Sustainability of our venture in local context will play an essential role in our success. One of the uncertainties regarding this is the availability of monitor and filter components. We visited Barakholka, the equivalent of a fleamarket, to find out if these components can be sourced locally. 

As we are emphasizing affordability of our product, we explored different price options and purchased the cheapest components available. We bought a filter for T4000 ($9), a fan for T4000 ($9), and a charger head T1000 ($2.25). However, this is much more expensive than the cost of the filter built in Shenzhen. Our plan for these local products is to make a simple air filter by using cardboard. We will mimic the filter design from Lingnan University and compare the efficacy of both filters. While the prices of components from local markets are more expensive than the components from Hong Kong, the price of importing from Hong Kong may make the filters more similar in price.

Because of the high level of air pollution at the market, our team did not feel well after returning to AlmaU. We were unable to focus because of headaches and nausea. This further demonstrated the importance of our project. We were able to get first hand experience of the immediate side effects of air pollution. Our passion for this project grows more and more with each day of fieldwork. The fact that citizens of Almaty just accept these illnesses as a reality is what we are trying to combat. We want people to be more educated on the effects of air pollution and to be able to avoid highly polluted areas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How do we want our project to be perceived? That is the question we are aiming to answer on day four of fieldwork. We will continue to edit our slides and will meet with social media influencers to determine how we should portray our venture.

While editing our slides, we realized that we need to create more of a brand. We will start by making a logo for Breathe Almaty. We also need to make a poster for our event at American Corners on May 31. This would be the first public place that our logo will be seen. 

We have also decided to take our project in more of a behavioral change direction rather than a policy change one. This is because poor health as a result of air quality can be improved by individuals taking action. While our monitors and filters will help in creating this change, our end goal is not to have the best products on the market. We want the citizens of Almaty to realize that they can take charge of their future by using any air purification products available. The results of our quasi experimental study show the harsh reality that air quality severely affects not only physical, but also mental health. Air pollution in Almaty is an issue that desperately needs attention, therefore, the citizens must take the future into their own hands and pressure the government to make a monumental change.

We are meeting with YOLO House, who are famous TikTok influencers in Kazakhstan. The purpose of meeting with them is to further understand the ways we can strengthen our branding for the products we are planning to sell. We also have a social media page we want to share to the Almaty community and meeting at YOLO house can potentially get us more people from Almaty to be invested in our project. During our meeting we got a brief overview of JKS entertainment and the partnerships that the organization has like the YOLO house and others. After their presentation we also presented our project highlighting the issue of air pollution and why they should invest in us. We scheduled a follow up meeting on Friday so JKS entertainment can further elaborate on ways we can build our branding of air pollution. We plan to expand our platforms to TikTok so we can reach a younger audience that is fun and interactive.

After coming back to AlmaU, our group presented our project to AlmaU faculty. Giving an overview of what we plan to do during fieldwork, and ways to implement our Quasi-experiment to schools in Almaty. We were able to receive some helpful feedback from faculty in the audience. A faculty member informed us that there is an upcoming conference that is about a similar project related to air pollution, which can help us gain more insight on ways we can improve our monitor and filter. Another suggestion was that we should start to gather more data for our air filter such as finding the parameters that the filter can cover and how long it takes to ventilate a room. There was also a question on if we plan to have multiple stations where we will build the filter and monitor. Our response was that we have not yet considered that as our main focus as we still need to research the best components. 

 

 

 

 

 

Now that we have settled in and declared our BHAG, it’s time to dive into the specifics of our project. Our main goals for the day are to schedule meetings with local schools, meet with Lingnan University, and prepare for tomorrow’s presentation.

Our AlmaU faculty advisor, Ainar, is assisting us in scheduling meetings with schools. We are planning on visiting one or two schools a day to seek feedback on our quasi experimental study. Because private schools have air conditioning, we will be working with public schools. Because public schools are funded by the government, they are not as luxurious as private schools and therefore have a lower quality learning environment. Through our project, we hope that public schools will one day have an air quality index (AQI) of less than 2. 

During our meeting with Lingnan University, we would like to learn more about the air filter and its capabilities. Once we get this information, we will figure out the best way to study its effectiveness and determine if it is the right fit for our project. The initial partnership plan with Lingnan University is that they will share the information about the filter and we will test it and share the results of the study.

The initial questions that we will ask are 

• How efficient is the filter?
• What size room is it for?
• What is its lifetime?
• What is the overall cost?
• How many are we able to import? And at what cost?
• Where is the best place in the room to put the filter?
• How often does the filter need to be cleaned?
• Elaborate more on the dyson filter being utilized in your design
• Is the design open-source?
• What would a reasonable selling price be for Almaty, emphasizing low income households?

Once these questions are answered, we will find the components in local Kazak markets and compare quality/prices.

For tomorrow’s presentation, we are altering our final presentation slides to better fit our AlmaU audience and to showcase the new plans that we have made. Our audience will be full of our Lehigh peers, AlmaU faculty, students, and the SDG club. We will be presenting with our AlmaU partners who will be able to translate and answer questions when necessary. At the end of our presentation, we will seek feedback from the audience that will help us steer our project in the best direction possible.

After meeting with Hong Kong, we are feeling a bit skeptical about the filter. It seems as if they just distributed the filters without knowing anything about its effectiveness. They were unable to answer most of the questions that we had for them. The two questions that they could answer were the lifetime and cost of the filter. This meeting highlighted the weaknesses in their filter information, which we plan to contribute to in our venture. Before our quasi experimental study, we will have to conduct a study on this filter. Our partners at Hong Kong will send all of the documents that they have on the filter and we will plan our filter study accordingly.

Professor Duvanova also arrived halfway through the day. She brought components to make five more air monitors. Ainar was able to take us to the AlmaU IT department to submit a request to use the soldering equipment later in the week. She also had planned a meeting with Haileybury in which she asked permission to use the school in our study. She attended this meeting with a faculty member from AlmaU, Aurora, and Allen Wilson from Breathe Almaty. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After months of researching the air quality issues in Almaty, we were not prepared for what it was like to actually see it. Upon leaving the airport, we were inside the gray skies that some of our group members have only seen pictures of. Feeling what it was like to breathe in this polluted air gave us more inspiration and passion for our project. 

Lehigh University and Almaty Management University are working together to mitigate the effects that poor air quality has on health. The members from Lehigh are Jessica McCurry, Kaliana Rae, Oyu Erdene-Ankhbayar, Alua Bekbossynova, Allen Wilson, and our faculty advisor Dinissa Duvanova. The AlmaU team consists of Ainar Nurgaliyev and members of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) club. The name of our venture is Breathe Almaty. We chose this name because poor air pollution leads to shortness of breath, along with many other respiratory issues. 

In the next five years, Breathe Almaty will expand the number of schools with air filters by 90.04%, achieving an indoor PM2.5 concentration of less than 5, ultimately creating a healthier and more productive learning environment. We will achieve this goal through research, technological innovation, activism, and policy changes. We will conduct a quasi experimental study to show the effects that air quality has on cognitive ability. We are also making cost effective air monitors that show the level of PM2.5 in the air. Our partners at Lingnan University have made air filters which we will test the effectiveness of. We hope to bring the monitors and filters to the market in Almaty. There are already many activism groups in Almaty that aim to help the air quality issue. We plan to work with them to further spread awareness. The policy that we would like to be added is that all schools are required to monitor the air quality index within the facility and to maintain a healthy PM 2.5 level (not exceeding 5 mg/m^3, but less than 2 ideally) in facilities. On their own, these goals will not have a long lasting effect, but together, they intertwine in such a way that a life saving impact can be achieved.

Over the next two weeks, we are planning to meet with our stakeholders in order to further refine the goals of our project. We are going to meet with our partners at Lingnan University to figure out the logistics of the air filters. We will meet with about 10 school principals to get their school involved in our quasi experimental study. A few other potential partners are the parents’ activism group, universities, and NGO’s. At the end of our fieldwork, we are planning to invite all of our partners to the American Space Forum in order to further network with them.

We also had group meetings with Khanjan, Ainar, and Maksat Koshkarbayev to discuss our general goal and specific fieldwork plan. We were able to redefine our impact statement and metrics of success with Khanjan. With Ainar, we detailed our fieldwork plan and started reaching out to schools to schedule meetings. Furthermore, as we introduced our project, Maksat Kohskarbayev shared his insights on our project and local context.