Project Ricardo: Clean Water Access For Arcabuco, Colombia - NDIGD (Fall 2018)

Client Profile

The Notre Dame Initiative for Global Development (NDIGD) combines the existing world-class teaching and research faculty of the University of Notre Dame with a dedicated staff of experienced international development professionals, administrators, and researchers. Together we address the challenges of building just and equitable societies by leveraging the University’s signature strengths to promote development and human dignity worldwide. 

Partner Description

"The Notre Dame Initiative for Global Development (NDIGD) is forming a team of 8 undergraduates to support research to improve clean water access in Arcabuco, Colombia. The student team will travel to Arcabuco twice during the 2018-2019 calendar year (Fall Break and Winter Break). 

Initial Ideas

The student team will travel to Arcabuco on two separate occasions during the 2018-
2019 academic year for field research.

Definition of Success

Students will gain valuable, real-world experience by working with the Notre Dame Initiative for Global Development (NDIGD) on an innovative, applied research project to improve local water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) systems in Arcabuco, Colombia.

Meet the Team

Recommendations

Building a new curriculum on climate change working with Madras schools - BCAS, Bangladesh (Fall 2018)

Client Profile

Climate change is a global issue that does not recognize borders. There is perhaps no place where this is more apparent than Bangladesh, which is exposed to a myriad of hazards: flooding, cyclones, temperature and rainfall variations, drought, water logging, and salinity intrusion in water and soil. Bangladesh is often considered the country most vulnerable to climate change in the world.

Definition of Opportunity

The Keough School Integration Lab is partnering with the Bangladesh Centre of Advanced Studies (BCAS) to help advance its important policy work focused on climate-vulnerable populations. This i-Lab BCAS Project specifically assesses the climate vulnerability of different sub-populations, especially women and children, across the ecosystems of Bangladesh in order to evaluate current national policies and develop climate vulnerability maps that can further inform future policy making. Critically important is increasing public awareness about climate change, particularly among the poor and those who are most vulnerable to the impact of climate change.

Initial Ideas

Given the need for greater awareness and education, the team has begun to think about the possibility of developing a curriculum for climate change and disaster risk reduction, especially looking at the role that Madras schools, that provide education to the majority of the poor population,  might play.

Definition of Success

Working with BCAS, the development of a accessible and informative curriculum that could be used by Madras schools in Bangladesh that addresses issues of climate change and disaster risk reduction in operational ways.

Recommendations

Building a new university-based, interdisciplinary center for global health - ITESM, Mexico (Fall 2018)

Client Profile

The Tecnológico de Monterrey and its network of campuses throughout Mexico is committed to providing quality education, world-class research, and building innovative models for the benefit of society. With the leadership of ITESM’s School of Medicine and the School of Government, the University is looking to build a new interdisciplinary center for global health training and research with strong links to practice.

The DGHSM aims to be a global center of excellence that generates health through training, research, innovation and knowledge translation, addressing in a profound and interdisciplinary way the existing inequities in Mexico and the world, based on health as a human right.  The DGHSM aspires to lead in training, research, implementation and public policy development in Global Health and Social Medicine in Latin America, through the creation of integral solutions to address social factors and strengthen health systems with a preferential option for vulnerable populations.

Definition of Opportunity

ITESM’s DGHSM is currently exploring the possibility of partnerships with the Program on Global Surgery and Social Change (PGSSC) and the Partner In Health’s sister organization, Compañeros en Salud in Chiapas, Mexico.  The Program on Global Surgery and Social Change (PGSSC) is a collaborative effort between the Harvard teaching hospitals, Harvard Medical School/ Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) and Partners In Health (PIH).  This organization emerges out of work of the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, tled by Dr. John Meara at Harvard Medical School (a 1986 ND graduate).  PGSSC’s objective is to advocate for Universal access to safe, affordable surgical and anesthesia care when needed. Compañeros en Salud is affiliated with Partners In Health and works in rural Chiapas Mexico to provide quality health care to underserved communities and hopes to serve as an inspiring model to train and accompany health professionals and community health workers, and to deliver quality health care in low resource settings in Mexico and elsewhere. Both PGSSC and PIH have deep ties to Notre Dame, and have served as clients on DAT projects over multiple semesters.

Initial Ideas

The ITESM Department of Global Health & Social Medicine is looking for models of university-based, interdisciplinary centers that work in the international context in close partnership with health service providers and policy makers.

●      ITESM is interesting in exploring different models of partnership that have been established for developing, first-rate, interdisciplinary global health centers that have strong links to practice, that highlight different institutional structures, incentives, and potential partnerships.

●      ITESM hopes to explore and expand partnerships with international development and health organizations, such as Compañeros en Salud, the Harvard Medical School and the University of Notre Dame, consistent with its strategic objectives.

●      ITESM is interested in implementing a framework to develop international partnerships.

Definition of Success

That ITESM uses the systematic examination of different examples and models for building an interdisciplinary, university based Center for Global Health with a strong link to practice in ways that it might serve as a roadmap for a path forward.

Recommendations

Building a powerful network of young leaders and accompanying them across the continent - Latin American Leadership Academy (Fall 2018)

Client Profile

Latin American Leadership Academy (LALA) seeks to promote sustainable economic development and strengthen democratic governance in Latin America by developing a new generation of leaders. LALA creates international and socioeconomically diverse cohorts of the most promising graduating high school students who have demonstrated an unshakeable commitment to social change.

LALA is launching leadership boot camps throughout Latin America to create local hubs of social impact and find values-aligned youth. In the near future, LALA hopes to open an eighteen-month program, which blends entrepreneurial leadership, a liberal arts education, and social and emotional learning. The program connects participants to mentors, resources, and opportunities, and LALA envisions a diverse continental ecosystem that collaborates across differences to bring shared prosperity to Latin America.

Definition of Opportunity

As the LALA ecosystem expands, attracting new members to the community (youth participants, social entrepreneurs, facilitators, advisors, etc.), we need creative ways to stay connected, both in local hubs and at a distance, essentially building and sustaining effective networks. More than just “keeping track” of what people are doing, we aim to create a community of mutual support and guidance (i.e. accompaniment). So far, after our one-week boot camps, alumni have used Whatsapp groups to keep in touch about projects they are developing, to celebrate accomplishments, and share resources about college applications, educational opportunities, local politics, etc. However, Whatsapp is visually messy, has a limited audience, and can restrict engagement to a superficial level.  

Latin American Leadership Academy wants to enhance its understanding possibilities for strong networks to combat social inequality in the region. We want to develop a network of partnerships with people and institutions that have the strongest commitments to supporting education and social change.

Initial Ideas

LALA would like to know: what are other organizations doing successfully to “keep their communities connected”? Some ideas that were brainstormed: “Humans of LALA” posts, a podcast, a LALA interface with notifications, among others.

Definition of Success

From this exploration of best practices, we would like to launch strategies to nurture, thicken, and enhance the connections in our Latin American ecosystem. Broadly speaking, this team hopes to map successful examples networks building in support social impact initiatives that might serve as models to help improve LALA’s decision-making and better inform our network building aspirations.

Recommendation

LALA_ND DAT Appendix by on Scribd

Contributing to the Sustainability Model for Nutrition - Sherlock Knowledge Lab CREN, Brazil (Fall 2018)

Client Profile

Malnutrition is a significant challenge facing children worldwide, and it has been increasing in the past decades: today, one third of the world’s population (2.1 billion) is either undernourished or overweight/obese. While best practices for addressing nutritional challenges among children and adolescents abound, the rising rates of malnourished children internationally indicate that treatment efforts are still lacking.

Addressing the challenge of malnutrition is not merely a matter of enabling access to resources, but it is about understanding the root causes that are inextricably linked to behaviors influenced by family, community, lifestyle, and complex environments. It depends on understanding the relationship of malnutrition to other areas of health and to social and educational interventions.

Definition of Opportunity

In 2017, Gisela Solymos, co-founder and former CEO of CREN, Center for Nutritional Recovery and Education, Nitesh Chawla and his team from the Interdisciplinary Center for Network Science & Applications, and Walter Link and his team from the Global Academy Foundation have integrated efforts to develop the concept of a Knowledge Hub (KH) that provides a framework for capturing data, knowledge, and experiences to help drive positive outcomes in child health and malnutrition.

The action-oriented hub is intended to support entities working in the field to more accurately capture the reality of the contexts in which they are developing interventions and to obtain a real-time assessment of their efforts. For this purpose, the hub will:

• gather different types of knowledge from diverse fields related to the health and development of children, their families, and their communities;

• conduct research and experiments relevant to these topics and their concrete application;

• publish papers, books and audio-visual materials for diverse types of media;

• convene dialogues between relevant stakeholders to advance knowledge and understanding and generate concrete action steps;

• offer learning and training opportunities in diverse forms, including in-person and virtual programs and audio-visual offerings;

• share its knowledge with governments, NGOs, global leaders, and other key players in the field.

Initial Ideas

We look forward to working with a team of Notre Dame students to advance our project’s ideation and organizational strategy through research into the following:

• What are the best practices of organizations focused on innovative work with child malnutrition in developing countries?  What are the innovations and how have they been deployed? What interventions and strategies do they use to share these ideas and make them operational?

• Do they use technology such as electronic medical records, mobile apps, etc.? How do they use it?

• What is their "business model"? (describe how they work)

Definition of Sucess

The generation of a professional presentation of the best organizational practices related to addressing malnutrition, and in turn, supporting and exploring the Knowledge Hub’s unique potential contributions to the field.

Recommendations

Building International Partnerships - Education Bridge, South Sudan (Fall 2018)

Client Profile

Education Bridge seeks to create flourishing South Sudanese communities through education and peace building.  As part of this mission, Education Bridge opened its first school, Greenbelt Academy, in Bor, South Sudan in February 2017. Led by South Sudanese Notre Dame graduate Majak Anyieth ’17, the Greenbelt Academy currently serves over 200 students in grades 9-10, with plans to double the school population and have grades 9-12 over the next two years. The Greenbelt Academy seeks to provide quality secondary education as well as to develop a generation of South Sudanese who are not only well prepared academically, but who also see themselves as peacemakers and transformational leaders.

Definition of Opportunity

Education Bridge has worked with Notre Dame DAT teams over multiple semesters on projects related to developing a peace building curriculum, building enhanced opportunities for girls, and contributing to organizational sustainability. Education Bridge now wants to explore the possibility of building networks internationally in service of its students and teachers that expand opportunities, as well as formalize relationships that support the development of the overall organizational culture of Education Bridge.

Initial Ideas

Education Bridge looks forward to working with a team of Notre Dame students to research how other non-profit organizations, especially those running educational and/or child development programs in the international context, have effectively build international networks in service of their mission.

• How do the best non-profit educational organizations think about building high functioning networks in service of their mission?

• How can we connect our students with a wider set of global possibilities, whether through technology or by travel, that will help expand their understanding of the world and their possibility to make transformational change? We believe we can draw lessons from the African Leadership Academy and other institutions, and want to explore student exchange, model UN, leadership development and the like.

• In support of teachers and administrators, how can we find relevant development opportunities for them?  We could also imagine a “Greenbelt Fellowship” that might draw talented educators and professionals to work with the Greenbelt Academy to help develop and train current teachers, develop new curricular and extracurricular activities, and more generally expose the school to more innovative pedagogy and technology.

Definiton of Success

The development of a number of good models of building networks and sustainable partnerships will be relevant for Education Bridge students and teachers, as well as concrete proposals that Education Bridge can utilize and implement as part of its strategic planning process to become a more dynamic and sustainable organization.

Meet the Team

Recommendations

Next Steps 

Impact: