The Blum Center for Developing Economies is making a real-world impact — and doing so remarkably quickly.
Launched a little over a year ago with a significant gift from Richard C. Blum ’58, M.B.A. ’59, the center has already inaugurated two hands-on initiatives that sent students into the field last summer to address the real challenges affecting the world’s poor.
The two projects included the Safe Water and Sanitation Initiative, which sent 38 students to a half-dozen countries, including India, Ecuador, and Mexico, and the Wireless-Enabled Health Care Innovations initiative, which brought nine Berkeley students to Uganda to integrate cell phone technology into health care services in that African nation.
Consistent with the Blum Center’s objectives, the projects use Berkeley-developed technologies and expertise, and provide hands-on service-learning opportunities for students. The projects also leverage existing partnerships in host countries to increase the likelihood of success, broaden impact, and promote sustainability.
These initiatives, says Blum Center executive director George Scharffenberger, reflect “the breadth and depth of the University’s capacity to contribute significantly to efforts to address the issue of global poverty.”
SAFE WATER AND SANITATION: A TEAM EFFORT
A multidisciplinary team representing the College of Engineering, Energy and Resources Group, College of Natural Resources, School of Public Health, and Haas School of Business developed an initiative to design and implement technologies and management systems to aid the 1.3 billion people worldwide who live without access to safe water and the 2.4 billion without access to sanitation services.
Thus far, The Safe Water and Sanitation Initiative has focused on the development and use of low-cost, small-scale water treatment systems. One project took students to the Mexican state of Baja California Sur, where Ph.D. student Fermin Reygadas worked with three other students last summer to promote household use of La Mesita Azul (“the little blue table”), a tabletop water filtration system he helped adapt from a technology originally developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
“The small scale of this technology gives us the flexibility to go to many places,” says Reygadas, a Baja California Sur native. “And the user acceptance has been amazing.”
The lack of central water systems in rural areas means that some people — but by no means all residents — disinfect their own drinking water by using chlorine bleach or boiling. Reygadas’s invention streams collected water under a 15-watt ultraviolet light to kill pathogens, cleaning a family’s daily water supply in about 10 minutes without changing the water’s temperature or taste.
Keeping the cost of the technology down was a primary issue for Reygadas’s team, but he feels they reached a happy medium with the end product, which costs about $40. “We took the risk of making it a bit more expensive, but nicer and easier to use,” he says. “People have responded to it very well.”
Reygadas and his colleagues will resume their work in Baja California Sur next summer. And they have found other areas of Mexico to help, as well — in November, Reygadas took the technology to the state of Tabasco, installing systems to provide safe water for families affected by catastrophic flooding. Funding for that emergency work came in part from the Blum Center.
IMPROVING HEALTH CARE VIA MOBILE TECHNOLOGY
Poor access to information and communications, underdeveloped transportation networks that hamper access to health care, under-trained medical personnel — health care services to poor communities in developing countries often suffer from these and other critical challenges, resulting in unnecessary death and suffering.
The Blum Center’s Wireless-Enabled Health Care Innovations initiative aims to dramatically upgrade health care. Last summer, a team of nine Berkeley students went to Uganda to develop cell phone-enabled systems and procedures to support medical personnel, improve healthcare access, and collect and manage critical health-related data. Participants worked with the Nakaseke District of Uganda, in partnership with the Ugandan Ministry of Health and Mbarara University.
Faculty from the College of Engineering and the Haas School of Business oversee the multidisciplinary initiative.
During their three weeks in Uganda last summer, the project’s two teams of students provided input into software design and suggested ways to use advanced cell phones for communication, data collection, and information sharing. The students also worked with area health professionals and volunteers to leverage the local cell phone network to improve healthcare access.
Participants next summer will further these efforts and monitor the Bodas for Life project, which trains local motorcycle taxi drivers (called “bodas”) with cell phones to provide transportation for patients in remote areas.
Meera Chary, a Haas M.B.A. student and program participant, enjoyed having “the opportunity to interact with a diversity of stakeholders, from health officials to local village leaders to traditional birth attendants. We had to tie all of those critical perspectives into the recommendations that we ultimately presented to the Ministry of Health and the Blum Center board.”
