Part 1

 

Interdependence: The relationship, dependence, and connectedness of different systems on each other

Example: Ukweli relies on Hassan to accomplish his mission of distributing test strips and collecting data to ultimately reduce maternal mortality in Sierra Leone, and Hassan relies on Ukweli to get paid.

 

Holism: Individual parts are dependent on each other and produce more value together than they would on their own

Example: The malnutrition team members all had different roles that were necessary by themselves, but also produced more value when combined together

 

Multifinality: Achieving different outcomes from the same original process, “win-win for everyone”

Example: Everybody involved with GSIF programs has individual things that benefit them from the same process. For example, the fellows get experience and publishable work, Hassan gets money, and Sierra Leonean mothers have reduced mortality rates

Equifinality: There are many approaches that can be taken to reach the same goal

Example: There are many different aspects (travel to clinics, light in birthing rooms, ANC days)  of maternal healthcare that can be focused on by the Safe Motherhood Documentary in order to reduce material death/improve maternal healthcare.

 

Differentiation: Within a given system, specific and unique parts are performing specific functions distinct from one another.

Examples: In the Ukweli operation, Wancheng is responsible for shipping the test trips to Freetown, Allieu is responsible for getting them to Makeni and Hassan is in charge of getting the strips to the clinics and CHWs. Each needs the other in the larger operation to function, but each is also its own subsystem.

 

Regulation: Making sure that intentions and actions match up with each other.
Example: The Sickle Cell group will be running many confirmatory tests, including a clinical trial (with a verification test, the gold standard), in order to insure the test strip is able to diagnose Sickle Cell Disease with a certain level of accuracy.

 

Abstraction: viewing a system from a birds eye view approach, thinking through complex scenarios with a level of higher context and in broader terms
Example: Once we perfect the muffin and pudding in Sierra Leone, we can use the same process and extrapolate to other developing countries to solve the same problem using their own local reseources

 

Leverage Points: A small area within a given system where a small change can be made in order to produce big change.
Example: The Sierra Leonean government can charge mothers a fee for giving birth at homes, and the mothers are more likely to go to the clinic to give birth. This small fee (about $5) saves many mother’s and baby’s lives.

 

Part 2

Emergence is the idea that an entire entity brings more value than each of its components could on its own. The muffin and pudding are emergent products, because as entities they bring value (i.e. they have all of the nutrients that children in Sierra Leone are missing, and make the children healthier), but without one of the supplements, the products don’t accomplish giving children all of the vitamins they are missing.

 

Part 3

 

Solution: Partner with the fishermen to sell the briquettes with the fish, they can make money and will help the entrepreneur collect the hyacinth. Only fisherman than want to be involved will be hired/become a partner. The other fisherman who aren’t involved originally will feel like they are missing out once they see the success of the original fisherman and will then want to join the venture.

 

Part 1: Partners –

1. World Hope
   1. We worked at World Hope and with their staff.
   2. They helped us because they provided us with workspace and connections in Sierra Leone. We helped them too because we expanded their reputation by involving them and tying them to our research.
   3. We should continue to participate in important projects so that we can continue our relationship with them.
2. Bettah Bakery
   1. They allowed us to use their spaces for baking the muffins and roasting the sweet potatoes
   2. We helped them develop their business model and they gave us access to resources we needed. We attempted to make it an equal relationship but there were some kinks that we needed to work out.
   3. It would have been a stronger relationship if they were further along in their business and we were able to fully rely on them for the things that they said we could rely on them for. 
3. Translators
   1. World Hope employee (Jawara) helped us connect with them and establish a partnership
   2. They helped us to effectively communicate and administer our questionnaires to the Sierra Leonean people. We compensated them for their work and time.
   3. To strengthen this relationship, we must keep in touch with the translators so that we can use them in upcoming years.
4. Wesleyan Church
   1. We were able to establish this partnership through our relationship with the Betteh Bakery (they have a partnership with the church)
   2. They allowed us to use their church as a platform to administer our questionnaires. They provided us with tables, chairs, and volunteers who helped us effectively gather data. We helped the church by helping them with their core goal: helping the people of Sierra Leone.
   3. To strengthen this relationship, we should be sure to keep communications strong even when we are not in Sierra Leone.
5. Allieu
   1. Partnered to help us drive our project ideas, connect us with Director of Food & Nutrition, general guidance
   2. ^ Introducing nutritious product for them
   3. More communication
6. Clinics/CHOs
   1. Our partnership with clinics and CHOs allowed us to gather data from mothers and children.
   2. The clinics allowed us to come and receive data from mothers and children. The mothers and children got to taste our food.
   3. This relationship was very beneficial. In order to make it more equitable and stronger we would need to bring enough food for everyone.
7. University of Freetown
   1. They gave us interns that we could use to help us with whatever we needed for our project
   2. We gave their students real life experience in their fields that they were interested in and they helped us further our project. We worked together nicely but it was not necessarily equitable; we are students in charge of other students. 
   3. This partnership would have been strengthened if we were positioned closer locationally 
8. College of Engineering (funding partner)
   1. The college of engineering gave us funding to conduct our research in SL this summer.
   2. To strengthen this relationship we can write a publication to bring publicity to the university and the college.
9. GELH (funding partner)
   1. GELH funded $1000 for each of us to travel to Sierra Leone.
   2. GELH helped us by making it financially feasible for us to go. We help them because we are giving them a good reputation and helping them contribute.
   3. It will be a stronger relationship after we do the GELH presentation at the end of October; they will know exactly what we did and how they helped us.
10. Creative Inquiry Dept
    1. The Creative Inquiry Department gave us funding for in country expenses 
    2. We gave them publicity for the project by coming back and producing projects
    3. We can make the relationship better by continuing to advocate and recruit new GSIF members 

Part 2 : Coalition-

The ultimate goal of our project is to make sure that no child in Sierra Leone is malnourished and has stunted growth? We can build a coalition to reach this goal.

OUR COALITION: NewTrition Coalition

People involved & how they can help us / partner with us

• Sierra Leone President
  • icon in Sierra Leone
  • President’s support shows that the country supports our coalition
  • President can gain support because he is part of a good cause that is helping his country, people will like him
• Director of Food & Nutrition
  • Understands food and nutrition in Sierra Leone
  • Can give us input on food and nutrition
  • We can gain credibility by partnering with them
• Ministry of Health and Sanitation
  • directly fits in with their mission and purpose (to maintain and improve the help of Sierra Leonean citizens)
  • gain support – the government will look good
• WHI
  • has a religious connection, and people in the churches are often thought leaders
  • well recognized across Sierra Leone
  • has a lot of resources that they can provide to the coalition
  • joining helps them reach their goals of their humanitarian projects
• Mother’s Support Group
  • Mothers are the main target market of our business, and it would be helpful to have their input
  • By joining the coalition, mothers will feel like they are helping themselves
• UNICEF
  • most powerful organization that deals with child malnutrition
  • If we partner with them, it will give us a better reputation and other people are more likely to want to join our coalition so that they can have access to UNICEF and be part of something that UNICEF directly supports
  • UNICEF is inclined to join us to further reach their goals
• Soccer Player
  • culturally important
  • people will want to support our coalition if they like soccer, so we expand our audience
  • Soccer player and team will get good publicity

 

 

 

Team Name: _Malnutrition_(NEWtrition)   Date: _10/2/19__
Goals	Personal Goals (small g) Neena – To contribute in any and every way possible so that we are able to advance our project forward to achieve the goal i have always had coming into this project: to help children become healthier. Personally, I hope to become a better teammate and learn better communication and leadership skills that can help me attain this goal. Kayla – I want to help with the project to see it pick off the ground. My goal is to find ways to preserve the muffins so that our shelflife can be extended and I want to set up the process in laying the ground work for clinical trials. It is important to me that I also have the ability to grow in my role in this project as we are losing some team members and I want to learn from them as well. It’s important to me that we remain one team and connected like we were in Sierra Leone. Karli – I hope to bring my unique background as an Economics major to our team to ensure that the business side is realistic. I have gained a lot of passion for this project, especially after seeing the impact that it will have on families in Sierra Leone. For this reason, I want to make sure that we will be able to execute our project in a cost effective, and smart way. Chris – My goals align with the development of the project’s products. I plan to continue the development of our recipes and the supply chain management to match it. I will also be focused on gathering grant funding for the project to do nutrition research and fund my trip there next year.  Seanna – My goals for this semester are to have a successful GHTC conference and for us to draft papers that explain our fieldwork experience. I also hope that we are able to define both recipes and develop successful business and marketing plans in order to take the next steps for our products. Rachel – Moving into this semester, my main goal in the beginning will be to research how we can preserve our pudding recipe through possible use of antioxidants/preservatives or through packing mechanisms, this way the product is more accessible for families.  After that I am hoping to help collaborate with the rest of my team to make a publishable paper of sorts on our research for a journal potentially. In general, I am want to keep our team close knit working as one entity and start ‘passing the baton’ to new members to forward the project. Matt – Over the next few weeks, I am hoping to analyze our research and use the data we gathered this summer to move forward. I would really like to publish a paper and apply for any grants that are available. Technically, I would like to determine the appropriate packaging to prevent the pudding from spoiling. Project GOAL (big G) – Create sustainable and effective change for the children of Sierra Leone through providing them with a healthy, nutrient-dense, easily accessible, and cost affordable muffin and pudding. Scaling to resources  We got a much better sense of what resources would be available to us in Sierra Leone and what a realistic cost for those products would be. These are things that we will implement in our product going forward this semester In Sierra Leone, we also learned to optimize how we use our biggest resources: our team members. We learned that by divvying up roles and responsibilities we work together better and get more done. Once we know what our budget will be, and understand what grants will help fund us, we will know how to make sure we optimize these resources Scaling to constraints We do have limited time especially because there are deadlines for submitting papers to be published Switch over of team members Our metrics for success Business success How many people are producing / selling our product? Are people making more money? How many children are our products actually reaching? Is NEWtrition sustainable (eventually)? Improving health: Our hope is that the malnutrition rate among children in Sierra Leone will eventually decrease in response to our product What is the malnutrition rate for children in Sierra Leone?
Roles	Deliverables Responsibilities Every team member was assigned to focus on one part of the data, and we will use each of our findings to write a paper and really understand our product and its capabilities in Sierra Leone. Neena – microbial testing in muffin, nutrient testing in muffin, shelf life testing in muffin Kayla – preservative use in muffin, clinical studies for both products, liaison to WHI and other SL organizations for mufin Karli – supply chain and marketing plan for both products,  Chris – muffin recipe improvement, grants for both products Seanna – pudding recipe improvement, nutrient testing in pudding, liaison to WHI and other SL organizations for pudding Rachel – antioxidant use in the pudding, preservative use in pudding Matt – shelf life testing in pudding, packaging for pudding Project Manager – At this point in the project, we have not decided on a project manager. At the end of this semester, we will need to decide on new project leaders because Chris and Seanna will be graduating.
Procedures	Decision Making Procedure – We will communicate and voice opinions and ideas about a certain decision all together. We will try to work towards a consensus at first. If there is a large divide and a consensus does not seem possible, we will make a majority rules type of decision. How we will have effective meetings – We will come into meetings with a clear sense of what we want to accomplish in that time. Decisions are best made in person when we are all together so we must make use of our time together to talk about bigger decisions and next steps. We will follow up on shared documents online and keep records of all discussions in meetings so that everyone has access to all the information. Kayla is officially our meeting scribe. Neena will be the facilitator and the time keeper. Communication We have a shared google drive in which we all have access to documents from each meeting, resources from SL, and all of our data We know that from week to week, each member’s schedule varies greatly and therefore we have found out that coordinating a meeting time in the beginning of each week for that specific week is the best way for us to all meet up.
Relationships	Although we do not have much diversity in majors within our group (6/7 of us are bioengineers), we do have Karli who will be very helpful with the more business-oriented aspects of the products. However, we are diverse in ages. We range from sophomores to seniors and have different perspectives because of it. Our team name is NEWtrition. We want to create a new type of nutrition in Sierra Leone. We are creative and want to use our skills to make children healthier through our social venture.