Tuesday 8/6/13
First Ideation phase
This week has been full steam ahead of brain power and hours of ideation! Our time spent in and out of the classroom has been an accelerated experience of working through a collaborative process specifying the problems and issues we are to solve for. As mentioned in the previous post, categories we identified as areas to provide solutions or improved processes are : water, food, health, transportation, sanitation, education.
We understand now that whatever solutions we create, they ultimately must provide educational and economic opportunities as well.
Today, Thursday, a lot of time was spent mapping out our understandings and ideas of the connections between these categories. For example, the topic of energy not only provides power for possible electronics, but energy can also provide an opportunity for further productivity and education. We worked down from big broad ideas into our current phase of refining in time to begin prototyping this weekend.
Check out an inspirational idea/product/cause called Square Foot Gardening. We decided after much collaboration that the issue of food growth, food safety, and food storage is of great importance and can relate to our experience with the Hydraid water filters. It relates because food, just like water, is one of the essential needs to human life. Food and agriculture was also said to be the next need in the bateys according to the Dominicans we worked with on our trip. Proper nourishment leads to health, increased attendance at work and school, education, and micro-economy. We understand and witnessed women spending their time cooking and preparing meals. Since there is no food storage or refrigeration, the food that is prepared is consumed that same day. We believe it would be amazing if the batey communities we visited had access or possession to an improved gardening enabling product including proper related education. One point that has been made related to food storage is to acknowledge that there might not be excess food to store in the first place, unless they had their own garden/tools.
Yucca garden in a batey. Gardening is not a completely foreign idea for these communities but we observed opportunities for improvement.
Dry land and soil erosion poses a major problem for gardening.
Just one of the many areas of issues we analyzed.
Please check out this link that contains more images of our mind mapping from today which includes topics ranging from solar energy, composting, and illness prevention.
The agriculture topic we are exploring parallels to the key values and targets of Hydraid such as, entrepreneurialism, sustainability, resiliency, and reducing poverty. We have not eliminated the other crucial identified areas of issues as previously mentioned, but rather will be integrated into our refined solution.
One week from today is our final presentation with Triple Quest of Cascade Engineering! It is crunch time and we are feeling it. A lot of creative and challenging thinking fills our classroom as we have been fully invested and committed in this project to be a piece of the puzzle to bettering life.
Questions? Comments? We’d love to read them!
KCAD Dominican Republic 
The statement, “One point that has been made related to food storage is to acknowledge that there might not be excess food to store in the first place, unless they had their own garden/tools” is a really important point. Additionally, I expect that there could be important cultural barriers to food storage as well. Sure people will store grains such as rice or corn or whatever is a local staple if they have excesses of it, but beyond that, I would anticipate that storing other types of food may be counter-cultural. Increased food storage means less of a need to buy daily which may be an important social aspect of society linking neighbors to one another. This could be important when considering any potential resistance to food storage products. Just a thought.
Thank you Ben for your feedback! We appreciate it. We understand that culture plays a massive role and we want for there to be positive social outcomes. In the areas we were in however, buying food wasn’t seen as often as the folks were more preparing fresh natural foods like chicken, corn, or fruit. We understand that buying foods is a great economic boost but we are considering that as well with our solution. Perhaps the process of cooking is a valuable social engagement in itself, which is another topic we considered.
I agree that the process of cooking food is also a valuable social engagment. Glad you are thinking about all of this!
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