Projects

Under a week until I travel to Nicaragua. I have been swamped with work, projects around the city, classes – so I am really looking forward to next Tuesday, Feb 16, leaving the daily grind! I have been talking to a friend who as an undergrad took an engineering course about the development of third world countries and she gave me some great ideas about projects she worked with in her class! To be brief, one is a corn husker that was “found” in Ghana, used to de-kernel the corn.

Last summer in Costa Rica, families would go through hundreds of ears of corn by hand, and when there is this simple tool, that costs under 2 dollars to make to help speed the process and would make it easier on their wrists so they can dedicate their time to other activities, it would be nice that they could know about it. I am excited on sharing this with Nicaraguan families and I hope they find it beneficial.

This other idea gives instructs on how to turn a bike into a little machine that can easily turn a blender, a washing machine or anything that needs rotational force. What is nice about this idea, is that it doesn’t require complicated equipment to convert this rotational energy into electrical energy which is difficult to repair and is expensive. We'll see how well these ideas are accepted in the field.

Well - not too much else to say right now, I'll have updates from the field soon.