Educational Program

Hesham Al-Mekhlafi of the University of Malaya in Malaysia in collaboration with Azal University for Human Development in Yemen will recruit and train youths and young researchers from rural areas in Yemen to teach their communities about preventing and treating specific enteric diseases. Although effective drugs exist for treating intestinal parasitic diseases such as soil-transmitted helminthiasis, many remain endemic in Yemen, particularly in rural populations where knowledge and attitudes towards these diseases are poor.

Gilbert Saint Jean of the University of Notre Dame in the U.S. will promote the consumption of salt fortified with both iodine, which is essential for child and maternal health, and the drug DEC, which is used to treat the parasitic disease lymphatic filariasis, in Haiti. Haitian emigrants residing in the U.S. frequently purchase food vouchers via money transfer company websites for their families in Haiti. The researchers will partner with food remittance companies to build on this system and offer vouchers for their tested DEC-iodized cooking salt.

Daniel Bloch of Bitsoko in Kenya will develop their mobile money platform known as Bitsoko, which integrates Blockchain technology for low-cost transactions mediated by bitcoins. They have built a mobile wallet and a point-of-sale service for merchants that allows money to be easily and securely transferred around the world using only a Bitsoko username, phone number or bitcoin wallet address. Bitsoko will also offer simplified options for paying household bills and payrolls.

Michelle Winthrop of Farm Africa (Food & Agricultural Research Management) in the United Kingdom will lead a team of community development experts to support 300 women farmers in Ethiopia to access and use existing technologies such as weeders and seed drills that substantially reduce the labor intensity of growing maize and sorghum. There are many cultural and social barriers that have prevented widespread adoption of new technologies in these settings, particularly for women.

James Pimundu and team from Send a Cow Rwanda in Rwanda will test whether educating men and women in Rwanda on gender barriers and social behavior issues stimulates them to use energy-saving stoves for cooking. Although affordable energy-saving stoves are available, they are not widely adopted, possibly because women have limited access to money and lack the power to make decisions. They will train both men and women to inform them of gender barriers in order to reduce inequality.

Brian Lund and colleagues from Oxfam America in the U.S. will work in Cambodia to increase the use of labor-saving weeders by smallholder women farmers there. Rice cultivation is the primary source of food and income for these households, and weeding crops requires substantial time and physical effort. Cheap, easy to use, and effective mechanical weeders have been developed and tailored for smallholder women rice farmers, but they have yet to be widely adopted due to limited marketing and inadequate local fabrication and distribution capabilities.

Sara Delaney of Episcopal Relief & Development in the U.S. and Ghanaian colleagues will promote the use of donkeys with ploughs for draught power to decrease labor and increase productivity of women smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Traditionally, oxen are used as draught animals but they are often unavailable to women due to cost, gender and cultural issues, and their large size makes them difficult for women to handle. The donkey ploughs are suitable for weeding and preparing land for a variety of crops, and can be locally manufactured and maintained.