 Good afternoon. Good evening or good morning depending when you're joining us from today. Welcome to engineering for change or you for see for short Today, we're very pleased to bring you our second installment of the university seven-hour series This series is spearheaded by SMEs engineering for global Development Research Committee and its purpose is to intellectually develop the field of engineering for global development Each month we are hosting a new research institution to learn about their work advancing the nation's sustainable development goals So with that, my name is Yana Aranda. I'm the president of engineering for change And I'll be serving as one of the moderators for today's seminar The seminar you're participating in today will be archived on the e4c webinar speech As well as on our youtube channel. Both of those URLs are listed on the slide Information on upcoming seminars is available on the same page Any first team members will receive invitations to upcoming seminars directly If you have any questions comments and recommendations for future topics and speakers Please contact the e4c team at research at engineeringforchange.org If you're following us on twitter today, I'd like to invite you to join us in the conversation with our dedicated hashtag Hashtag e4c seminar series Now before we move on to our presenters, I'd like to tell you a bit about e4c e4c is a knowledge organization digital platform and global community of more than 1 million engineers designers development practitioners and social scientists Who are leveraging technology to solve quality of life challenges faced by underserved communities around the globe Some of those challenges may include access to clean water and sanitation Sustainable energy solutions improved agriculture and more We invite you to become a member e4c membership is free and provides access to news and thought leaders Insides of hundreds of essential technologies in our solutions library professional development resources Encouraging to opportunities such as jobs funding calls fellowships and more e4c members also receive exclusive invitations to online and regional events and access to resources aligned to their interests We invite you to visit our website engineeringforchange.org to learn more and sign up e4c's research work cuts across geographies and sectors to deliver an ecosystem view of technology for good Original research is conducted by e4c fellows annually on behalf of our partners and clients and delivered as adjustable reports with implement temple insights We invite you to visit our research page the url is again listed on the slide to explore our trend analysis research collaborations and review of the state of the engineering a state of engineering for global development A compilation of academic program and institutions offering training in the sector If you have research questions or want to work with us on our research projects as a research fellow Please contact us at research at engineeringforchange.org For those of you who are interested in launching an engineering for global development course in your institution We invite you to check out the engineering for change educational toolkit This is a free open source syllabus of a freshman course developed in partnership with Lipscomb University's Raymond B. Joe's College of Engineering If you have recommendations for other resources that we can develop and deliver We also encourage you to contact us all right So with that, uh, we wanted to take care of some housekeeping items Let's go ahead and take a moment to practice using the WebEx platform I advise you to right now use the chat window to let us know where you're joining us from fitting Now the chat window if you don't see it is located at the bottom right of your screen And you can just type in your location right there. I see some folks are you doing this? So we and I'll also join you guys in this exercise All right, so we have someone from Canada from my home from home country Vermont, brooklyn new york Thank you so much for joining us everyone Again, if you don't see the chat window look for the icon that is in the middle of the slides at the bottom of the screen Just as a note So we'd like you to use the q&a window which is located below the chat to type in your questions to the presenter Again, if you don't see the q&a window just look for the q&a icon at the bottom of the screen in the middle of the slide All right, so welcome folks from michigan from stock home from pennsylvania And some more from ontario welcome canada. I'm so glad to see you I'm a bit partial all right, and with that I'd like to Go ahead and introduce our presenter and our moderator for today a doctor Conjure mexta is the inaugural vice provost for creative inquiry and the director of the mountaintop initiative at the high university Mexta champions the creation of learning environments and ecosystems where students faculty and external partners come together To increase their capabilities for independent inquiry take intellectual risks and learn from failure Recognize problems and opportunities and affect constructive and sustainable change previously Mexta was the founding director of the humanitarian engineering and social entrepreneurship or hcc program at pennsylvania university He serves as an associate editor of the archipelago technology and society magazine and contributing editor for engineering for change His latest book solving problems that matter and getting paperwork very critical Takes a deep dive into STEM careers and social innovation and global sustainable development He is um, all right So i'm gonna i'm not going to read through the whole bio because you're going to learn quite a bit about kanja in today's presentation And with that I just also want to introduce our moderator and one of the architects of the series Dr. Jesse often Vernon who is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the university of michigan Here in his phd in mechanical engineering in 20 from 14 from mit he also holds a I think we should just get right to the stuff, you know, I mean I'm going to be here to have my questions and talk and and help with the discussion afterwards But uh, yeah, we're excited to have all of you here. Thank you, Anna All right, no worries. I'm so enthusiastic about your bio, but I will be We'll shorten it from here and I'll get over control to kanja right now so he can go ahead and Present his slides and mute myself to avoid further bio reading Over to you Thank you Yeah, thank you for the kind introduction jesse. Thanks for having me. Joanna. Thanks for all your work in the background there I'm going to spend the next 30 35 minutes talking about Some of our work to the global social impact fellowship at lehigh and Then I hope to have at least 10 15 minutes for questions and answers So i'm at lehigh university, which is in betland, pennsylvania We're about an hour from philadelphia about an hour and a half from new york city We have about 5000 undergraduates undergrad students growing to 6000 over the next few years about 2200 grad students So we are a mid-sized research university and And over the next 30 minutes or so i'm going to give you a quick backdrop of why we do what we do Talk about some of the ventures and the global social impact fellowship. But talk about academic model Talk just a little bit about venture and fieldwork funding because I always get a question from other academics On how we do these kinds of things and a little bit about practical partnerships And then try to try to zoom out and talk about some of the larger lessons learned So we believe very strongly in preparing students to live a life of impact And that is impact in terms of how they help improve the human condition over their 40 year or so in a working life And how it connects to them as individuals So that's impact on themselves and helping them find their ikigai find their reason for being Is just as important for us and this is about finding that intersection between what what you love What the world needs what you're good at and what you can be paid for in other words finding this intersection between fashion mission profession and vocation Which a lot of our students are looking for when they embark on a college education. It's about that deep sense of purpose And and experiences such as the global social impact fellowship help help find that sense of purpose We also believe very strongly in this this life of impact being Being built on the foundations of skill sets mindsets and portfolios And we believe in a mindset that education because if you can believe it if you can think it You can learn it and you can do it So those mindsets are just as important as the skill set and ultimately the proof is in the pudding And we want our students to develop strong portfolios of accomplishment as they go through their education And there's some of skill sets mindsets and portfolios helps our students develop a new identity develop their agency and self-sacrificing Reach a higher level of consciousness And as I said earlier find their sense of purpose and belonging in the world So when we talk of skill sets It is about teamwork and communication and then the world economic forum 2020 skill sets Such as complex problem solving and critical thinking and creativity and coordinating and emotional intelligence and so on When we think of mindsets, it's things like design thinking but not just design thinking whether they become experts at posted notes But also entrepreneurial thinking and systems thinking and seeing being able to see the forest and the trees A data-driven approach an evidence-based approach ethical decision-making which is incredibly important no matter what we do Taking the lead and playing by strengths and most important the one that is closest to my heart is about execution It's about getting stuff done. You know ideas don't solve problems We want to we want our students to get really good at taking ideas identifying opportunities and advancing them through the long winded paths Towards measurable sustainable impact getting stuff done And finally when it comes to portfolios, we are really interested not just in As students engage in these kinds of experiences We want them to not just think about personal growth, which is wonderful But also the professional recognition that they get from other external entities and how exactly do they contribute to advancing knowledge And advancing praxis and the point here is that while personal growth is internally calibrated The other three areas of advancing praxis knowledge and professional recognition Are externally calibrated and we want them to go out and get that external validation and boost their portfolios and prepare them For a world for a life of impact So how do we do that? We believe that it happens through real meaningful authentic projects My office runs a number of programs that span the university And that bring together students and faculty from each of our colleges And we do a lot of this work through through a summer program Called the mount of summer experience where we pay students to work on all kinds of open and interdisciplinary problems And every single team that continues that work into the academic year Through a through a set of creative inquiry courses So we don't invest in one semester two semester projects. We are interested in moonshots We are interested in three to five year long or even longer ambitious projects That can really move the needle on a really compelling topic So we have teams that have been working on 3d printed concrete and a team that is looking at And actually they've developed a performance that they are now doing across the region to educate people about About mass incarceration through social theater We have teams that are trying to understand the relationship between creativity and anxiety At the genetic level we have teams that are that are developing a VR tour for the leahad valley watershed For our local middle school that kids who are not able to travel can still understand and appreciate The watershed so it's we have about 30 or so projects in this whole ecosystem That are all focused on impact in the longer term We have teams that are working on low cost outlets They're focused on tactile organism to make our downtown area Which is Which is economically disadvantaged region more kind of attractive to small businesses and more walkable and more inviting So it's a really wide portfolio of projects and about 11 of them are part of The global social impact fellowship, which as the name says is all about global social impact So i'm going to quickly run you through What some of these ventures look like and then we'll try to kind of zoom out and see and you know Try to talk about what kinds of projects we find exciting and why So we have the team that is working on a two dollar diagnostic device for sickle cell trait West Africa 24 percent of the population has sickle cell trait and the diagnostic devices that they have right now Are incredibly expensive and hence inaccessible and so this is a two dollar test trip We are actually moving pretty close towards clinical trials This summer We have a team that is working on mushroom production systems to support circular Agriculture where the outputs of rice farming the rice husk can be used to grow mushrooms We started in Cambodia where with our non-profit partner world hope international We're now doing about 6 000 kilos of mushroom cultivation on a weekly basis So last year we did about 800 000 dollars in sales of these mushrooms That is now being kind of pumped back into the social enterprise to get more farmers up and running with mushroom cultivation And now we are trying to do exactly the same In in Sierra Leone a very different ecosystem and incredibly complex technical challenge Believe it or not growing mushrooms is not that easy But once you get it it's tremendous potential for profit and value creation, especially for women One of our flagship ventures is a test trip to screen vehement for unity tract infections and preeclampsia the test trips that are used in Sierra Leone right now cost about two dollars each and That's not affordable Sierra Leone has the highest mortal mortality rates in the world And so this is the two cent test trip to screen vehement for UTS and preeclampsia. Sorry So here the picture on the left here is Cassidy draws one of my awesome students who graduated in December And about two years back. She was the one who worked in the wet lab developing the test trip Along with the team of students from every college and then that team Just got regulatory approval for this device in November of last year and hired their first employees starting the first of december So Cassidy was able to take this test trip from understanding the challenge developing the product Negotiating with our render in china developing the distribution pathways We actually got a grant from Grand Challenges Canada. So thank you, Canada for for to study the distribution channels to get this test trip Out to the women who need it most you can get tested in the comfort and privacy of their homes And here's Nakesh Kamadi who's been working on this team for The last two years who's going to be graduating in May and moving to Sierra Leone For a year to work with our staff on the ground You get this test trip to three of the major districts with the population of over three million women So it's about scale and it's about building systems to enable that We have a team that's working on a documentary on safe motherhood and trying to shine the light on some of the innovations that are happening in Sierra Leone to celebrate them and to make others in the country aware of them and And use that to educate people and and increase, you know, awareness and understanding of maternal health issues We actually have a bunch of students that are working on Shell stable aspirational food products that can deliver micro nutrients such as vitamin a and zinc and iodine To kids because 40 of the kids under the age of five are stunted So we have a recipe with a taste testing with our 400 mothers and kids last summer And we're actually just about to Do actually launch the venture on the full 10 days is We have a team that's working on community-scale plastics recycling They've been working in the Philippines with The University of the Philippines and they've basically got a bunch of machines that can take plastic waste and convert them into Into all kinds of products. They have a first customer with the local restaurant group And they're they're working with other non-profits and trying to position that as a business in a box That entrepreneurs can take to convert waste into plastic You have a team that's looking at Diagnosing autism in a context and culturally appropriate manner in West Africa another enormous challenge lots of stigma and almost no services and Little understanding and awareness of the issue No diagnosis methods. So that's where we're trying to develop this tool of working closely with the health ministry and other non-profits Philippines, you know, we're looking at birthing practices again trying to improve maternal health Looking at copra value chains and coconut processing that that engages over 3.5 million farmers in Philippines alone and trying to make these supply chains more the value chains more efficient and design Products to increase the shelf life of coconut products And this is actually most of the students on this team are material science students are looking at this from a materials perspective Much more so than a process perspective The teams in kazakhstan working on air pollution issues. So we have a team working on smart city innovations Especially as the cities keep growing and urban migration, which is a reality How do you build up the city to work for some of the new Entrance into the city So this is in kazakhstan So it's a pretty wide portfolio of ventures and we you know, we keep growing We're looking at a bunch of new ventures in madagascar And hong kong and other parts of the world. So here's the deal across the board Here's some of the common project characteristics. The first is longer time horizons You cannot do any of this work in a semester or two it takes a long time And so all we everything we do they are multi-year ventures. We're not interested in summer romances We build relationships and the projects emerge from those relationships It's all about evidence-based approaches. And so we have rigorous research expectations I think every single team over the last year published at least one article And we expect every student every single student that is in the fellowship Where they make a one-year commitment at the end of which they pass the baton on to the next team to have at least one publication Reality of a university ultimately the our university and that's where we have a number of practical partnerships So as these as these innovations of many different types emerge, we have pathways to scale them up These ventures have high resource needs The fee funding can come from the university. That's a first five hundred dollars. That's a first thousand dollars But then we expect them to go out and get funding to advance the project forward There's no none of none of these projects are working on a single product or service It's an entire ensemble. You have to design the entire system So we are incredibly focused on systemic innovation and entrepreneurship And so here's an example of one of our one of our Ventures with really test strips Which i'm talking about earlier and if you look at this kind of set of concentric squares number one is our box of test strips All right That we spent three years or probably longer than that developing that getting it through regulatory approval But along with that we design 35 other artifacts Everything from the training regimen to get health workers to be able to use this product To data collection and monitoring systems to make our systems better But also to collect data on how many different are we actually screening are they ultimately getting the treatment treatment they need So we're trying to go from like end to end And make sure that we are actually not just selling test strips So we're actually saving lives right so you have to design that entire Ensemble with with a lot of different things and that's where you need a deep systems approach So this is about sustainable scalable impact the focus is on markets and systems The focus is absolutely not on people or communities, but of course systems Are made of markets are made of communities are made of people So we are interested at the systems level and not kind of at the people level or the communities level So we would be very kind of skeptical of using the s word the service word. This is not about service This is about social enterprise and systems innovation Um a lot of these ventures require large investments of time money energy And so we actually take a good bit of time to even identify What areas what projects we will pick up? It is we just don't pick up any projects. It's often six to nine months sometimes longer Before we even make a project open to students and bring them in So there's a lot of work that goes into finding these projects Very high expectations from students. We have three goals impact impact and impact. That's all that matters The impact on the ground comes first in terms of building independent independent self-sustaining systems the second goal would be research and publication and and not to fill a gap in the literature as much as democratizing knowledge as much as inspiring and And and supporting other innovators working on other similar grand challenges such as plastics recycling or maternal health or what have you So and then the third goal if after doing all of this if the students learn something wonderful, right good for them But the idea here is very simple if you set out to learn you'll learn if you set out to really create something systemically that does not exist You're going to learn so much more doing that So very select students and even more select faculty. So we spend a lot of time trying to find the right faculty and prep them And support them as they're working on these kinds of of ambitious projects In terms of the academic model Students apply to be a part of the fellowship. It's a one-year program They apply in the fall semester about we've been accepting about half the students They sign up for three credits in the spring semester between the fall semester Of which one third is a common workshop class for all the students across all the projects Where we equip them with the skill sets and tool kits and mindsets that they need to be successful with their projects We have several full day retreats and workshops on fieldwork preparation on research writing Um on understanding the context on making better observations. It's a pretty wide array of topics Those seminars are actually three hours a week. You know, it's pretty intense Um And then students can do a mountain top summer experience over the summer But they actually get paid a stipend to work on the project on a full-time basis for about eight to ten weeks And accelerate the project and then they engage in two to three weeks of fieldwork in country with our local partners and for Number of ventures for our employees that have been hired under the legal organization of our partners But work very closely with our team here in terms of the intellectual leadership for the venture And then they'll travel out to conferences and we expect them to you know talk about their work So, you know things like the asme impact engineer conference a great learning opportunity for them The global humanity and technology conference an excellent learning opportunity and we expect all teams to have at least one article As long as they're working on technology stuff But not all teams are right. We have teams working on all kinds of things and Given where I sit frankly, I don't care whether I love engineering But I don't care if something has technology or not. I want to see the impact and let's be realistic On how we will get there These are some of the topics for kind of the spring semester class I don't want to get into the details But it's a really wide array of topics that you spend a lot of time studying What do students really need to be successful with their ventures? And that's how these topics are identified and then delivered with a lot of There's a lot of active pedagogies and it's all about all about the project you learn something good for you That's how we approach this And then You know the steelwork in country pretty intense again We'll have for example We had 20 students in Sierra Leone And we had eight faculty that were working with them shoulder to shoulder And working with about 25 30 people on the ground that are partnering with us on all these different ventures um The fall class there's one thing I wanted to point out was that there are three teams One is ethical decision making which is something that we have a significant emphasis on because It's just incredibly important when you're working in this space or no matter what students choose to do We want them to be able to make good sound ethical decisions and make that part of you know every thought and every action So we drive that we drive grassroots diplomacy Which is about how do you get stuff done in a radically different cultural context in a harmonious manner? And then we have a significant emphasis on systems thinking and strategy and conceptual frameworks And and and and so on So in terms of demographics, we have 54 students in this program Pretty even mixed between arts and sciences and engineering with some students from business Some graduate students from education the students are overwhelmingly Undergraduate students 90 percent are undergrads again a pretty good mix between Junior senior sophomores and a few freshmen So this is where we have freshmen and third or fourth year phd students Who are all kind of coming together being a part of this team and advancing the venture forward in terms of gender significant Significantly more women than men If you look at ethnicity, we actually have an incredibly incredibly diverse group of students Of 54 students 25 are wide non-hispanic But we have a good mix of Asian-american multi-racial Hispanic and African-american students And finally 24 of our 54 students are first generation Um, and that's very important to us as a university. We are delighted that we've been able to To you know engage them in these kinds of ambitious multi-year projects All right. So how does funding work? You know the in-country expenses are covered by my office It comes to about a thousand dollars per student And we have we have a few donors and it's a few grants that cover it And then the students are responsible for their airfare visas and other things It comes to about 1500 to 2000 dollars and we have various Research centers and colleges chip in Especially to cover the high need students Which is a pretty significant number of the students who are part of this program have high financial needs So we've been very proactive in ensuring that that not having those finances is not a bad year to engagement Venture funding we get funding from a lot of different sources. So venture that has funded a number of our programs We actually just got a nsf career grant which where a significant emphasis is on some of our work in the Philippines We have you know a couple other nsf grant spending Epa p3. We just got a new central asian university partnerships grant to support our work in kazakhstan So it's a pretty wide array and our students are always working on on new proposals So we tell students why it's pretty important for us to get the right students and this is how we We we You know support. This is how we can frame our Our projects and you know tell students whether or not they should do this You know first is that this is not about just learning about it. This is about doing social impact Very real ventures real people real impact We're not so first of all this is big debate on do you design with and design for And I don't want to get in the semantics of it But the kinds of products we work on are seldom things that we can have direct engagement from students Or from community folks, uh, or even in the healthcare system So while they might not while they might not be A part of the design team they are absolutely part of the larger systems design team. So we work very very closely with governments and uh, and non-profits and un agencies and a lot of the requests like the nutrition project That was a request from the national director for nutrition Uh aim serial beyond who said hey, this is a real challenge and we don't have the expertise in this and can you This is something you can help us with and then we looked and we found the right faculty who had expertise and we you know worked on that project further And that is something we really try to get our students to understand It's about travel culture developing life skills learning how to How 20 people can fit into a single vehicle. It's a great life skill Working in multidisciplinary teams all our teams are incredibly multidisciplinary Um Becoming a global professional. So this is actually Hasan Koroma. Who's one of our first employees for the test trip project And we are negotiating a contract with him In this in this project In this photo an emphasis on scholarly research and publication Traveling to conferences and presenting your work Undergraduate conferences don't count. They have to play with the big boys and girls and uh, it goes through the peer review process and You know do rigorous work This is a great way for them to distinguish themselves a lot of us are looking at med schools and pulled rides and PhD programs and this really helps them Set themselves apart as you're applying to their dream schools A lot of our students actually pursue In fact focused careers We have students working everything from the state department to major foundations to their side of social enterprises And preparing students for those kinds of book careers focus on social impact is pretty important to us And finally it's also about fun Uh and lifelong friendships that you cultivate when you worked on something together 20 hours a week 24 seven in the field for two years um But most importantly it is about the three goals about the impact. It's about the impact and it's about the impact And you know that that piece of paper that you know, that's actually our regulatory approval for the for our test strips That's a magical document because all the students that were part of making this happen Would be you know, that's a game changer for them personally and for for the venture as a whole Um, so here's you know, fundamentally to kind of summarize the next next couple minutes Here's what we believe and some of the lessons learned first of all We absolutely take for granted interdisciplinary engagement 24 seven non-stop action and radical ownership in these ventures First do then learn because then you learn why you need to learn something So it's it's really hands-on Let's do stuff and then go and take a class in organic chemistry or fluid mechanics or whatever we need to make this device work It's about it's not about problems. It's about opportunities and we're always you go in with an opportunity mindset with an entrepreneurial mindset It's not about activities. It's about outcomes It's not about heroes. We don't want to be heroes our goal actually is self-obsolescence We want get stuff doneers So to give you a quick example one of our most successful venture Across the world in my previous life was low-cost greenhouses And now we have eight companies that manufacture and sell these greenhouses But you know, we don't own any of it We helped we worked with a lot of partners. We helped them get it Helped them get it Helped them get it started they run it You know, it's it's their venture and we are out of it So self-obsolescence is a goal across a lot of these ventures for bringing together our knowledge and their knowledge to fuse it To create sustainable value, right? So it's about getting stuff done It's not about products. It's about ecosystems. I talked about the ensemble You know, you can't just design one product. You have to design or co-create the whole system We don't want volunteers. You don't take volunteers. You want our students to come in as professionals that deliver We need convergence of concepts cultures disciplines epistemologies to make this happen It's not about one-offs. It's about scalable solutions life is short. Why do we focus on one-offs? Uh, we are not interested as or we're not as excited about about communities as much as you are about markets Because that's where we are expanding choice for people and people can always You know grow vegetables the way they always have or try using one of our greenhouses for which we will help them Get access to capital and double triple their income People can choose not to get screened for uti's or we can educate them on why they should get screened And how that can help save their baby's life and you know that education is transformative because no pregnant woman Is you know not going to get tested if their child's of their baby's life is in jeopardy, right? So it's about you know embracing markets and building scalable systems Passion is good, but you know passion doesn't solve problems. You need rigor. You need evidence Um ideation it all starts with an idea, but we really focus on execution The the technology product the idea is one percent the other 99 percent is is accountability structures business models You know finding the right talent And making stuff happen, right? It's so it's about building those systems. So we really emphasize execution We're not interested in episodic engagement. We're more excited about longer-term engagement in some of these places In all these places to ensure that we have those long-term impacts. It's not about jobs. It's about careers But most importantly it's about going into this space for the right reasons And that is something we stress with all our partners and you know the question is why do we do what we do? And there are many different philosophies you can you know go in with With a kind of personal development mindset You can go in with a view to save people Geez that's pretty scary. But you know, but that's what drives some people Uh, so there are a lot of there as many philosophies as there are people and for me personally It's about the ubuntu philosophy of iam because we are and we are in this world together and the question is we have certain You know education skill sets mindsets and how to diffuse it With what a lot of our partners have to improve quality of life for everybody And the best way and this is my last slide is Is a favorite philosophy comes from dr We've uh, dr Irvin Venkateswamy the founder of the urban eye hospital We talked about how when we grow in spiritual consciousness We identify ourselves with all that is in the world And there is no exploitation because it is ourselves. We are helping and it is ourselves. We are healing So that could be kind of the philosophical framework through which we approach this work And uh, that is something we you know start with when we engage new students and faculty But then it ends it always ends in three words get Self done and on that note, I will open it up for questions comments and expertise Thank you very much uh kanjan. Thank you very much for uh, that that great talk and overview of The work you guys are doing at lehigh. I think uh, obviously you ran very quickly through all the projects But I really like how you summarize sort of hey, these are these are the characteristics of the types of projects We are trying to do And I think uh, you know and seeing a lot of the the question and answers that people are are posting I think yana, you're going to help me with this But a lot of this is about sort of how are you changing the objective Of a university engagement with these types of projects Okay, so I think a lot of it a lot of the questions we're having to do with hey We've seen all these failures where people don't address systemic issues And what I took away was resonated with with me from your from your presentation was really this difference between Hey, we want students to learn we're going to send you over we're going to do the student project to Hey, we really just care about impact and if we care about impact we'll learn along the way Right and our students will benefit along the way So the primary goal is that impact and to do that we need projects that or you have found that you need projects that have these characteristics Right and so that's when you're looking at the system level. So I think a lot of the examples that uh When mcknight was talking about We're we're talking about like the sort of not understanding system level interaction. So maybe you understand the end user But you don't understand something that that's that's going to prevent impact I think maybe could you talk a little bit about how you guys define and measure impact? I know it's different for every project. And when you say hey objective is impact What does that mean to you? Sure, so So how we how exactly we measure it really depends on the project and frankly it also depends on the kind of resources We have to do the impact assessment because measuring impact is not cheap. It actually costs a lot of money to do it, right? So to give an example You know with this greenhouse project that we wrapped up two years back Our primary goal ultimately was to create an independent. Okay, let's everybody independent self-sustaining Social enterprise run by run by folks in Sierra Leone that manufacture and sell these greenhouses To farmers and educate them on how to transition from open air farming To greenhouse farming to improve their income to improve food security and to fight climate change stressors Okay, that was the goal. That's exactly what we've now been able to accomplish And so when during the first three years when us aid was funding this we were actually looking at indicators like How many greenhouses are we building which is a good short term output not an outcome? But then as he transitioned from year one to year two and three we said, okay for how many of these greenhouses have The farmers recovered their capital investments Which can only happen if they're actually successful in using these to grow more vegetables sell them and make it You know economically feasible, right? Where is the where are the vegetables that they're growing going? Are they just selling all of them? Is this supporting their own families and neighbors nutritional needs? So it was actually a pretty you know and we the other dimension to this was water savings because out of our work Well funding came from Securing water for food that was about securing water for food So we had a whole bunch of measures on tracking water usage. We were able to demonstrate how we can now grow Vegetables you can go go three to ten times as many vegetables at You know with 30 to 70 percent the 30 to 70 percent less water So those were it's pretty wide ranging You know measurement evaluation system Ultimately the impact there was in Sierra Leone alone We have Over a hundred greenhouses that have you know Still the tests of time that are being used and that have contributed to local food security and the folks who run it Have significantly improved their own and their employees quality of life And so look at the venture across the board. We have more than a thousand Greenhouses now that have transformed the lives of tens of thousands of farmers You know we have audited case studies done by USAID on a single farmer in Mozambique who with a $1,200 investment Was able to make a hundred thousand dollars more And there was like clear how that money trickled down to their employees who got a 25 percent bonus and how it improved their quality of life If you have the funding you can do that kind of deeper assessment Um, that's a long-winded answer if I can say one more thing You know you got to realize it when you're working with markets when you're working with systems There is no charity. There is nothing that we are you know giving away There is no play for there's no many go around farms which fails You know if that fails, you know right away that it's failing people are not buying your product So we focus on products that people are willing to pay for and then you can feed back very quickly Whether that it's working or it's not working with my test strips Are people willing to pay two cents or actually it's more like 10 cents when they purchase it Are they willing to pay 10 cents to get tested or not? We know right away if they don't pay and then we know how many women that got screened also got diagnosed Right, so it's a whole it's a different approach and a lot of the conversations I hear about this space Are about projects of engineers without border types typically That that are focused on going and implementing stuff where people are not directly investing In that product or service and look you'll need that in certain cases. I fully respect that But that's not the kind of work we do. This is more market-centric Yeah, yeah, no, I can't hear you That's because I muted myself on my phone and forgot. So sorry. Thank you gentlemen for bodyguard that I'm talking to myself so come down just um pulling on that thread a little bit and we've seen the the approach of Teaching engineers development economics are in this sector because of how important is to understand market-based solutions and and integrate that In your framework for the the program you went to quite quickly Do you touch on development economics or do the students in fact learn about those principles through the the projects themselves? So through the common workshop class We actually have a significant signal well not as much as I would like but no we do We probably have the class is focused on On development economics, but from an entrepreneurial perspective and not a political perspective right the politics is great That's how about how the world ought to be this is about how do we make change? And so in fact the very first class or the very first thing we do in the retreat is to look at different Ways in which you can create change the direct approaches indirect approaches We compare them contrast them and then we kind of suffice of what direction are we going to get and how will this work? And then a significant emphasis on on business models and how to build you know Ventures how to do movements and so on Um, I want to follow up. There was a question from uh, lisa exxon Uh, I believe from sweden and then and I actually wrote down the same question Seems like the importance of the team the relationships And the partner identification is crucial Throughout this month at your things you're saying like it takes nine months before I even decide whether I want to do this Right. Yeah, so can you talk to us about some of the ways or like strategies you use? to think about who should be on this team and How do I identify those right partnerships when constructing these ventures? Because you need the local partners that you're talking about that's your end goal, you know, you're building this all in, right? Yeah, so I think it all starts with the local partners and finding partners with a similar philosophy of engagement is absolutely critical So i'm a very market-centric person system-centric person and I would not Be I would not be a good partner for a nonprofit that is looking to get Uh students to go and paint walls or looking to kind of build a structure. That's just not going to work, right? so finding partners that have that Have a similar philosophy of engagement for me. It's about technology based or non tech But market based and it's a systemic approaches, right? That mindset is critical You build those partnerships and then use this as you spend more time on the ground All kinds of opportunities bubble up So we talk to a lot of people all the time in the countries that you're trying to work in it is not episodic I've been working with Sierra Leone for seven eight years now And we have an excellent network from federal ministers to non-droppers to UN agencies people on the ground And then we are constantly looking for alignment between some of those expressed or not not expressed needs And faculty expertise But most importantly needs for which we believe we can actually design and deliver a sustainable solution along with our partners And that's where we spend those six or nine months to see. Okay, if we were to develop this muffin With these micronutrients, how do we get it out to the people if we design a two dollar sickle cell diagnostic device Who is part of a coalition to build a system where every single baby born in the country? Is screened for sickle cell right when they're born, right? We're talking about those impact pathways and the students actually be that they come later If the dream is grand enough if the dream is compelling enough the students will come Yeah, um, so so you haven't you have a question and I have I have another one that falls on that That's that's great. I think please go ahead. Jesse. I think we're coming to time. So I just want to be Yeah, so let me just ask one last question. So I think just to summarize what what I understood from that I think what you're talking about is if we have these long-term relationships We're not identifying a product opportunity or a project or a systemic intervention What we're doing is saying, okay, let me find partners that are local that have the same engagement philosophy I do and then with them try and understand the system and identify impact we want to create Yeah Yeah, and if I may I saw a question here from Glenn McKnight and he said, how do you avoid the criticism of white failures and I'll kind of try to combine these two points and that is Oh god, I lost my train of thought. Sorry, Jesse. What was your Oh my god I think that's a good thing that Saying like if you build these relationships, then you have a team And yeah, it's a multinational team. Yeah, you have everybody there But it's not you coming and delivering a technology and leaving You're trying to create this partnership that then's going to identify social ventures possible social ventures that you could create That was my understanding Yeah, absolutely. And so those needs and opportunities emerge from the context with local partners and they are the ones saying You know, can you can we work together on this? Right, so I'll go back to, you know Philosophically, it was this code by Gustavo Esteba who said that if you come to help don't come But if you see my struggle as your struggle come and live to let's live together And we might find something to work on and that's the way we think about it So this whole you know all this question about white savior complex is actually moot, you know When we are working in these places all the people we work with are incredibly Excited to work with us shoulder to shoulder We're not white saviors and for the record 24 of my 54 students are white the other 30 are not even white, right? So this is we got to realize that we live in a very different Very different world and look we do have different kinds of resources to bring to the table and if we can You know make something happen with those Why not? Yeah, um, I just want You're gonna to wrap it up. I think that there are Just answered one question. There are First at least several projects. I think when he was talking about evaluating impact audited How to extend by independent ones that's generally driven by the funding and funders in my experience So the funders like you have to have a relationship with the funder where you say listen I think that if you give extra money You can be assured if that's valuable to you That what we did is actually working and not measured by us, right? Again, no usad does that a lot And and gates certainly does that Depends on which which funder type you're working with and certainly there are types of projects Which lend themselves more to that than others and I think Conjons work certainly certainly does Yana, I wanted to pass it off to you. First of all, I wanted to thank conjon again This is a great vision and and you gave a lot of practical details to help the rest of us try and learn from that I love how you generalize it Often I see just these lessons from like a very one case study And I'm trying to understand how does that apply to me and I think you gave us Give us a lot to work with so thank you very much for that. Yana. I wanted to pass it off to you to sort of Wrap it up. Thank you. Thank you so much. Jesse. Thank you conjon I really appreciate you taking the time and thank you for the good discussion One thing I would like to note and I know there was a lot of good chatter about, you know How do we ensure that we are addressing needs and understanding of what the context of the communities and You know that we're serving conjon spoke about that and he kind of glossed over it really quickly because there's so much Content there like you noted that you guys talk about human center design techniques as part of your workshop For those of you who are not familiar with that This is really about unpacking needs and we recently hosted a webinar that I shared the link on the chat about What is human center design and how that helped you to also understand the needs before jumping in with some sort of solution So just for reference that's included in in the deck So again, thank you so much gentlemen for joining us today. I wanted to give a shout out for our coming presenter in march We will have Nathan johnson who is the assistant professor at arizona state university speaking And we encourage all of you to join. There's going to be really great Insights on on his researcher gender during that event again these these the the nature and Of the seminars is for discussion is to learn from each other and what we're doing And we're really excited to hear your thoughts on this if we didn't cover your questions Or you have ideas or you want us to to give us feedback on the seminar series more generally We invite you to reach out to us The emails are listed there and with that I'd like to thank you all for your time today. Good morning. Good evening. Good afternoon Wherever you're joining us from today. Thank you so much and let's let's keep the conversation going Bye everyone Thank you folks