Edward Cheung '08
I'm taking a group of 14 undergrads and one pediatrician to the Dominican Republic. It's a rural clinic between Santiago and Puerto Plata on the north coast. We'll be doing sustainable community development work. The cool thing about it is that it's all student initiated. So, if the students have ideas, they have the opportunity to carry them out and to put their academic knowledge into their projects.
The project will go for 21 days, from the 1st to the 21st. Because this is our pilot project, we were really looking for candidates with good fluency in Spanish, good background knowledge of sustainable development and good ideas on community development. We were also looking for a wide range of classes, because this is something we want to go on into the future.
Right now, we have weekly meetings talk about cultural sensitivity and develop curricula for things the community may want. For example, women's empowerment is something the community has wanted in the past. I worked in the clinic for a semester my junior year, and that's kind of how I got involved and connected with the clinic.
Duffy Tilleman '08
I'm going on a trip to Uganda through Engineers Without Borders and Project Assida Foundation, which was started by Lauren Kolodny '08 last year. She had learned from her cousin that a big problem in refugee camps all over Africa - but particularly in the Darfur region, for example - is that women are generally responsible for the cooking, and they have to leave the camp to go collect firewood, which is the major cooking technology there. Often times, they are subject to attack, rape and other gender-based violence while out collecting firewood.
Lauren wanted to look at alternative cooking technologies and one of the things she came up with originally was looking at biogas digesters. So she came to the EWB meeting and asked if any of us were in interested in helping out with the technology side. I was interested, as were a couple other people.
We've been working on this project since last semester, and this semester we built a test stove in Massachusetts. It's a large plastic bag in a trench filled with manure, which is digested by bacteria to produce methane. The methane can be used for cooking. So, we're going to build 10 of these stoves at an internally displaced persons camp in Uganda in January, and we're going to see if this form of energy is appropriate for the region and if it can really serve to replace traditional cooking technologies. We're going to do some documentation and try to spread the knowledge around, if it works, and advocate for this as an alternative.
Paul Monnes '08
Since it's my last winter break, I really want to make the best of it. I really want to do the classic college end-of-the-semester traveling.
Beginning of winter break I'll obviously go home, see some friends and family, relax. But, immediately after I have a friend from Sweden coming to visit me. I'm going to think of all the crazy things I've always wanted to do in Florida, ever, and take her to them.
There's this really cool park called Butterfly World - it's basically a butterfly menagerie. I haven't been there since I was seven, so I'll probably take her there. The beach of course, maybe Miami, maybe back to Disney, maybe to the west coast of Florida.
I'm thinking of maybe traveling around the U.S., maybe visiting friends in California. I also have a friend originally from a little mountain town in Colombia who has a big bullfighting competition in January. He's doing a trip this year, and I might head down for a week or two with him. Or maybe a road trip. Worst comes to worst, I might just stay in south Florida and enjoy the beach and the weather.
