Why did you join this Impact Fellowship program (motivation, prior interests)?

My reason for joining the Impact Fellowship is that I have a strong interest in helping those in need. Looking back on previous community engagements that I have been a part of I traveled to Senegal with peers from my high school. During our three-week period in Senegal, we helped a village infrastruct two classrooms to create a productive learning environment for children living in the village. We built desks, chairs, and painted the classrooms. While also becoming familiar with Senegalese culture, and understanding what the villagers did in their daily lives. It was a lot different from what you would expect from people living in Urban areas because this village was segregated from any urban city. The closest city was a kilometer away from the village. I think I have gotten some understanding of helping in rural communities but I want to get a glimpse of what it is like to help urban communities. Helping urban communities seems to have additional layers to fixing its issues. I want to see the connections that are made to inforce reform or even create reform to better communities that are in need. Going into Kazakhstan will give me somewhat of an introduction of what needs to be done to make progress in urban settings while also getting the chance to experience a little bit of central asia.

How do you envision this course making you a better () student?

I envision this course will make me a better researcher, finding evidence that will further push the project in the right direction. While being more engaged within the community to obtain statistical evidence from reliable sources. I see this also improving my writing skills as the presentations and papers need to be discrete and direct on what was learned from the team. The course will better my writing skills in a more professional style as some of the writing can be published. Presentations will improve my public speaking as I believe in most professional settings you need the ability to speak confidently with knowledgeable individuals to address concerns that need to be addressed or in this case convince certain individuals to care about your topic. Being in the political science field will be a great trait to strengthen before getting more serious in my field. Still trying to find an exact interest in all of this, my hope is in Kazakhstan I may find interest in public policy and want to dive deeper into that field. As I may get a better understanding of the political implications that are not easily seen when trying to fix political issues. Another important aspect I hope to strengthen is team collaboration. This course has made me approach this project a lot differently than other school projects. The impact we have on these communities is determined by how much effort we put into this project, not saying I did not put 100% in my previous class projects but this is definitely not a project that should be taken lightly. I believe to heighten our progress to its maximum potential we as a team must be willing to collaborate with each other on what we find in our research and build on each other’s ideas. I think that is something I am willing to work on also thinking on the fly as I am constantly hearing different opinions. Knowing what comes with collaboration is agreement and criticism.

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 where there is barely one optometrist for every 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?

I would first want to understand what is causing the problem in these developing countries because most of the reason for their loss of vision is the toxic waste that surrounds them. For example, textual waste is something that can alter people’s vision as the used clothes are piled on top of each other which later produces toxic chemicals that can cause defects to young children that are carried onto them for their whole lives. Making sure to create subtopics in my research on other possibilities of what is hurting people’s ability to see. I would then start to approach the public bringing awareness to the issue at hand as to why there are so many people who are in need of eyeglasses. I would also address the root of the cause whether it is the government, neighboring countries, or even the U.S. on what they are doing to cause these problems. I would bring awareness to government officials to give more financial support to more optometrists in the areas so that the general public can go back to working efficiently which should in return help build the economy faster.