Blog 1 GSIF
Why did you enroll in this course (motivation, prior interests)?
I enrolled into this course for some personal reasons as well as ones bigger than myself. I have always wanted to help people and feel as if my contributions have made someone else feel better in some way. Going into the business field, I unfortunately came to terms with the fact that I would most likely not be helping people, and even in some ways hurting them financially. However, during my time at Lehigh, I have found various outlets to still participate and excel in business without going the traditional route. One of those was the global citizenship program which I took the course during the spring of 2018. When I applied to be in the program, they denied me. I almost felt as if my ability to expand past corporate boundaries was doomed at that point. Much to my delight, I found this program afterwards and applied here and got accepted. To be able to work with companies as they are adjusting to regulated corporate social responsibility is perfect. I have had prior interests in business, so the fit was automatic there as well. Our only impact on this world will be how we treat each other with the limited resources that we have, so we should take care of those without an abundance of them. This means mandating that all corporations share the wealth they have with less profitable people, especially in order to align with the president’s new targets for equality across all realms.
How do you envision this course making you a better (<your major>) student?
This course will help make me a better business student in multiple ways. For one, it will allow me to have experience doing research, which is not something a lot of business students have the opportunity to do. Also, this course will prepare me for the inevitable failures and successes that come with a project. I expect us to have difficulty determining which direction is best, which goal is paramount, or which part of our budget will we have to cut. These are all important decisions I am anticipating making, and the experience doing so will make me more resourceful as a business student. I also think this will improve my communication skills, from preparing blogs, research papers, presenting in front of a distinguished audience, and even more.
The World Health Organization estimates that over one billion people who need eyeglasses do not have access to them. The vast majority of these people live in developing countries like Kenya where there is barely one optometrist per one million people. Given the high poverty levels, access to eyeglasses is almost non-existent. Lack of proper eyeglasses severely impacts people and their livelihoods by decreasing their productivity at work, limiting or eliminating new opportunities, affecting their quality of life, deteriorating their general health and possibly leading to (preventable) blindness. What solution do you propose to address this problem?
To address the problem as is and treat the effects, one method that could be used is requiring that all students with poor vision/need glasses sit in the front of their classes to prolong the blindness. To help this problem at the source though, glasses companies could do a deal like Toms where with every one pair of glasses bought, they donate a pair. Another idea which might need some technical manipulation, would be to reuse the old screens of smartphones that often get thrown away instead of recycled. Hopefully with the surplus of glass, glasses will be able to be reproduced at a much cheaper price where poorer people have access to them. Also, the rim of the glasses can be reformed using the outer shells of the smartphones so that they are cheaper as well. If these exact materials don’t work, that is fine but the underlying solution is to recycle smartphones to reproduce glasses at a more accessible price.