I met with GreenTech, a company that compresses peanut shells into logs as charcoal alternatives, to discuss using the biomass as an excellent biochar candidate that we could then use for agricultural applications and wastewater filtration. Franco, Lamin, and I met with the head of Biology at the University of The Gambia, Dr. Njie, to discuss the water situation in The Gambia. We found that no one had really taken initiative in holistic water quality testing on a small scale, and he chimed well with our interest of using bio-markers to coincide with the grading scale that Franco created. He said he would share his knowledge of plants and animals that react sensitively with water, and provide lab space and connect us with some of his students.
Franco, Saikou and I met with Dr. Jaine, the head of the physics department, and his students at the Tangi fish market. Dr. Jaine is a sustainable energy genius, and certainly acts as an inspiration to what our interns and the youthful innovators of the future could aspire to be. Tangi has a major reliance on ice to keep their fish fresh, and often do not make a honest profit due to constant need for replacement or suffering the loss of rotten fish. The electricity grid has failed in a past Japanese-funded project, and we were looking to make a difference in hopes of stabilizing the ever-important fish economy of not just Tangi, but Gambia as a whole. We knew that whatever we came up with, had to also apply to the homes of Gambia, as even if we sustained the local market, electricity shut-offs in the city would affect how much fish citizens would purchase. The challenge still stands, and it is something that could change many lives. The completion of the project excites me less than being able to work young intellectual counterparts in their own country, and facilitate innovation to be in their own hands. True learning and social change CAN happen at once, and I am ecstatic to see it before my eyes.
Many meetings, site visits, and innovations to be had within the next week, and more interns arrive early July. The horizon of change rises before us, and I can’t help but run…
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