It's all happening.

Originally published at http://teamsuriname.wordpress.com

Many have heard of the twin island nation of Trinidad & Tobago, a destination in the Caribbean well known for its beaches, carnival, calypso music, and substantial natural gas resources. Our trio had a 10-hour layover in Trinidad’s international airport, so we took the opportunity to venture into the island and explore the capital, Port-of-Spain.

Our able tour guide and taxi driver, Milton, spent the next few hours describing the sights, sounds, and structure of Trinidad. Once filled with sugarcane, the fields are now filled with houses, malls and movie theaters while the economy focuses on tourism, services, oil, gas, and chemicals.

Indians who came in to work on the sugarcane plantations created a vibrant local community, integrating their food along with their culture. We requested that our guide bring us to an authentic restaurant, and were promptly taken to…um…a local mall food court. In any case, we could select from curries, fried chicken, pizza, and yes, some Trinidad coo-coo (cornmeal) with cole-slaw, roasted chicken, and mixed vegetables which reflected some of the nation’s Amerindian, European, African, Creole, Indian, Chinese and Lebanese culinary roots.

We also explored some of Trinidad’s more eccentric sights: the “upside down” Hilton, famous cricket player Brian Lara (aka “The Prince of Trinidad”) and the unconventional National Academy for the Performing Arts, along with the musical streets of Port-of-Spain.

Leaving without seeing the beach was difficult, but it was time to get our documents in order and create our field interview guides that would help us learn about various social, technology, health, and education structures in remote interior villages in Suriname.

UNICEF Office in Suriname

From 13-21 March 2010 I will be in Suriname working with UNICEF’s NYC based Innovations Unit and the UNICEF country office in Suriname to conduct field research. Suriname is a middle income country on the north coast of South America south of the Atlantic Ocean and north of Brazil. It is a small country of only 163,821 sq km and 481,000 people, but is one of the most diverse countries in the world, both in population (resulting from a horrific history of slavery) and in biodiversity (the Amazon rain forest composes much of its south).

The UNICEF team in Suriname is looking at the possibility of using mobile phones and rugged computing to improve health and education delivery to its difficult to reach interior, an area that has far worse indicators than the coastal region. In fact, much of the interior lacks basic assess to services including sanitation, clean water, health services and education beyond primary school.

Our task as visiting students is to expand the dialogue begun earlier this year when UNICEF Suriname and Josh Goldstein from UNICEF’s Innovation’s team met with NGOs, government, telecom companies, and civil society organizations such as Peace Corps to discuss possible methods of improving delivery of services through ICTs. Our role will be to conduct participatory field research, interviewing health care workers, teachers, community members and leaders about information flows, needs, assets, and openness to communication. I will be traveling to Suriname along with two other students, Mayuri Ghosh, first year Master in International Affairs at SIPA, and Chrissy Martin, second year Master of Arts and Diplomacy at The Fletcher School (@chrissiy). Panthea Lee, a member of the Innovation Team at UNICEF, will also be traveling to conduct research.

I was reading an article about mLearning homework for my mobile learning class and stumbled upon Polleverywhere, a free voting tool:

Pretty cool. Can visualize how this could be used in a limited way in classrooms.

Photo by k.Akagami via Flickr

Below is a policy stance piece I submitted for my Mobile Phone Learning class, which explores how mobile phones can and are being used for educational purposes. It’s perhaps a bit too rah-rah to be of much analytical value, but it was a fun way to explore policy!

Like many other schools in the United States, the New York Public School system has taken a hard-line stance against the use of mobile phones by disallowing possession in schools. Supporters of such bans argue that permitting such devices increases distraction, enables cheating, and creates a risk for theft, while critics insist that phones are an integral part of students’ lives and that they can ultimately be used as tools to increase learning.

A key role of public schools is to prepare children for life after school and to encourage social responsibility. Putting a blanket-ban on the use of phones within schools not only destroys chances for innovation by teachers, but also ignores an opportunity for teaching students how to appropriately use technology in a social setting. I assert that classroom bans at the discretion of teachers are a much more palatable choice for school systems.

Organizations such as Sesame Workshop have demonstrated the efficacy of mobile phones for learning. To benefit from these tools, it is essential that schools explore how mobile phones can be integrated into classrooms and how they can bridge school and home environments. A peer-to-peer training approach may be particularly useful. Issues such as inequality of possession and appropriate use would need to be addressed by any strategic plan.

I recognize that a blanket ban is the easiest solution to the unregulated use of phones within classrooms. However, if school-wide bans continue to prevail, there will be no way to capitalize on the potential of these ubiquitous devices.

by i-marco via Flickr

A significant component of my undergrad program in Learning and Organizational Change was built around the concepts of systems thinking – how interdependent elements affect and are affected by other elements in the system. This was typically applied in an organizational setting but could be applied to anything from car mechanics to climate science. My current graduate program, Development Practice, was developed out of a need to bring more of a systems thinking approach to development. You can see this systems approach in practice in the Millennium Villages.

Design thinking is tangential to systems thinking, and recently I’ve been wondering how a design approach would work within development. The basics of d-thinking depend on who you ask, but to me the essential component is the focus on creating an experience built around the end-user’s needs and desires (whereas systems thinking takes more of a problem solving approach and extends the boundaries of analysis). I know there are examples of development orgs out there that have this type of approach, Architecture for Humanity to name a big one, but I’m having trouble thinking of any beyond the architecture, engineering, mental health, and urban planning fields. I always hear the word “innovative” when I hear of development organizations that promote a design-mentality. This worries me. I feel that user-centric design concepts should be integrated into all development initiatives; that beneficiaries should be viewed more as clients and participants than as recipients. I’d like to hear of more development orgs, especially any large INGOs, that incorporate this type of approach into their programs.

Today was my the end of first week back at Columbia’s Masters in Development Practice program.  Every Friday we have a cross-disciplinary seminar with our class of 24, which serves as a chance to regroup and communicate any administrative issues. More importantly, these informal seminars are designed to give us exposure to a wide-array of experts within the development community. Last semester we met with a range of professionals including employees of Dalberg, Millennium Village project, and Rockefeller Foundation. We’re exposed to an absurd amount of accomplished practitioners and scientists in other Columbia courses, but the strength of this particular session is that it allows us to personally interact with top-notch professionals while surrounded by the familiar MDP crew. One of the most important rules of the seminar is that we’re able to (and encouraged) to access the speakers after they’ve left the classroom.

Today, however, was different in a number of ways. Our summer Millennium Village field sites are getting closer to being finalized, but more urgently, Professor Sachs joined our Program Dean, Glenn Denning, to challenge us to devise a way we can support Haiti’s reconstruction and perhaps institutionalize it into our program for future generations of MDPers to continue. The challenges are extreme. As many are aware, Haiti had a weak institutional and economic structure previous to the disaster, and international assistance tends to fade once the cameras are shut off. Many questions demand adequate answers before long-term recovery can be attempted: What industries still exist in Haiti? What structures exist for reconstruction? What is the soil composition in agricultural areas? It’s a complex scenario and we’ll see if our team is able to draw upon SIPA and Earth Institute resources to contribute something meaningful to medium and long-term redevelopment efforts.

For some interesting information on short term recovery in Haiti, see a recent NYTimes article and Saundra Schimmelpfennig’s blog, “Good Intentions Are Not Enough“. Thanks to Barbara Wiczek of Rotary International’s World Community Service Program for forwarding them along.

Video of a Slow Loris (you probably want to mute out the screaming child)

Speaking of themeparks, on Saturday night I went on the Night Safari. It was no Kruger Park, but it sure was cool. I had heard from others that it was overrated. Maybe it’s overrated if you hate animals. The park is incredible and again, like the airport, like Singapore, everything is designed with the participants’ holistic experience in mind, down to the smallest details of the zebra-shaped chairs.

The adventure begins on a tram, with a guide who weaves together facts about the animals specially picked for nocturnal viewing. In the manufactured moonlight (which they mimic with the precision of a broadway crew), you have the rare opportunity to see these animals at their most active, in a setting that feels more like you’ve stumbled upon a wide-open set for Jurassic Park than a traditional barbed-wire zoo. Off of the tram, you have the opportunity to walk along small, winding pathways past a munching rhinosaurus or a moonlit herd of Indian swamp deer.

Those animals you once had to peer through nose-printed glass in the dark recesses of a dank, musty zoo room to see? They come alive at night; and they are incredible to behold. I always used to rush past these slow moving creepers. But suddenly in the dark, without the throngs of loud (why are they always so loud?) tourists, and stiffling noon heat, you can start to relax into the motions of nocturnal animals, like that of the aptly named Slow Loris, and imagine what it would be like to patiently observe these guys in the wild.

If you do get a chance to go, check out the bat mangrove walk. In this small room you can experience being up close and personal with some harmless (but admittedly creepy) Malayan bats and surprisingly large flying foxes. No glass between you and the bats means you can get as close as your nerves will dare.

I’m in the Singapore airport right now and just ate way too much chilicrab. This airport is remarkable. With a free movie theater, massage chairs, a butterfly garden, attentive service and high-end shopping, you just can’t complain. I realize I’m sounding like a government-sponsored ad, but everything here really is designed for your comfort and credit card. In a way, Singapore as a whole feels designed for convenience and consumerism. You hear this in traveler critiques: criticisms of Singapore’s perceived lack of realism, its overtly manufactured spaces, and Disney-esque feel. Indeed, Orchard Road’s giant gold and sparkly “Glitzy Chrismas” banners and “go enjoy Christmas with VISA” street signs don’t exactly refute this stereotype.

The trend in travel today seems to be the less-developed, the more “authentic” the experience. I despise this attitude. Certainly, traveling in Singapore doesn’t result in sensory overload like traveling in some developing countries does, but the highly manicured walkways, giant malls, food courts, and clean streets are an experience in their own right, and are the result of Singapore’s journey from swampland to Asian leader. Dismissing Singapore as bland ignores the fascinating multicultural system that underlies the development. Additionally, Singapore’s rapid industrialization and water management stories are unparalleled.

Both Frommer’s Jennifer Eveland and Lonely Planet’s able staff give their own perspective on the travel offerings of Singapore beyond the skyscrapers. Sure, sometimes it does feel like Disneyland, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.

Jennifer Fong and John Dulac

Day two topics at the 2009 GPPN Conference included “Economic and Environmental Sustainability” and “Economic Crisis and Asia” featuring speakers from the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, Asian Development Bank, and Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. The morning panel highlighted Singapore’s water and natural resource management.

SIPA’s own Jennifer Fong and John Dulac presented at the GPPN Student Conference in the afternoon breakout session on sustainable cities. Fong presented an overview of principles for sustainable city governance, and highlighted US policy examples such as the No Child Left Inside Act and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s stringent guidelines for new building. Dulac presented disturbing data on projected growth of emissions from the transport sector and recommended policy shifts that increase shared modal spaces and access to public transportation.

Other participants from Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy presented research on the effect of economic capacity on population growth in Singapore and energy efficiency in Asia.

Dr. Eduardo Araral closed the conference sharing the words “change is not driven by old folks, but is driven by young people…I have made the conclusion that only the young people can change the course of history.”