The iSTEP internship was designed to give Carnegie Mellon students and recent graduates the opportunity to apply skills learned in the classroom to address real-world challenges. Furthermore, the multidisciplinary and globally distributed nature of the team allowed interns to draw on the different strengths of their teammates and take advantage of resources available in different geographic locations.

iSTEP also gave interns the opportunity to give back and positively impact three Tanzanian communities. Rotimi reflects, “Seldom does one get an internship experience that allows students to conduct research and find their own solutions to problems that positively impact developing communities in the world.”

The iSTEP 2009 interns faced many challenges and frustrations at the start – partly because they were pioneers of a new internship program and partly because they were dealing with a new environment and culture. Brad affirms, “When I arrived in Tanzania, the pace surprised me. It’s not that I worked too little – in fact, I probably worked more than normal. Rather, things just took a lot longer to get done. This is because there is less control over the environment and less understanding of the conditions.”

Furthermore, for most of the interns, this was their first experience conducting field research, “Field research, in my opinion, is a struggle. Field research involving people is even tougher. There are so many unknowns that it is impossible to anticipate everything,” states Beatrice.

Despite all of this, a valuable skill the interns acquired is to adapt to their surroundings. “The timeline I had originally created for myself changed as we started talking with the communities. I realized very quickly that I needed to be more open to plans changing and not being able to predict my work timeline,” adds Rotimi.

The interns also valued and appreciated the importance of working closely with the communities. Hatem advises, “Regardless of how wonderful and powerful the technology solution is, community involvement is the most important. Technology cannot overcome challenges on its own – rather – the community and its people are the ones who can transform the technology into a solution.”

An important lesson learned was that everything cannot be solved in a 10-week internship, “This has been an ongoing theme, as repeatedly through the internship we have had to stop and take reality checks and pick out the things that we will not be able to accomplish before the term is over.”

While the interns realized everything could not be accomplished in 10 weeks, they were optimistic about the future of the projects. Dan adds, “The fact that the project was too big for 10 weeks was not a bad thing – I enjoyed sinking my teeth into it, and I hope I have started work that others will continue.”

On behalf of the iSTEP 2009 and TechBridgeWorld teams, we would like to thank you for reading! We would also like to thank our partners, advisors, and many others for their contributions to making the inaugural iSTEP a success.

Before leaving, I was as prepared as I was going to get. I had the same feeling that I get before I run a 100 meter dash — whether or not I feel 100% that day, I know that I have been racing for years and that I have been working on my technique. And when the gun goes off, I use all I know to get me through the race. In my book of life challenges, I would liken the iSTEP internship to an 800 meter dash, a race and adventure that I hadn’t been coached for, but definitely knew I was capable of accomplishing. This internship challenged me in a new way, and required me to enhance the skills that I already had in order to excel in the role that I had been assigned.

Seldom does one find an internship experience that allows students to conduct research and find their own solutions to problems that are impacting developing communities in the world. Upon my arrival in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, I was a bit intimidated by the goals that I had set for myself. I knew I wanted to explore the country, meet new people, and embrace the new culture but I was also aware that I had a lot of work to do. I also did not have much experience in needs assessment, so I wanted to make sure I was focused from the time we arrived. The timeline I had originally created for myself changed as we started talking with the communities. I realized very quickly that I needed to be more open to plans changing and not being able to predict my work timeline.

As the weeks passed, I became comfortable with my surroundings, familiar with the community members, and proactive with my work. I knew how to engage with the different communities, record data, and share it with the rest of the team. Nothing was spoon-fed to me. It was all about experiential learning and a full commitment to the success of the project in the community.

I am going to walk away from this summer with a wealth of knowledge and understanding about the realities of ICTD, and the challenges facing the developing world. Africa is my homeland and the opportunity to travel and experience the cultures in Tanzania, and take a look at social justice and political issues that I really care about is something that I will always be grateful for. I cherish the experience that I have received this summer which has provided me with practical exposure outside of the classroom, outside my own ambit and back to the origin of life and commerce. I know this is just the beginning of my work in Africa, but it has created a strong foundation for me to be able to contribute to the development of my people.

Rotimi Abimbola was the team’s Needs Assessment and Evaluation Coordinator, based in Dar es Salaam, for the iSTEP 2009 internship. She is a rising senior at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. She is pursuing two majors, Political Science and International Relations, as well as a minor in African Studies. Rotimi is determined to pursue a career with a focus on politics and governance in Africa. She was born in London, England, but grew up in Nigeria in West Africa. At Carnegie Mellon, Rotimi has been elected as the Student Body President for the upcoming academic year. She has also held several other leadership positions, including Chair of the Undergraduate Student Senate, Resident Assistant, Varsity Track and Field Athlete, and founding member of the African Student Organization.

iSTEP 2009 has been a remarkable experience technically and personally. On the technical side, the field experience was certainly different than any of my prior experiences. Working in the field requires being dynamic and ready to re-plan and adjust quickly. This internship offered me the opportunity to solidify my project management, planning skills and put to test my Computer Science skills in a real world setting.

On the personal side, this experience has been truly influential. Living in a different country, meeting new people, getting accustomed to a new culture, and managing a project all in 10 weeks had a significant impact on my personality. This internship helped me improve my communication skills significantly. Communicating with our team, which is a very diverse and globally distributed team, has been a great exercise. Being able to communicate ideas to people from different backgrounds and collaborate in a project with them made our work experience significantly smoother and more enjoyable. Beyond day-to-day personal and work communication skills, this internship was a great teamwork experience for me.

The iSTEP 2009 internship has shown me the importance of people and communities. Regardless of how wonderful and powerful a technological solution is, community involvement is the most important. Technology cannot overcome challenges on its own; rather, the community and its people are the ones who can transform the technology into a solution. Furthermore, having local partners is absolutely essential. Most of the work could not have been achieved without the support from our local partners. Local partners are part of the community and culture. Their support and knowledge are essential to achieve sustainable solutions, especially within a limited timeframe.

Having firsthand experience of being on the ground cannot be replaced by any readings and online research. Living in a country and experiencing the daily interactions with people is the best way to truly understand the challenges a community faces and gain the necessary insight to contribute and help. We could have done all the programming back home, but our presence on the ground increased our solutions’ relevance significantly. All in all, this internship has been significantly influential, technically and personally. If I go back on time, I would certainly choose the iSTEP internship again.

Hatem Alismail was the iSTEP 2009 team’s Technical Lead for the Literacy Games project and was based in Dar es Salaam. Hatem graduated from Carnegie Mellon University’s Doha, Qatar campus with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and a minor in Mathematics in May of 2009. Over the last four years, Hatem has gained significant programming and project leading experience. His areas of interest include sustainable technology development. In particular, Hatem is interested in the creative use of widely available computing platforms, such as consumer grade cameras and cell phones. Hatem looks forward to pursuing a Masters at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute next autumn.

I am normally a technical guy.  Throughout my time at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, my primary interests were always the more theoretical, mathematical aspects of Computer Science, which are far removed from the realities of implementing software systems, let alone the social implications that software may have.  Part of what attracted me to iSTEP – and kept me waking up at those early hours – was the opportunity to try something new.  Here was a job where it was all about social implications.  I had to think daily about not just creating a solution to the problem, but creating an inexpensive solution that could be used by community workers who may only have a primary education.  And beyond that, it had to be an application that we could successfully pitch to government and other organizations.  This was new, and it was exciting.

Of course, there was a great deal of novelty from just working in Tanzania.  Communicating with people who spoke varying degrees of English – from flawless to nearly non-existent – oftentimes made me wish I were able to speak Swahili.  Slow Internet connections and daily blackouts were a fact of life.  And on the weekends, I was fortunate enough to get a chance to explore Dar es Salaam and its surroundings.

I do wish that we had more time. 10 weeks was just enough to do the first stage of needs assessment and build a prototypical solution; another 10 weeks and I think we could deploy that solution and get some useful data from it, and more. The fact that the project was too big for 10 weeks was not a bad thing – I enjoyed sinking my teeth into it, and I hope I have started work that others will continue.

Daniel Nuffer was the Technical Lead for Social Workers Mobile Tool project and was based in Dar es Salaam. Dan graduated in May of 2009 from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. He has completed two internships with Microsoft, in Redmond and in New York, and is particularly interested in programming languages and their applications.

When I arrived in Tanzania, the pace surprised me. It’s not that I worked too little – in fact, I probably worked more than normal. Rather, things just took a lot longer to get done. This is because there is less control over the environment and less understanding of the conditions. The other part that was difficult for me was developing new technology to meet the needs of a community that still had so many basic needs that have yet to be fulfilled. A direct example is that Uhuru Mchanganyiko Primary School desperately needed braille books. It was tough because while this internship did have a component where we tried to match community needs with providers who could meet those needs, my job was to focus on what I could do in the framework of the research. This limited me to doing work that I did not necessarily feel was the most effective at helping the community.

However, the people here are invested in improving their lives, as well as the development of their country. Often, we wrongly assume that without help from developed communities, developing communities would crumble and fail. I think it is very much the opposite. If left to their own devices, developing communities will improve, but they can improve faster with help. And I guess that is why I wanted to be here.

I have been humbled by others’ hospitality and their warmth in helping a stranger, and I have been inspired by the work of Tanzanians. I have even advanced technically, getting my first real exposure to C++ and developing user documentation for people with limited technology experience. I have even learned how to work in a globally distributed team. I am confident that these skills will serve me well in the future.

Out of all the lessons learned, the biggest one I learned was to keep plugging. This means working through frustrations and limitations, and trying to find meaning even in small tasks. It means putting up with challenging conditions, and learning that what seems like a big problem in the United States is relatively minor here. It put things into perspective for me. And for that, I am grateful.

Bradley Hall was the Technical Lead for the Braille Writing Tutor project and was based in Dar es Salaam. Brad is a Mechanical Engineering student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh expected to graduate in May 2010. As a 5th year scholar this coming year, Brad will continue his undergraduate experience next year under a full scholarship. He is the current president of Engineers without Borders-CMU and works as the Community Adviser for Donner House, an on-campus student residence. His professional interests are centered on designing sustainable technology solutions to problems faced by developing nations.

There are many things that frustrated and overwhelmed me, mostly at the beginning and end of the internship. At the beginning everything is new and you are learning to roll with the punches, and at the end you are scrambling to finish things up so you can make a smooth exit. The middle bit is where I figured many things out and learned to revert to my laid back mode so I could take things in stride. I remember the first time I sat down with teachers at one of the primary schools we worked with. That moment reminded me of why I decided to embark on this journey in the first place.

I am a scientist and have been into mathematics and science most of my life, but post-college I realized that, although physically applicable sciences were interesting, I really wanted to see how science impacted people’s lives. iSTEP afforded me the opportunity to do just that. I have seen how hypotheses developed in front of a computer in a remote location just do not make sense once you are on site. Ground-level realities are so important to consider if one wants to successfully implement a sustainable project. All in all, I would say iSTEP has given me my first glimpse into what field work is like; its challenges and also its victories. Based on this experience, I have affirmed my desire to be involved in ICTD (Information and Communication Technologies and Development) work.

Beatrice Dias was the Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator, based in Dar es Salaam, for iSTEP 2009. Bea is in her 3rd year as a Ph.D. student in the Engineering and Public Policy Department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh who volunteers with TechBridgeWorld to assist with marketing, events, fundraising, and strategic planning. She earned her undergraduate degree from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York with concentrations in Mathematics and Physics. Her current research involves measuring the impact of the USA PATRIOT Act and the Bioterrorism Preparedness Act on Microbiological Research in the U.S. Beatrice is a native of Sri Lanka and hopes to pursue a career in policy evaluation.

Looking past the mess on my desk, the technical leads have ensured me that my work for the past 10 weeks has been organized and clean. Brad, Dan, and Hatem all have their own means of organizing their tasks to be done, and each format has ensured that I keep my own work organized when I am pulled in three directions on an everyday basis. The tech leads all did an admirable job in keeping their projects organized through the many setbacks we faced.

Putting it all together, it is difficult to give an accurate representation of how much I feel we accomplished. I look back at the start of the internship and I cannot believe how much we completed in such a short amount of time. Conversely, as the projects wrap up, I can say how much we could have done with another 10 weeks. It is clear that there is so much more to do and I hope the people involved in Tanzania continue to develop these projects when we depart. But I do believe we have given them a considerable amount of work to get them started.

Consequently, I have learned to accept that there are things that you cannot accomplish. Ideally, I would like to work on these projects for months to come, but there is not enough time or resources to get them to the state I would like before the team leaves Tanzania. This has been an ongoing theme, as repeatedly through the internship we have had to stop and take reality checks and pick out the things that we will not be able to accomplish before the term is over. I have never been the type of person who likes to submit something partially finished. Despite this, I know we have done a lot of good work here and have an excellent start for future development. So we may not accomplish everything I wanted but I guess saving the world by solving world hunger, accomplishing universal peace, and building an In-N-Out Burger in Pittsburgh will have to occur during a different 10-week internship.

Anthony Velázquez was the Technical Floater for iSTEP 2009. Based in Pittsburgh, he provided technical support for all three projects and worked closely with the technical leads. He is a rising senior pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He works with Development Solutions Organization, a student organization on campus, to raise awareness of global development issues and help connect peers with opportunities. He remains interested in issues revolving around computer science education and the intersection between technology and global development.

It’s been a fun 10 weeks, a hard 10 weeks, an exhausting 10 weeks, but it certainly hasn’t felt like 10 weeks. The iSTEP team has braved monkeys, lions, snakes, mosquitoes, tornadoes, and hair cuts. We surprised no one more than ourselves in the progress we were able to make across the three projects. We’ve learned more than we thought possible and made countless memories.

One might think I probably had the boring job in the team being home in Pittsburgh but I had my share of excitement. I’ve worked myself to exhaustion on more than a couple days and I’m proud of the work the team has done and hope to continue my own work in ICTD in the future. The ever-changing day to day conditions, the wealth of viewpoints, and the projects I got to work on more than kept me interested. I hope the things we’ve started this summer continue to develop and make a difference in the lives of Tanzania.

And so it is without any eager that I leave my humble desk that was home to me over the summer. I would say that I don’t know how I will manage to keep myself busy but then I remember classes start at Carnegie Mellon in a matter of weeks. But then, homework just won’t be the same.

So what’s left to accomplish? We’ve discussed on the blog a lot of work that’s been done and I hope by now you’ve got a good impression on the three projects. A lot of the late nights have involved putting in as much extra functionality as possible so that when we leave it’ll be in a state such that people on the ground will be able to utilize the technology that we’ve been developing for some time. While we’ve spent a lot of time developing recently, slowly we’re starting to shift into a more presentation oriented outlook. Everybody is discussing and developing reports and slides so that we can present to the UCC and students back home in order to show off the work we did and how it’s useful. It’s a nice time to reflect on where we’ve been.

In developing my portions I was able to go back and look at the first reports we did before the team left. It was interesting to revisit the places where we started. Granted a lot of that information continued to be relevant throughout the duration of the project but looking back and remembering some of the research we did, attempting to find relevant work from which we could draw inspiration. CMU HealthLine, Project LISTEN, Project Kané, and countless others. From all of these projects we were able to draw inspiration and learn something new. It’s unlikely we’ll make as much of an impact as things such as Project LISTEN which for over a decade has been improving the way children learn to read, but we hope that when we leave we’ll be able to tell our experiences such that other people will be able to benefit as much as we have benefited from those before us.

Last Wednesday, Bea and I went to Mlimani Primary School to sit in on some of the English classes that were taught by the 3 teachers that we interviewed during the initial needs assessment process. When we arrived around 9:20am, we joined Mr. Jehudi (a Standard 5 teacher) in his classroom. When we entered the classroom all the students stood up and said, “Good foundation, Good morning madam, how are you today?”. We were received with this same greeting in every class that we visited.

Mr. Jehudi was just getting started with the lesson, and we noticed that almost half of the students in the class stood up and ran out of the classroom. Mr. Jehudi told us that they were going to go and borrow books from their peers, because there is a shortage of books. After all the students returned and were situated Mr. Jehudi started the lesson, Unit 7 Sports Day. He instructed the students in English, but sometimes he spoke Swahili to elaborate and explain certain words.

I looked around the classroom and saw about 5-6 students, per bench, sharing one English workbook. Mr. Jehudi started the lesson by reading a story from Unit 7 in the book. He then asked for volunteers to role play different characters in the story. The students were very anxious to play the roles of: the sportsmaster, Mr. Mburugu, and Mrs. Wetio. Based on the names of the characters in the story, I am guessing that the book was in a Swahili context.

The first group of students that read were very articulate. It was shocking to see some of them reading better than their teacher. The oral exercise was intended to give the students an opportunity to practice their speaking skills. Mr. Jehudi stopped several times to highlight some grammar errors that the students were making. He emphasized the commas, periods, and question marks. The first group of students read their parts of the story with no problem. The other groups stumbled on words, and Mr. Jehudi stopped several times to make sure the class understood how to pronounce certain words. The students that participated were clearly very sharp and eager to learn. There were so many students in the class and with no teaching aids or books for the entire class we saw how difficult it would be to teach them all.

 After the role playing, Mr. Jehudi asked the students to answer some questions from Unit 7 in the workbook. He asked the students the first few questions out loud, and the same students responded. Some students heard others saying the answers to some of the questions and so they raised their hands to answer the question. After a few examples, the instructional portion of the class was over and the students were asked to answer the remaining questions on their own and then Mr. Jehudi would mark their answers. Overall, the students in Mr. Jehudi’s Standard 5 English class seemed engaged and excited to learn English.

After Mr. Jehudi’s class, we went to Mr. Chuo Standard 4A English class. The students welcomed us with the same really cute greeting, “Good Foundation, Good morning…”. The students in this class also had to borrow books from their peers. We saw about 20 students rush into the class to borrow books from the Standard 4A class. There was a scarcity of books in this class as well. I shared a book with three other girls.

The lesson for the day was a review of a unit called “Future Events”. Apparently they started learning this unit in the previous class. Mr. Chuo followed the book, similar to the way Mr. Jehudi did. He drew the same table of words that was in the book, and then called on the students to formulate sentences, using will/shall, for future events. (ie: we shall eat fish. Joan will eat fish.) Mr. Chuo spoke in English most of the time, but would say some sentences in Swahili. The students were very eager to answer the questions; almost every student wanted to answer a question. The unit seemed to be an easy one, but some of the students that answered the questions did not do so correctly. Mr. Chuo was not very supportive when the students didn’t give the correct answer, instead he encouraged students with the right answer to raise their hands. After the students completed all the sentences, Mr. Chuo told us that the lesson was over, and the students would do the exercises in the workbook on their own.

The last class that we attended was Mama Merina’s Standard 3 English class. The topic for the day’s lesson was adjectives. Mama Merina told us before the class that the topic was very easy and she was confident that the students would pick it up immediately. She even showed us the teacher’s guide and asked us if we wanted to teach the students. We politely declined and allowed her to proceed with the lesson. Similar to Mr. Jehudi and Mr. Chuo, Mama Merina used the book as her guide for teaching. She spoke very little Swahili during the class. She made sure she communicated to the students in English. When she started the lesson, she asked the students if they knew what an adjective was, and she asked for one of them to define the meaning of an adjective. No one raised their hands. Then she asked for the students to give her an example of an adjective and then a student raised his hand and said black, and then several other students proceeded to mention different colors. The exercise in the book showed several drawings of young students. Again this was a culturally sensitive book. The students could relate to the characters that were illustrated in the book.

 Mama Merina asked the students to describe the different pairs of boys and girls on the page. (ie: The boy is tall. The girl is short) After every example, she would select students in the class to be an example of adjective. One of the adjectives pairs was tall and short. Mama Merina asked a tall boy and a short girl to come in front of the class as a visual display of the adjectives. After the exercise, the students were asked to copy down sentences that Mama Merina had written on the board. Then, Mama Merina asked Bea and I to help her mark the students work. It was nice to be able to help her and to also have the opportunity to interact with the students. We tried to give them positive reinforcement and make eye contact with them as they came up to us. We said Good job or great work, and I even drew smiley faces on their papers regardless of how many sentences they wrote correctly. Even when the students were copying sentences that were written on the board, it was evident that some students really didn’t know what was going on because they tried to copy the sentences but misspelled several words or made other smaller mistakes. When we were marking, we also noticed that all the students had been spelling the word rabbit with one b instead of two b(s) and that was because Mama Merina had misspelled the word on the board, so we called her attention to it immediately and made sure that the students knew the right spelling.

Last Wednesday was a great day at Mlimani. The school is really starting to warm up to us even more and accept them as part of their community, because they are starting to see that we really care about the success of the students. Its difficult to see the students sharing books and learning with limited materials, but they thrist for knowledge and will definitely benefit from an English literacy game. A quick side note, I walked by Mr. Chuo’s class, and most of the students remembered Yipee!! It was great! The teachers enjoyed the demo that we presented to them last Friday, and we received lots of helpful feedback from them.

Asante,

Timi