1. List ten things that make you feel human.
2. 1. The ability to consciously make decisions
   2. To be aware of my role in society
   3. Learn from making mistakes
   4. Have the power to help others
   5. Feeling emotions
   6. Make someone else happy
   7. Have friends and family
   8. Do what I like to do 
   9. Ability to learn and gain knowledge
   10. Feeling disliked

2. Articulate your philosophy of engagement as it pertains to your work with the GSIF / LVSIF. Specifically discuss 

Using my position, skills, and academic background I am able to provide help to others that may not be able to help themselves. When I say this I mean that I am in a position that allows me to pursue my academic and career goals, while some people in this world may not be able to even get food for dinner. My position in comparison to the scale of the world is one that allows me to engage in research and service to help others. 

In Almaty, Kazakhstan the increasing population calls for change in subtle ways. Instead of taking the bottom up approach in which we would modify city infrastructure and allocate resources into redeveloping the city as it grows, the better way would be to start at the top. Implementing change at its source would produce results that are far better than the trickle up approach. Not only does implementing change at the top produce direct results by tackling the issue directly, it inspires others to do the same through social entrepreneurship. In Almaty, we seek to introduce a device that will increase the quality of life for people, through monitoring water contamination in households, measuring heating system efficiency, or by quantifying the amount of pollution a household is producing. The goal of these introductions is to produce valid change that can be replicable not only in Almaty but also other cities that are growing at rapid rates. Additionally, we want to inspire social entrepreneurs to also take responsibility and tackle these problems, because the odds are if one city in the world faces them another will to. 

Our project focuses on using smart technology to improve the quality of life of Almaty residents. This means we must work directly with those who live there, luckily we will be working with students from Kazakhstan National University and Almaty University. This provides a direct reflection as to whether our product is culturally and socially viable there. The fact that our product can produce viable, long lasting, beneficial results is just as important as being accepting for use. We must work within the constraints of cultural and social bounds in order to produce a result that can bring about change and ultimately improve life in Almaty. Given that the product we want to implement needs to be caters to cultural and social constraints means that the parameters for acceptance can be modified in order to make this a globally used device. 

Aside from cultural and social barriers, the funding needed to produce a device capable of improving life might be hard to come by. It may be difficult to persuade someone to fund our project to produce a device if it is mostly original because the results are yet unknown. However, using a currently implemented device already with results will be much easier to gather funding for. This leads us to find a balance in between creating a whole new device that can be implemented versus using one that is already on the market. Using this mindset we hope to find an equilibrium so that we can be most beneficial to the residents of Almaty. We currently are researching 

Engagement comes from the people being aware of their position of value, the fact that they can bring about change from the position they are in. My epitaph would be something encompassing the idea of using one’s position to bring value to someone else’s life. My analogy for life is a video game. Everyone starts at different levels given the circumstances that were given in life, everyone works towards leveling up, becoming better, and improving themselves, but while doing so they inadvertently improve the world around them. After reaching a certain threshold in this game of life, their life improves marginally or near nothing, so this leads them to use their position to help others. Although I don’t know exactly what my epitaph might read, it would be about improving the world around us by not only helping ourselves but most importantly helping others.