Resources

Mindmap of resources available to us (or obvious to us) as of March 12. -Dave

Pics from Lunch

Lunch at Zeni!

Sorry for the small # of pics, not all of them were real flattering...

Mindmaps for Questions

Ladies,

I have also scanned the mindmaps I made of our overall thoughs re:stoves (scarttered, but pretty broad and useful), and re:travel questions (also broad, very scattered, but dense enough that typing them up seemed ridiculous right now).

I recognize that mindmaps are about mental associations and my thoughts on connections and what's noteworthy may not match your own. If you have any questions about this stuff, let me know and I'll try to unpack it for you. Also let's see your own versions (if you've got 'em) too!

-Dave "Nueral Connections" Evans

Notes from 1st Muna Lunch

All,

I have made scans of my notebook scribblings to post here since when I started typing them up I found it teeeedious (which does not fit in with my end-of-the-quarter scramble). Please forgive the quick chicken scratch (I write live notes very fast).

-Dave



Page 1


Page 2

Dave's Team Roles/Expecatations

Nice list, Emilie, here's my take:

goals for project:
A. Help lots of people by creating great stuff that improves/changes lives.

personal learning goals:
B. Learn how to work well with business-minded people and gain a few skills in that arena. (logistics, market plans, etc.

priorities: (how does this fit in in life & class work)
Probably pretty high. I will generally shuffle other stuff around to make this happen.

things i am working on (please call me out & help me):
Respecting other people's time. Learning to lead by consistent example. Being a positive thinker (i.e. a realist does not have to be critical).

skills & things I think I am good at:
Making stuff. Mechanical engineering. Taking other people's ideas, assimilating them with other information, and spinning out bigger and better concepts (and then making them real).

favorite team role:
"Enabler," the person who helps other people's ideas really come alive. Also the divergent thinker and information assimilator.

typical team role:
See above, but add some leadership in there.

things that bring me down in groups:
People who get really stuck on ideas and make group work personal. Meeting before 10AM.

random thoughts on group work:
I love working with others, particularly fun, smart, engaging, dedicated, and passionate people who are willing to work as hard as I am.

-Dave

FW: Presentation Notes

Hi Team,

 

Below are notes from today’s (March 10) presentation brainstorming and outlining session.

 

1. Why the problem matters [Emilie]
1. Why is this such a problem?  Health?  Efficiency?
2. Who is the end user?  Extreme users? 
3. What are Dama’s goals?
2. Team formation and name [Abby & Jeannie]
1. Team name is………
2. Coffee meeting
3. + Jeannie lunch

                                                               i.      Personal preferences form

                                                             ii.      Sharing personal details about ourselves

                                                            iii.      Setting expectations, past group experiences

                                                            iv.      Process for discussing problems / concerns within the group

                                                              v.      Different approaches – business and PD

4. Ethiopian lunch

 

3. Project manual: evolution of physical binder, blog, tagging, and wiki [Jeannie]

 

4. Resources [Abby & Dave – mind map]
1. Physical

                                                               i.      Travel guides, cooking stoves, pizza box [Jeannie]… and at some point we want to get the injera griddle

2. Intellectual

                                                               i.      Competitive landscape [Abby – visual depiction], REI, Black & Gold movie, Thermo Sciences at Stanford (on the agenda)

3. Human

                                                               i.      Muna, Dama Chicago contact (Tadesse Damte), Michael Helm (Darfur stove project, Emilie’s contact), Emilie’s friend Leah (has worked in the Gambian highlands)

 

5. Trip Strategy [Dave]
1. Strategies / Goals for the trip

                                                               i.      Observe and participate in injera cooking à in both city and rural settings

                                                             ii.      Compare home cooking, restaurant cooking, mass production cooking (Easter festival)

                                                            iii.      Manufacturing at Dama

                                                            iv.      Transportation and distribution in Ethiopia

                                                              v.      Stove manufacturers – who are they; what kinds of stoves are the making; how are the big clay pieces made?

                                                            vi.      Is other fuel besides wood used, and what is the life cycle of fuels?

2. Nitty gritty questions to answer – give a few examples

 

To Do:

Wiki – Jeannie

Pizza box – Jeannie

Personal goals sheet – Emilie

Why the problem matters info compilation - Emilie

Stoves – All

Photos from Muna – Dave

Strategy & Goals posting – Dave

Mind map on resources – Dave

Competitive landscape visual – Abby

Dama Chicago meeting setup - Abby

 

 

 

 

links

www.zelaleminjera.com
www.ethiopiancommunity.com

Ethiopian Food & Cooking Options

After our incredible meal at Zeni today I could not stop thinking about injera, so I thought I’d post on Ethiopian food.

First, though – I wanted to let you know that I saw on Zeni’s website that they feature live Ethiopian music every Saturday night from 7 – 11pm. This could be a great chance to meet Ethiopians who live in the area.

Here’s a menu guide that will help Emilie and Dave keep their foods straight while traveling:

Alecha: Stew, either chicken or beef, but not hot and spicy stew.
Berbere: Thick, red paste composed of paprika, salt, ginger, onion, garlic, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, allspice, pepper, coriander, and fenugreek blended by water and oil.
Doro Wat: Chicken stew.
Fenugreek: Little brown seeds that are ground into tan powder for spice seasoning.
Injera: Thin, spongy pancake-like flatbread made from teff flour used to scoop up and wrap food in place of utensils.
Niter Kebbeh: Spicy butter made from sautéeing onion, garlic, ginger, cinnamon, turmeric, cardamom, clove, and nutmeg in butter.
Shiro Wat: Vegetable stew popular during religious fastings.
Sik Sik Wat: Beef stew.
Teff: Ancient grain of Ethiopia available in whole-grain form as well as ground (teff flour) in health food stores.
Wat: Essentially means stew—typically made from base of berbere paste so it is hot and dense with spices.

Wow, injera is not all that easy to make. This site has step-by-step instructions: http://burakaeyae.blogspot.com/2007/02/step-by-step-injera-instructions-real.html

Several sites suggest cooking injera on a mitad when cooking in the US – this looks very similar to Muna’s plug-in pad that we saw today. Another site suggests cooking injera on a griddle over the stove if you do not have a better option.

Here is a site on a newfangled injera stove (mirte stove). The site talks about the extreme inefficiency of cooking over a wood fire, as is done in most households; cooking accounts for *75%* of household energy consumption in the country! Not so efficient. Apparently, 50K mirte stoves have been sold in the country since 1995. There is contact information on the site – could be worthwhile to check out while you guys are in Addis:
http://www.tve.org/ho/doc.cfm?aid=240&lang=English

This site offers a fairly good overview of Ethiopian culture: http://www.selamta.net/culture.htm

Mitad for making injera................And here is a photo of my sweetheart (Matt) and me!

Test

I want to see if my attempt to have the thingie-winglet email us all when a post is made worked.

Darfur stove

I am in contact with Michael Helms, a phd in the Center for Design Research about the stove he is working on in Darfur.  here is some info:

http://www.darfurstoves.org/

from the site:

what is a berkeley-darfur stove?

It's a life raft, a call to action and proof to Darfur refugees that their problems have not been forgotten.

The stove itself is nothing more than a handful of metal pieces but combined with creative problem solving and engineering innovation, it becomes a symbol of hope. It can keep women safe and help them provide better nutrition to their children. Because the stove frees women from hours of searching for fire wood, they can reallocate that time to money-making ventures like weaving mats.

But it's not just hope for Darfur families. It's hope for Darfur itself. Since it uses significantly less fire wood than a traditional three-stone fire, the Berkeley-Darfur Stove gives the environment a chance to recover. And that's really all that Darfuris want — a chance to recover.

With more and more refugees crowding into camps, the land has been stretched to its limits. It now takes women 7 hours or more to find fire wood.

Every time a woman leaves the safety of the camps, she is at risk of rape and mutilation. It has become so dangerous that up to 80% of families in some regions of Darfur miss meals for lack of fire wood.

The Berkeley-Darfur Stove can change all of that — and you can help.

safety

The Berkeley Darfur Stove provides women in refugee camps a measure of safety. Because of the efficiency of the stove – four times more efficient than traditional 3-stone fires and two times more efficient than clay stoves, these women need to leave the camps much less often to forage for fire wood.

This stove fully encloses the open flames, and thus substantially reduces the danger of the dense straw-and-stick shelters burning down because of open fire cooking. The stove produces much less smoke and thus reduces smoke inhalation in the cramped shelters during indoor cooking.

better nutrition

A significant majority of the refugees miss one or more meals each week due to a severe scarcity of fuel wood for cooking. Furthermore, a significant fraction of refugees reported selling a part of their food rations to middlemen for cash to purchase fuel wood for cooking their meals. Health risks are increased due to the stress and conditions of living as a displaced person in a refugee camp. A consistent diet is important and our stoves are addressing this issue. 

income potential

The wood is rapidly becoming scarce, and it already takes an average of 7 hours per trek to find enough wood to cook family meals. By saving wood, the women save time, allowing them to reclaim their lives. In our surveys, some women said they are so exhausted that they would use the extra time to simply rest; but others said that would put it towards income earning activities such as making mats.

Additionally the Darfur Stoves Project designed this light metal stoves so that they could easily be manufactured, in large numbers, in Darfur with simple tools — enabling the refugees to reclaim the dignity by being part of the solution, and earning an income by building stoves.

How much does The Berkeley-Darfur Stove® cost to make?

The Berkeley-Darfur Stove® is very reasonable to make and design/production enhancements continue to drive the cost down further. Each stove currently costs about $30 to make. We expect that number to continue to decrease as production of the stove becomes more efficient.

How come you aren't making stoves for $1 like I've heard in the press?

We have not found it realistic to make such a high quality fuel efficient stove for anywhere close to $1. With the scarcity of fire wood in Darfur, it does not make sense to produce a less fuel efficient stove when a more fuel efficient solution exists – a less fuel efficient stove will not make a woman safer or help her save firewood.

Why are you selling The Berkeley-Darfur Stove® instead of giving it away?

The Darfur Stoves Project and its parent nonprofit, TISS, believe in making recipients of aid a part of the solution. We believe that people who are asked to pay at least a nominal amount for the stove will hold The Darfur Stoves Project (and its local partner) accountable if their stove does not perform as expected. We want our stove owners to have a stake and be involved in the solution. To that end, we have set up production facilities in Darfur and hire local Darfurians to produce the stoves. The nominal amount our partners charge for the stove is set slightly above the local scrap-metal value of the stove. The majority of the cost of each stove is underwritten by donations. For families that simply cannot afford the cost of the stove, we have established a special fund to ensure that every family that needs a stove gets one.

What makes The Berkeley-Darfur Stove® so special?

The Berkeley-Darfur Stove® is 75% more fuel efficient than the traditional 3-stone fires commonly used in Darfur. It is over 50% more fuel efficient than the clay stoves – and is much more durable. In fact we have designed the stoves to last a minimum of five years whereas a clay stove's lifespan can be as short as four months. But what makes The Berkeley-Darfur Stove® most unique is that it is a solution that Darfurians helped to create. We field tested The Berkeley-Darfur Stove® with women in Darfur refugee camps and incorporated their comments into the design of the stove. It is so valuable that many women who have already received The Berkeley-Darfur Stove®, move it each night to their bedside to protect it as their most prized possession.

Why not use a clay or solar stove?

We extensively tested many types of stoves before deciding on the metal stove. We chose not to develop a clay stove because extensive lab and field testing showed that a clay stove was not the most fuel efficient choice. Given the scarcity of firewood in Darfur, it does not make sense to produce a less fuel efficient stove when a more fuel efficient and cost-effective solution exists. A less fuel efficient stove will not make a woman safer or help her save fuel. While solar stoves are a great technology, they are not appropriate for the climate of Darfur or for the foods cooked in Darfur which require a hotter temperature, and higher thermal power input than current solar stoves can produce.

trial post with images

first off is the great man in my life, Mike:

Mike and I have been together for 3 years. (I get to go see him in AK in a week!) whay is he in Alaska you may ask? Well because he does this:

He Is a heli ski guide. And in case I haven't made it clear already we're both rather into the whole outdoor thing especially skiing.  I love being on top of mountains but I also love just being outdoors and having fun.  My winter break was spent wandering in the snow and doing stuff like this:

But when you spend a lot of time in snowy places you have to deal with the snow... often times on your car:

so thats my life in the winter (or at least what I strive for when not bogged down with school) but in the summer it is all about the rivers or desert.

Before I decided to come back to school I spent some time as a raft guide and had the amazing experience to spend 3 weeks on the Colorado in the Grand Canyon (I couldn't more highly recommend it!)

I love all things that involve water, from the frozen form of snow to rivers & oceans. One day I will own a boat and sail around the world, but for now I just practice.

Now it is starting to look like I am a thrill seeker but thats not entirely true, I also really enjoy this:

besides these activities I love, I also really enjoy the world and simply noticing circumstances.  I am fascinated by beauty.

and I love watching interactions:

Riki this adorable yellow lab was our dog but because she is a working avalanche dog she had to stay in utah when Mike and I moved out here.  Now that was a sad sad day.  Her she is investigating the halibut we were lucky enough to catch, umm yummy!

So besides the obsession with living outdoors I was actually an engineer once upon a time.  I always liked to call myself a pretend-gineer personally.  Here is the race car I worked on; an example of good group work!

But after graduation I decided to turn away from engineering and apply those problem solving skills elsewhere.  Here is the mountain lodge I worked in and managed for a couple of years.  We would close up for the winter which mean I got to head out to utah to ski (and meet Mike!)

When I moved on from the lodge in NH instead of traveling internationally (at the end of the season my employees spread to the wind from Tanzania, Botswana, Asia and Antarctica) i simply went to Alaska. It is foreign in its own way though. For one my job as a raft guide included loading rafts on a train everyday and getting dropped off in the wilderness at the foot of a glacier to then float out a river.

And amazingly enough this is about where i'll be this sumer.  Running a backcountry lodge with Mike.  It'll be a great respite and chance to consider life after a couple years of school and living in the fast paced world of silicon valley. 

So thats some about me, now I want to hear about you!

-emilie