Week 11

Develop an M&E plan for your project. [Clearly, list all assumptions. develop a Logic Model to identify short-term and long-term metrics and methods to determine them.]

Assumptions:

  • That Ebola will strike west Africa sometime soon. A very disturbing assumption to be having to make.
  • That we will be able to get data based on Ebola from WHO and the Ministry of health
  • That we will actually fill out these reports that I said we would make and present them
  • That the data we will be using is actually right and not false data
  • That we will be able to make a model that will accurately predict where Ebola will strike
  • That having the government use its resources more accurately will decrease the death rate from Ebola.
  • That we will be able to decrease the death rate by 10%
  • Sort of assumption is the education regarding behaviors that increase risk, will be able to quantify through the use of survey
  • Our survey will work

Logic Model:

 

Estimate the Social Return on Investment for your project. [Clearly, list all your assumptions.]

Assumptions:

  • If the government doesn’t have to spread itself thin preparing resources across Sierra Leone, that if we can tell them that they need fewer resources in that area that they will actually do that.
  • That the average cost to treat an Ebola patient is around 600 USD if they die with treatment and disposal of the body. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4445295/)
  • Approx 5000 confirmed cases in SL
  • Our product will be able to reduce death rates by 10%
  • Rest are listed in the Excel sheet
  • Important to note that the cost of a caring for a patent is relevant because its the SROI, so this SROI is dependent on the cost of caring for dead and sick patients with Ebola
  • The model I have below infers that if we improve the death rate, the people who don’t die don’t get sick. In other words, our model would prevent those from dying to be able to help the government from even getting Ebola.

SROI:
Through the use of our model, for every 1 USD, we create a saving of 30 USD. [Rounded to the nearest dollar. The real number is closer to 30.25 USD].

A 3000% return on the investment.

 

Week 10

Funding:

Design Phase (These are two grants for the design phase. We have two design phases, Survey, and modeling.)

  1. NIH Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant Award (R21) https://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/r21.htm. This grant is a beginning grant for initial stages of research. We already have an NIH grant for our project, but it’s focused more on the original project with modeling bat movement. If we were to apply to this grant we would have more resources for our project to look into how we are building our survey. We would apply for it with logic using this grant to hire some professional help with the development of the survey. We need a good survey for the rest of our project to work, so professional help could improve the accuracy of our data and overall improve our project.
  2. NSF Computational and Data-Enabled Science and Engineering (CDS&E). This is a grant focused on developing models and conducting research into modeling. We would write a proposal targeting this grant from a modeling perspective. Our project once the survey is completed and the data collected we need to create a model to implement the data into. This is sort of our second phase of development of the project, but fortunately, we can borrow the model from our bat project to accomplish the beginning of the modeling. We have made a lot of progress in this area, but we need money to run simulations and buy time with computing power, which would be the use of this grant.

Dissemination Phase (This first grant targets collecting data in Sierra Leone, the second is for growing the surveying into other countries and other diseases)

  1. NIH Modeling of Infectious Disease Agent Study Research Projects (R01) https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/pa-16-107.html. This grant is focused on infectious diseases. We would write a proposal for this grant focusing on how our project has the potential to model the transmission of Ebola, which is an infectious disease. We would also probably add that if we get our model to work we can adapt it to other infectious diseases. Thus, the NIH would be more likely to approve our proposal. We would use this money to hire people in Sierre Leone to collect data and survey people while we are not there. This data is valuable to the NIH as raw data and is necessary for us to model the spread of Ebola
  2. CDC 2019 Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Prevention and Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases (ELC). This grant is focused on the spread of disease worldwide. We would write a proposal to receive funding once we have completed the data collection and modeling, we would hope to start adding data from other countries, factors, and diseases into our model. We would use this grant to that by making new surveys, collecting new data, and improve the model with these new diseases by testing.

 

Partnerships

  1. CDC: We need to form a relationship with the CDC because they have experts that have a great understanding of Ebola. They also were on the ground in 2014 during the last outbreak, so they have an understanding of how the disease spread in humans which can help us better understand how the disease transmits from bats to humans. The experts who do what we are trying to do for a living who can give us advice. Finally, they have a lot of data from the 2014 epidemic which can use to train our model and better understand what is going on. Overall the CDC has so much human capital that we could use to further our project. The CDC has a mission to understand the disease and find methods to better control and understand disease, which we are doing so our interest align.
  2. NIH: The NIH has a lot of grant capability and also has a large research network we can rely on. Our relationship with NIH would be similar to our relationship with the CDC. They have experts, first-hand experience with Ebola, and data from the epidemics from before. There reach and network of researchers can allow us to connect with and improve our model. The NIH literally has tons of people who are doing what are doing that we can help, and that can help us. Take as much help as you can get. The NIH mission is to study health across the world, so if we are doing that, which we are they are incentives to work with us.
  3. WorldHope: Obisoiuvly we have a relationship with world Hope through Khanjan, but we need to establish a better relationship with them so in the future, we can have them possibly conduct our surveys for us while we are not in the country. We also can use them as a base to get transportation, translators, and a place to work, which are key resources we need in order to gather our data. WH will want to work with us because we have money and human capital that they desperately need.
  4. Statistics Sierra Leone: We would like to establish a relationship with statistics SaLeone to hopefully have them collect our data using our survey while we are not there. If World hope won’t or can’t play a part in the collection of the data Statistics can because they are already doing what we are trying to do, so we just need to convince them to do it with our survey. We just have to find the right motivation for them to do this for us. We can provide them with some capital resources to encourage them to work with us.
  5. UNSD (United Nations Statistics): The UNSD can provide us with connections to statistics beuaras across Africa. Ebola is really only found in Africa. We want to grow our model as much as we can, so we need someone who makes all the right connections and has a global reach. UNSD can make these connections to allow our model to grow and allow us to collect data in more countries to improve our model. I am not really sure why the UNSD would want to work with us other than to collect data that can be valuable to the world.

Week 9

Acumen Fund

Worked Anna & Lindsay (Ebola Team)

  1. Partner network
    1. Bain & Company
    2. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, IKEA Foundation, Metlife Foundation, Unilever (have given $5,000,000+ each)
    3. World bank
    4. Dow Chemical Venture Fund
    5. International Finance Company
    6. LifeSpring Hospital
  2. Key activities
    1. INVEST IN BREAKTHROUGH COMPANIES
    2. DEVELOP LEADERS DISRUPTING POVERTY
    3. CREATE PLATFORMS (+Acumen) THAT DRIVE CHANGE
  3. Key resources
    1. Human capital
    2. Business strategies/planning expertise
    3. A network of people on the ground as mentors and advisors
    4. Financial capital
    5. Physical capital
    6. Infrastructure to move money and resources
  4. Offer
    1. Money/Investment
    2. Resources: strategies, a network of mentor and advisors, Training programs
    3. To improve the economy at the bottom end of the pyramid
    4. To create jobs through investment
    5. To offer what banks won’t, to small businesses
  5. Customer relationships
    1. Fund to Owner
    2. Fund to employees
    3. Advisors to employees/Owner
    4. Fund to NGOs
    5. Fund to World Bank
    6. Fund to Gov.
    7. Training Partners to students
  6. Distribution channels
    1. Support companies through access to expertise in their specific field
    2. Active, post-investment support in areas of governance, customer insights, and strategies
    3. Raise awareness of their goal through a focus on the social gain over monetary gain
    4. Invest donations instead of giving them away, turning philanthropy into investment capital
  7. Customer segments
    1. Creating value for companies through investments and area expertise for social enterprises
    2. Most important customers are early-stage companies providing a product or service to the poor across the areas of agriculture, education, energy, and healthcare  
  8. Cost structure
    1. Patient capital is a debt or equity investment in a social enterprise
    2. Typical commitments for an enterprise range from $300,000 to $2,500,000
    3. This capital is in equity or debt with payback or exit in about 7-10 years
    4. Value-driven and focused on value creation, premium value proposition
    5. Pay in-house staff with expertise in the fields of Acumen’s current projects
    6. Pre-negotiated fees for this support are paid in full by investees using part of their investment capital from Acumen.
  9. Revenue streams
    1. Funds its capacity-building projects through a pool of grant capital
    2. Acumen sets aside 10% of its total raised capital for capacity-building support to fund in-house staff
    3. Portfolio companies access Acumen’s in-house resources free of charge, these services attract investment pipeline
    4. Have built relationships with high-quality consultants with pre-negotiated fees for this support are paid in full by investees using part of their investment capital.

 

SOURCES:

https://acumen.org/about/

https://www.guidestar.org/profile/13-4166228

https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=12735717

https://thegiin.org/acumen-fund

https://www.bain.com/about/global-affiliations/acumen-partnership/

Week 8

List five takeaways from Guy Kawasaki’s talk and explain exactly how you will integrate that concept/construct/strategy into your project. Make it compelling. Don’t write generic forgettable text.

 

  1. 10, 20, 30 rule. Have 10 slides, 20 mins, and the smallest font is 30 pt. I really found this as a good way to think about how to give a presentation from a formation point of view. We hope to implement this rule when it comes to our presentations to help us move to have a more condensed clear and understood presentation.
  2. Don’t use the Dilbert mission statement generator have a mantra, that we can use to invite people to actually understand what we are doing. What we are doing from an academic point is easy to explain, but from a simplistic point of view, we need a mantra to simplify it and allow other people to quickly understand what we doing.
  3. Let 100 flowers blossom. In our case, this means to sort not to worry about the worry about who we get the data from, or whether or not we get the data. We should work with what we can get data wise and who we can get to survey.
  4. Don’t listen to the bozo’s/you don’t know what will work or won’t. There have been a lot of people who have told us that there is no way to really do what we plan to do very accurately. honestly, half the time I am not even sure we will be able to do it, but as long as we keep working and trying we will learn and find out new knowledge.
  5. Milestone assumptions tasks. This one is pretty obvious in regard to what to after last weeks blog. We have to first decide what we need to get done. Then we need to figure out what we are assuming, which we sort of did last week. Then we need to figure out how we will confirm the assumption and complete our milestones, which we sort of talked about last week.

 

In partnership with one or at most two team members, present a business model canvas for your venture.

 

Week 7

List ten non-obvious assumptions about your target customers (or organizations) that you need to validate.

  1. The first non-obvious assumption is that we can get our targets to actually talk to us and give us data.
  2. The second non-obvious assumption is that our target will actually give us data that we can work with.
  3. We also are assuming that this data is true and valuable. It is entirely possible that all the data we collect could be valueless.
  4. We also are assuming that the target audience will be able to understand what we are talking about, and therefore will be able to answer the survey.
  5. The next non-obvious assumption we are making is that expect to spend a lot more time collecting data, then we would have to if we’re in the USA or a more built up country.
  6. We also are assuming that we will have access to people and resources that will make it possible to collect data and process it.
  7. Another assumption we are making is that the statistics bureau in Sierra Leone will actually want to work with us.
  8. If they do want to work with us, will they collect high enough quality data that we can work with?
  9. The next assumption that we are making is that we can convince the ministry of health to sort of force the statistic bureau to continue to collect data for us when we leave.
  10. The final assumption that we are making on who we think is most at risk for spreading Ebola from bats to humans.

List ten hypotheses about your project that you need to test during fieldwork.

  1. The big first hypothesis we have to prove that we can connect bats to the spread of the Ebola. We know bats carry it, and we know humans can spread it, but we still haven’t been able to prove this is the cause of its spread between the two groups.
  2. Another hypothesis we need to test is that hunter bats are the most vulnerable to being patient zero and carrying the disease onward.
  3. We know from our research that people who eat bat are more likely to get Ebola. Therefore we need to confirm whether bats and high-risk animals are being eaten by not just hunters.
  4. We also hypothesize that these meats not being cooked cause the spread from bats to humans, so we need to confirm whether they are cooked are not at the markets.
  5. We hypothesize that people will be willing to give us honest and truthful answers when it comes to this survey. If they don’t do this our data won’t be accurate and basically useless in our context.
  6. Another hypothesis we need to prove is that transportation, in the regions, can be difficult allowing is to hypothesize that the spread is easier to track.
  7. We also have been hypothesizing that the spread might have something to do with the housing situations, so we need to see with our own eyes, what it is like.
  8. Another hypothesis we have is about burials of dead bodies, we need to see how they are buried after the epidemic to sort of decide if the burial process is as big as a problem as it has been stated to be.
  9. We also have hypothesized that knowledge of ebola is quite high and we need to confirm that the knowledge is there to prove the data has some value.
  10. The final hypothesis we need to confirm in the field is whether everything will work. Sounds simple, but is a major hypothesis we need to sort out.

 

What do you think you bring to your team? How has your perception of your own strengths and weaknesses changed over the course of the class? Please be specific.

 

I think I bring three major qualities to the team. I think I bring a little organization to the team when it comes to sorting who is doing what, as well as what we need to do. The next thing I bring to the team is a sense of listening and understanding what is being said. I can process complex thoughts quickly which allows me to sort of help explain to those who are still having trouble. I think the final quality I bring to the team is having a keen sense of when to pick a battle. I think my team sort of shy away from battles, that we need to pick in order to advance the project forward. At the beginning of the class, I thought I naturally had the strength of being the face of something (a public speaking sense). Throughout the year I have learned that I have a lot of work to do with my public speaking. I also thought that I was really bad at organizing and understanding what to next. Turns out I was decent at it, or the competition of who I was being compared to was really low. I prefer to think it was the latter.

 

Week 6

Identify 10 specific things you will do to strengthen your next presentation (and responses).

  1. Speak louder
  2. Have a better story to over compass our whole presentation to connect our story: create a better flow that makes more sense
  3. Find a way to connect our vision into the project, as well as convey that
  4. Prepare a little more; more rehearsal
  5. Plan for contingencies, like where will stand, having a clicker etc.
  6. Get a grilling from someone impartial, (someone other than mentors)
  7. Find a way to connect the data collection and the modeling together so the audience doesn’t get confused.
  8. Prepare to answer more questions, but also learn which ones to bring up in the presentation, and which we want to leave out, knowing that they will answer it.
  9. Learn to dodge questions better, but also learn a little more so that we don’t have to dodge as many questions
  10.  Fidget Less on stage.

Does your work require IRB approvals? If yes, articulate your detailed IRB strategy.

Unfortunately, the work on the Ebola team requires IRB protocols. We are going to shoot for an expedited IRB. We don’t fit under the criteria for an exempt protocol because we are dealing with humans as well as interviewing them to collect data. We don’t plan on keeping their names or any specific information regarding their data, so we don’t fit under the full either. We are sort of in the sweet spot, and therefore we believe that we fall under the expedited category of the IRB.

From an actual strategy point of view, we are going to do a couple of things to make the IRB board happy/ like our project. The first strategy is to keep all data confidential and not correlated to anything other than then the interview number. We hope that none of us will be able to pair any of this data to names. I think this is one of the main things IRB will be looking for. The second strategy is to conduct our interviews with a wide variety of range of people but avoid a specific category of people (Pregnant woman, young children, etc.). This will allow us to gain data, without having to work with a group of people under stricter protocols. The third way in which hope to make the IRB board happy is by creating our questionnaire so that it guides the reader to the data we need without asking anything to compromise or that is considered too inappropriate. The final way in which we hope to satisfy the IRB board is by using the IRB protocol from when the project only involved bats as well as the proposal that was sent to the NIH for funding. We basically plan to name drop and use already approved protocols to sort of “WOW” the board with what the previous members of the team accomplished with their protocols. Through the use of these four concepts, we hope to get IRB approval as an expedited project.

Develop a Logic Model for your venture.

 

Week 5 Post

Based on your life experience, skills, and interests, what would a design process that is both uniquely yours and effective look like?

This is going to sound weird, but I do my most creative thinking while sailing. There is something about slicing through the water, in a fast-paced environment where every mistake lands you in the cold water. I think I do my best thinking while sailing for three reasons. The first is that while your sailing you have to learn to take in everything in the world around. You have to read the water while correcting for the wind, all while trying to not fall off a constantly shifting boat. Once these skills become second nature, you have all of this extra concentration to devote to other things. Trust me you want to devote this concentration to something other than sailing because sailing is really boring, so I tend to daydream creatively.  Sailing also teaches you how to think in a different mindset. When you reach a certain level in sailing, the sport becomes less about speed and more about strategery. You learn to play what is referred to as a game of “3D chess”. You learn to evaluate many different strategies all in a matter of 3 seconds. The third and final is that in sailing you can plan all day, but until you actually change course you see it through you have no idea what will happen.

Right about now your probably wondering two things: how do I plan to sail in the middle of the Lehigh Valley or what the heck this has to do with a creative design process. You see while I sail I act creatively, am able to evaluate situations quickly, and understand that I will only see the impact once I put it into place. If I could find a way to model the attributes of sailing then I could create a design process.

Any chance I could build a lake and put a boat in building c during the summer?

 

How will you validate your project concept, technology, usability, operational / business model?

We will validate your project concept through the use of the data that we collect.  The honest answer is, I don’t really know how we validate it till we start recovering data. Without this data, we are sort of just shooting into the abyss. The issue with our project is that we are trying to collect data, that no ones has done before, so we will also have no idea if it is right or make sense. Even if we collect this data, we still have absolutely no clue if it is accurate. There is entirely the possibility that we got wrong, our data is wrong, or we created something that is unbelievably flawed. I guess my point is we need to figure out a better answer than what I can give you right now. The one thing we can, sort of, validate is our operational model. If we can actually collect data we could sort of say we had a valid operational model.

 

Articulate your philosophy of engagement with communities, partners, and markets.

I don’t remember the name of the woman who spoke on Tuesday but she said something that really made me think about this. She talked about how we shouldn’t just show up and asked to help, we should show and make their problems our problems. Now as to how to that with Ebola in the United States I have no idea, but the point is what matters here. We aren’t going over to Sierra Leone to help get rid of Ebola. We are going over to Sierra Leone to figure out our problem. A problem we both have equal weight in We might be five thousand miles away, but it is our problem. Our problem. One that we have to figure out together, so I guess my new philosophy on community engagement is that we are sitting in the trenches together. We should feel the pain of we fail and Ebola resurfaces. They are just as embedded as us, so they should have the same pull and say in what we do.

Until last class, I didn’t realize the way my mind was framed when it came to charity work or anything like this. I always looked at as we were there just to help and come back to our regular lives. I think this was a really important class with really valuable information being shared.

 

 

Week 4

Give three examples of how you can use nature as a model/mentor/measure for your own designs (and life).

  • The first example of how to use nature as a mentor is quite simple. Our project is to literally to understand why people are getting Ebola from nature. More specifically how they are getting it from bats and nature. If the start of humans getting the disease is from nature, then we have to look at the model in which it spreads. If we can understand how this model works, we can then begin to adopt the protocols, so that people don’t get Ebola. Understanding nature as a model is literally how we will build our project.
  • The second way we can use nature in our designs for our project is to learn how nature gathers information, to use to make decisions. Now I understand that trees don’t make a decision about where they will end up being planted, but lions have to decide which way to walk to receive food. They have to gather information about where they are, what they are doing, the conditions, and what not. Then they have to find food. If we can better understand how they make decisions we can model this and learn from it. Too me, life is about the decisions you make, and I think the project, as well as myself, will take as much help as we can get in decision making
  • The third way is that I can use life as a mentor is more of a measure. Nature tells you very clearly if you are hurting it or helping. When your grass goes brown you know you did something bad. If I could somehow figure out how to do that with life, I would be better able to understand what is helping and what is hurting. Now I know you’re going to say, “talking is the solution”, but that doesn’t always work.

 

Pick one of Life’s Principles. Explain how you might apply it to your work and life (could be unrelated to your GSIF projects)

Resilience: In 2nd grade, I was diagnosed with dyslexia. Can you imagine barely being able to sound out a single word while the rest of your class is reading 20 pages of a book in a class period? Can you imagine the power a bully has over this type of person? Especially when you start popcorn reading. I had to work an hour a day with a tutor just to learn how to read, but it taught me that the battle is the fun part. The struggle is real and should be what you look for. Had I just given up, trust me there were many of time where I did for a little, I wouldn’t be able to sit here and type this. Talking the punches is valuable because it allows you to laugh your way through what seems like unsolvable tasks.

 

How do you envision integrating the Cradle to Cradle Design concept into your project (and life)? Give one compelling example.
I envision using the cradle to cradle design concept in the project by finding a way to not create a massive impact in collecting our data. Now the reality of our project is that our project is that collecting data requires a lot of energy, with this energy comes waste. If we can find a way to sort of use our energy more efficient or redesign the way in which collecting and analyzing the data happens we can better address this problem.

 

Give three examples of something very interesting you learned from a friend that was a completely alien concept to you.

  • This is going to sound ridiculous: the chocolate egg cream. I basically spent my summers as a child in Wisconsin, America’s Dairyland, yet I would have never thought that putting sparkling water and chocolate milk together would taste good until my friend ordered one. It’s a great combination and shows that you never know what will go well together.
  • The rubber band in a stripped screw. My boss at work taught me this one. My bet is you know what I am talking about, but if you don’t; if you have a stripped screw that you can’t get out, put a rubber band between the screw head and screw. The screw will come right out.
  • The final one is regarding how a sail works on a sailboat. I was a competitive sailor for all of high school, but the reason I began racing as a 13-year-old was that I had a science teacher explain that sails only push boats for only about 150 degrees of the 270 degrees you can actually sail. Sails are actually pulling the boats upwind in certain points of sail, their effectively wings on an airplane. That’s why if you have ever seen a photo of the boat below you would be confused why they would have a sail that could change angles because conventional wisdom would tell you that there would be less surface perpendicular to the wind.
  • Image result for americas. cup boats

Week 3

Describe the five major stakeholders for your project and their motivations.

The first major stakeholder of our project is the communities we plan to help in Sierra Leone. These villages and people are motivated by the fact that if our project succeeds we will be able to prevent unnecessary bloodshed. The issue you at the moment is that this group is more passively motivated than actively. Ebola is not a problem right now, so they have no real reason to help us because they have greater active problems. The second stakeholder in our project is the government of Sierra Leone. The government motivation is to prevent its citizens from dying, but also from a monetary point to use what little cash they have in the most efficient way possible. Ebola is a disease that can easily take over governments medical expenditure. The government by helping us complete our project helps it, citizens, while at the same takes out a sort of insurance policy that will hopefully lower the likely hood that this terrible disease does not crop up on their shores again. With what they don’t spend on Ebola they can spend elsewhere. The next stakeholder in our project is basically any NGO, like UNICEF or MSF. They basically have the same incentives as the government with the way this impact people, money, or resources.  WIth these stakeholders, though they have an added incentive that if they don’t spend their money on Ebola, these groups can spend it elsewhere in the world, with greater problems. Now the issue with this is that like the community and the government they are more passively motivated to solve this problem because there are greater problems in the world. The fourth stakeholder in our project is the United States National Insitute of Health.  The NIH is motivated to help us discover more about Ebola for two reasons. The first being the NIH is in it for science and the discovery of data that can help them better understand the disease, as well as how diseases like it behave. The second reason they are motivated is that they are funding some of the projects. They gave us this money, so they are motivated to see that money as well used as possible. Now, are they technically sort of a passive partner since they have already given us the money, yeah. But, that is not really relevant since we are spending their money, so they should be motivated to make sure we spend it the best way possible. You don’t give your money to a startup and walk away.  If you do there is no guarantee you will get it back. You stay and give your advice to make sure you got the most amount of money back. The final stakeholder, for this list at least, is the group. By group, I mine professor and students. Now the motivation of the professors might be a little different than the students. They are getting paid to publish papers, do research, and do something like this for a living. The students are doing the same thing except instead of a nice paycheck, we get to pay 76k a year to participate. Technically we are getting paid during the summer, but to be honest 10 weeks of 400 bucks makes only a dent, so to say we are motivated by money Is not necessarily true. Though we differ in forms of economic motivation, professors and students are both motivated by the prestige of publishing work, doing the right thing, and Lehigh prestige. It’s not a zero-sum game, we all win in the end. Lehigh gets to say they collected data for the NIH, the professor publish work with students, all of which benefits Lehigh Reputation and status.

 

Describe three ways in which you will validate your project and enhance your credibility over the course of the semester.

One of the ways we plan to establish credibility to our project is to mention as much as we can that we are funded in part by the United States National Institute of Health. Mentioning that we are funded by the NIH should help with our credibility for sure. We can also validate our project by getting people from the CDC as well as the UNICEF to do a little consulting. If we can get these groups to say they worked with us, we will be able to mention them as defacto partners which will help with our credibility. The final way we can really validate our project is to have an actual product to show and that we can use. From a time point of view this is sort of unrealistic since the actual application/collection method will be built over the summer, but if we can get a demo product then we have something to show not an idea to show. This would hopefully help us with credibility.

Week 2 and Saturday

Give three compelling examples of how cultural issues affect your project?

Culture and our project are bounded at the hip. In order to collect the data necessary for the project, the culture of Sierra Leone must allow for people to talk about Ebola. If people aren’t willing to talk or share information regarding Ebola, then the project will cease to exist. We are reliant on the culture regarding Ebola to be open. The second-way culture affects our project is the actual data that we are collecting. The data we hope to collect and analyze is literally what cultural norms impact the spread of Ebola. The data we hope to collect literally is affected by the culture because we don’t really know the culture, so we don’t really know what to analyze. Finally, the biggest issue regarding culture is the language barrier. Though they speak English our data is more targeted out those who don’t. Creating a survey that can be understood, and that collects the right data is a culture issue.

 

Have you experienced any of these issues at home? Describe at least three issues.

I have experienced all of these issues at home before with just different context. I have to have hard conversations about things that are normally taboo things to talk about. It can be difficult to get answers in these situations, and a lot of the time you have to persistent but respectful to get what you need. In regards to discovering culture norms, I have trouble understanding what an egg cream was for the longest time. This is sort of a weird thing to say as a cultural norm, but until I saw some drinking it. If we to ask me what dairy products people drink around here I wouldn’t know to include this. This goes to show that we don’t really know the small things about the culture around New York, so Sierra Leone will be a challenge. From a language point of view, I have a great example. The first day I got here I wanted to fill up my water bottle, so I asked where the “bubbler” was. We both spoke English and are from the same country yet my Gryphon had no idea what the heck I was talking about. For reference, a “bubbler” is the water fountain, one of those weird midwest terms.

 

Give three examples of cultural practices that can be leveraged to address community/market problems.

One of the hopes / one of the things we have been told is that people in Sierra Leone are quite open when it comes to talking about Ebola. This will allow us to have spent less time getting people to talk about the information that we need and more on collecting information that helps us prevent an outbreak. From a Lehigh point of view, one of the problems that I face on campus is the fact that the dining halls shut breakfast down at 10. I like to think that most college students like to sleep in, whereas the adults get up a little earlier. If they left these halls open another hour they would get more customers. I think closing at 10 is due to the time necessary to flip the halls for the next meal. If they staggered the switching of meals they could keep one place open long enough for the late resizers. The final cultural practice that could be leveraged to address a market problem could be the fact there is an abundance of plastic cups on college campuses. They all get thrown away, but if you could find a way to recycle them for the same price you could prevent waste and help kids get drunk without contracting a disease.

 

In regard to your ventures, how does the African context present different challenges than the American context . Give at least three examples.

Africa presents a lot of different issues than America does. The abundance of technology is different, technology is abundant just its not as high quality.  People don’t have iPhones they have flip phones, which are quite different to build an app for. Another challenge with Africa is the difference of languages across a mear 10 miles, communicating can be quite difficult when you have to speak multiple languages, that you have never learned. Another challenge you can face in Africa is the transportation and logistics train. In the USA you can overnight a package from NYC to LA. That’s not possible, for the same distance in Africa (for the same price), due to the roads, airlines, cultural practices, and two big issues: Tanzanian traffic cops (with their white hats as well as customs and immigration.

 

In regard to your ventures, how does the African context offer different resources than the American context . Give at least three examples.

Well from an economic point of view the cost of labor, as well as certain prodcuts, is significantly cheaper, which (theoretically) could allow you to get things done cheaper and at a faster pace. Africa also offers technological advancements that the US does not. I know that in the Serengeti, you can snapchat your friend due to their being wifi in some of the vehicles. I had a Cell signal and called my parents at the top of Kilimanjaro. Technology grows and is affected differently their, which can be an upside if you can shape it right. The final big upside about Africa is that is that people have a different perspective than we do, and their solutions to problems can be concepts we couldn’t have ever imagined. They have don’t see the world like we do which can allow us to operate in ways we wouldn’t have too.