Archive for the ‘Fieldwork’ Category

Nomadic Entrepreneurs: A New Generation Fueled By the Sun

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

As a child, she tended yaks and goats on the mountainsides of rural Qinghai, China but things have changed since then. She still considers herself a nomad. Now, however, she is a nomad of business and it is solar panels and solar cookers she tends.

Dorma (卓玛) rose in the business world by migrating from trade to trade and from city to city; wherever opportunity presented itself. She is one of the few women of her ethnicity to run her own non-restaurant business.

One Earth Designs recently visited Dorma’s factory with local university students to negotiate solar technology prices. Seventy watt solar panels cost 2,000 RMB (293 USD) and 8 watt solar panels cost 400 RMB (58 USD).

As for solar cookers, China has a handful of standard designs that you can read about here. Dorma sells the two most popular designs:

(1) Concrete Butterfly Solar Cooker:

Butterfly solar cookers are asymmetric parabolas. In this solar cooker, the asymmetric parabolic dish is made from concrete. Small mirrors (usually 1”x 1”) are then pasted on the surface of the concrete parabola using tar or silicon adhesive. The base of the cooker is a circular concrete slab.

  • Cost: 150-200 RMB (22-29 USD) + tax + shipping
  • Weight: 95kg (209 lbs)
  • Long Distance Transportation: 20% breakage in route to the villages
  • Collection Area: 1.88 m2
  • Reflector: Both tar and silicon glue lose efficacy when exposed to weathering. If mirrors are not placed tightly together, these glues melt and the mirrors fall off within a few weeks to a few months.
  • Assembly Time: 20 minutes
  • Boil Time/5L water (summer): 10 minutes, sunny day (30 C ambient; 86 F)
  • Boil Time/5L water (winter): 2.5 hours, sunny day (-15 C ambient; 5 F)
  • Accidents:
    • Starts unwanted fires
    • Burns through pots
  • Cooking: Fast but cooks food unevenly

(2) Cast Iron Butterfly Solar Cooker

This is also an asymmetric parabolic solar cooker. The dish is made from two cast iron wings that unscrew for separate transportation. Mylar is pasted on the surface to boost specular reflectivity. Standard paper glue is used as the adhesive. The base is designed like a wheelbarrow in order to increase portability.

  • Cost: 420-500 RMB (62-74 USD) + tax + shipping
  • Collection Area: 1.62 m2 (0.81 per wing)
  • Weight: 70 kg
  • Long Distance Transportation: Mylar often tears during transport to villages.
  • Reflector: Pasting Mylar leaves many bubbles and insufficiently pasted edges which tear easily during transportation and weathering.
  • Assembly Time: 5-10 minutes
  • Boil Times: Slightly less than concrete cooker
  • Cooking: Fast but cooks food unevenly

Although Dorma sells these cookers, she does not manufacture them. We went to visit solar cooker factories in Gansu, Sichuan, and Qinghai in order to compare prices and profit margins. Here, we report these values for the concrete solar cooker (only the government manufactures metal cookers as the unsubsidized cost of purchasing them is prohibitively expensive for most households).

The total price of manufacturing a concrete solar cooker averaged 84 RMB (12 USD). Profit margins for the factory owner ranged from 36 to 116 RMB (5-17 USD).

Many factory workers had recently relocated to urban centers from the countryside. Workers laying mirrors were able to make 6 cookers per day, thus earning 36 RMB (5 USD). If they work 7 days per week every day of the year they can make slightly more than 2/3rds China’s average urban income. The workers we spoke with had bandages covering cuts on their fingers from the edges of the glass mirrors.

Workers laying concrete were able to make 13-15 cookers per day, thus earning 39-45 RMB (6-7 USD). If they work every day of the year, they earn a few hundred RMB short of China’s average urban income.

One Earth Designs is inspired by Dorma’s success and saddened by the low wages and poor working conditions faced by rural peoples relocating to urban areas (those few able to find city jobs). We are working with local development organizations, universities, and communities to nurture a new generation of nomadic entrepreneurs skilled at merging traditional design practices and materials with modern needs and urban capacities.

Stay tuned for an introduction to our novel solar cooker design, the SolSource 3-in-1, and its potential as a local income generator.

One Earth Designs (OED) was founded in 2007 by Catlin Powers and Scot Frank ( OED website; OED blog; OED facebook page; Twitter@OneEarthDesigns). Catlin will post on Mondays and Wednesdays. You can also find her on Twitter @CatlinPowers.

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Posted in China, Clean Technology, Design, Environment, Fieldwork, Health, International Development, One Earth Designs, SolSource 3-in-1 | No Comments »

Sustainable Change: Local and Holistic Grass-roots Development

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

Good Technology vs. Good Implementation: Recently, a paper was written which greatly offended our friends and partners in China. The paper described local grassroots efforts as being less effective than those made by One Earth Designs and other foreign-led groups because locals ‘lacked the technical ability to create sustainable infrastructure’. This is an opinion that we have heard voiced by many international development workers. BUT creating sustainable change requires much more than just good technology.

My favorite example is a set of greenhouses that one foreign aid organization built here in Qinghai. The organization didn’t tell the villagers how to use them so, instead of growing crops, the villagers stored their motorcycles inside so that the motors would start more easily in the winter.

Without an understanding of the social, economic, political, cultural, and environmental contexts of a region; without both listening to constituents and teaching about new ideas; without follow-through and continuity; and without scalability, development projects (no matter their technical excellence) are doomed to failure.

Informed Impact & Local Students’ Efforts: Unlike foreign-based organizations, local groups have a much deeper understanding of and greater ability to meet these conditions.

In western China, they have done so. Thousands of rural communities have accessed tap water, adopted cleaner cooking technologies, revised farming practices, and built schools with libraries through student and community led grass-roots efforts. A few examples are Shamo Thar’s Development Program at Qinghai Normal University, Pentok, The Bridge Fund (TBF), the Jinpa Trust, the Friendship Charity Association, the Normgo Education Association, and the Snowland Service Group.

Communities and grass-roots development groups have built a wealth of sustainable social and physical infrastructure by implementing their own solutions and reaching out to others (whether neighboring communities or aid organizations) for any additional resources they need along the way.

In fact, it is only when local groups need project funding, technical capacity building, or confidence to act based on local knowledge (even when others might put them down for doing so) that foreign-led groups are any use at all. One Earth Designs aims to build confidence and technical capacity in the arenas of science and engineering, but our impact is by no means comparable to that achieved by the teachers, students, and communities who really run the show.

Foreign Students’ Efforts: The offending paper was written by a student ‘changemaker’ visiting Qinghai for just one month. While the author cannot be blamed for misunderstanding the dynamics of local development efforts, s/he should be held accountable for acting upon misconceptions. The same holds true for all student changemakers.

Social entrepreneurship and sustainable development are popular terms among US students. But, although the US university community offers many resources to help students become changemakers (in their own communities or abroad), few turn talk into action. Many of those who do take action fail to understand the communities they work with or to ensure project continuity beyond the 1-3 months of their involvement.

Even worse, I have often heard students lying to the communities with which they are working. I once heard an Engineers Without Borders (EWB) regional staff member counsel local chapters to ‘tell communities that [they] will return regardless of whether or not [they] actually will’ because it ‘fosters a sense of trust’.

Students who really want to make change can start out with three steps. First, they can learn from the mistakes and successes of other students doing development projects. Skill-building conferences such as the Global Engagement Summit (GES) at Northwestern University, the International Development Design Summit (IDDS) hosted by MIT, and Clinton Global Initiative University’s (CGIU’s) annual student conference are just a few of the great opportunities in this vein. Second, students should spend time travelling and living in the region where they hope to make positive impact. Third, students should learn how they can best help directly from their partner communities.

Sensitivity & Academic Integrity Abroad: Lastly, please make every effort not to jeopardize the lives or work of your community partners.

As changemakers, your actions have the potential to create great positive impact in the world. The positive nature of this impact, however, hinges on your intentions. If your intentions are sincere, they will lead you to respect and connect deeply with those around you. By doing so, you will naturally find a way to do good things in the world.

One Earth Designs (OED) was founded in 2007 by Catlin Powers and Scot Frank ( OED website; OED blog; OED facebook page; Twitter@OneEarthDesigns). Catlin will post on Mondays and Wednesdays. You can also find her on Twitter @CatlinPowers.

Posted in China, Clean Technology, Fieldwork, International Development | No Comments »

Three Cups of Tea Aren’t Always Enough

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

If one were not paying close attention, Xining, the capital of Qinghai, would look as though it were inhabited by bands of Native Americans wearing cowboy hats.

'Young cowboys' dawn hats and traditional clothing. Young ‘cowboys’ after playing with camera (they took some pretty good pictures of me too). Photo: Scot Frank.

Upon closer inspection, however, it would become apparent that these were various minorities wearing a wide range of traditional clothing, and that the image of ‘Cowboys & Indians’ was one projected onto locals due to our familiarity with Country Western movies.

Woman in traditional headdress. Photo: Scot Frank Woman in traditional headdress. Photo: Scot Frank

Throughout our history in this region, there have been many such misperceptions, both on our part and that of the local communities. For example, we once spent a week evaluating drinking water well installments in a nomadic winter settlement where water was extremely scarce. One of our team members declined to wash his face on the first day in order to save water. His home-stay family thought that washing was against his culture and proceeded not to offer him water for the rest of the week. After several days, he felt so dirty that he washed his face with his canteen water. One of the village children saw this and ran back to his family shouting, “The foreigner is washing his face! The foreigner is washing his face!”

Such misunderstandings are inevitable when projects cross cultures but, having guided several teams of students through international field work, our experience is that these misunderstandings can have humorous rather than deleterious outcomes if students follow a select set of guidelines. To the seasoned international traveler or development worker, these guidelines may seem obvious, but we hope that they will be useful to newcomers looking to form connections and build trust in unfamiliar lands.

How can students attempting international projects during a single winter or summer vacation hope to make a positive (rather than a negative) impact?

  1. Engage in change for the right reasons. When you begin an international project, make sure that you honestly want to help others and are not just engaging because you feel pity, superiority, or distaste for another’s way of life, or because that’s what all your friends are doing. Since we are all connected through the earth we share, we cannot survive without helping other living beings. So, help others because that is our only choice.
  2. Orient yourself to the culture. It’s not a passive process. This is the age of the Internet (digital natives galore). There is no excuse for not knowing the historical and cultural context of the communities with which you are working. Please take the initiative to be an active learner and don’t be afraid to ask questions both before and after you arrive. Otherwise, you and your local partners are in for a not-so-healthy dose of culture shock.
  3. Communicate, check for precedent, and support local projects. If you are working on a development project, find out about similar projects that others have done in your region. Contact them for background on the topic and potential collaborations. These people can help you while you’re on the ground. If possible, establish contact with community members beforehand, but don’t expect this to mean that you can forego formalities on the ground.
  4. Practice cultural sensitivity, respect, and awareness. Obliviousness will earn you no friends when you arrive in the midst of a new culture. Stay aware of your surroundings, take your cues from others’ behavior, and—to start out with—err on the side of sensitivity and respect rather than informal overtures of friendship.
  5. Always ask permission and heed advice. If you want to do something that you don’t see others doing, please ask for permission first. If your hosts say no, don’t do it. Please use common sense.
  6. Have a polite default option. Inevitably, you will find yourself in situations in which you have no idea what to do. Have a back-up plan, the polite option that you fall back on whenever the ‘correct’ option is not clear. It’s important that you try.
  7. Respect host culture, but don’t let go of your own (they’ll find it entertaining). If you pretend that you’re a local, you’ll be disappointed in yourself and others will see you as false. Just be yourself and respect your hosts. We are all people, and most of us are pretty forgiving. Your unusual thoughts and behaviors will provide entertainment in the absence of television.
  8. Have clear and realistic expectations about your own role. You cannot save the world by yourself. Accept this and work with local people to find out how you can realistically contribute to the efforts that they are already undertaking.
  9. Know your field instruments and procedures. If you are doing field research, it is best to be familiar with your equipment beforehand. Read the instructions (and bring a copy). Try using your equipment a few times to make sure its working. Familiarize yourself with operating parameters and storage/transportation precautions. Practice working with any necessary software. You don’t want any equipment to explode or malfunction.
    For the sake of data analysis, be sure to decide on a systematic data recording plan beforehand. Come up with a consistent labeling scheme for samples (make sure your permanent markers don’t run in the rain; the black color is most permanent). Keep a field notebook with dates, times, GPS locations, photo filenames, and other relevant notes. Setting up equations ahead of time ensures that you don’t forget to record any key information.
  10. Prep translators so that you know that you’re getting the right point across. Avoid sending the wrong message by working with your translators ahead of time to make sure that they have understood the nature of your work and questions.
  11. No false promises. Do what you say you’ll do and promise no more. You cause more harm by promising to come back with a solution and not showing up than you do by admitting that you are not sure whether you will be able to come back.
  12. Familiarize yourself with the range of solutions that others have implemented in the situation you are investigating. When you discover the cause of a problem (e.g. bacterial contamination in a water source), be ready to tell the community about the ways that others have addressed this problem and what options have worked under which circumstances.
  13. Don’t proffer solutions with certainty unless you are certain about them. If you know that a certain solution is absolutely the best one, great! Usually, however, this is not the case. Communicate as much as you know about possible solutions, but be honest about your uncertainty and, in many cases, your lack of expertise.
  14. Don’t begin a project unless there is a plan for continuity. Follow-through and continuity are imperative to project success and creating positive impact. It’s not enough to characterize a problem. You must take the next step to facilitate the implementation of an appropriate solution. If you can’t continue the project yourself, find someone locally who can and partner with them.

We hope that this list of guidelines will help you create positive impact in the world. Sharing three cups of tea is often not enough, but there are concrete steps you can take to channel your time, patience, and altruism into building friendships and partnerships rather than burning bridges (even if unintentional). We want to build this into a good guideline list for newcomers to international development. Please let us know what we’ve missed or gotten wrong.

One Earth Designs (OED) was founded in 2007 by Catlin Powers and Scot Frank ( OED website; OED blog; OED facebook page; Twitter @OneEarthDesigns). Catlin will post on Mondays and Wednesdays. You can also find her on Twitter @CatlinPowers.

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Posted in China, Fieldwork, International Development | No Comments »