Luke Plummer (MechE) ‘14, Sydney Beasley (Civil & Enviro) ‘14, and Jessica Ong ‘15 are blogging from Assam, India. The students of D-Lab’s Cycle Ventures class are working with the Rickshaw Bank, a project of the Center for Rural Development, an Indian NGO. Rickshaw Bank loans rickshaws on a micro-credit basis to drivers until they’ve paid off and own their own vehicle. In India, the Cycle Ventures students are looking to implement some of the projects which have come out of the course – rickshaw improvements that are simple and repeatable but do not add significant cost.

Luke, Sydney, and Jessica are joined by Madhavan Jaswanth (Urban Studies and Planning) '13, Jeffrey Carothers (MechE) '14, Micaela Wiseman (EECS) '13, and D-Lab Instructor, Gwyn Jones. Check out excerpts from their Cycle Ventures Blog.

From Jess's Entry: "Causing Fights at the Factory"
"As you know, Micaela and I are working on measuring the power it takes to pedal a rickshaw. Long story short, part of the project involves using a Vernier Lab Quest to measure the amplitude of a triangle wave and its derivative. We plugged in a hand dynamometer (which basically measures the force of a squeeze) to see how many data points the Lab Quest can record. This quickly turned into a competition among the factory workers to register the strongest grip on the sensor. After the Americans, Luke and Jeff, had soundly beat the workers’ numbers, the workers began to insult each other and argue, which turned into something of a good-natured brawl before workers eventually made their way back to their stations."

Hand-drilling rubber disks is a two-man job Photo: Jessica Ong

From Sydney's Entry: "Indian Cuisine"
"India offers so many new and exciting things, one of the most important being its cuisine! (And for those of you who know me, it should be no surprise I’m blogging about food) A few dishes here are familiar, while others I never could have imagined. Some interesting things about Assam – it’s famous for its tea and it’s home to the hottest pepper in the world, the Bhut Jolokia chili pepper, known also as the Ghost Pepper. Luke and Jeff have been on the hunt for this pepper since day one (despite warnings from a local resident they might just end up in the hospital) In general, the food is much spicier than I’m used to, but I still think most of its delicious!"

An Indian marketplace Photo: Sydney Beasley

From Luke's Entry: "Project Update!"
"We’ve been working hard since we arrived at the rickshaw bank factory, and all three projects are starting to look useful.

Suspension Fork:
After installing the fork prototype on an old rickshaw, the fork team
has tested and altered the design until it performs like a half-decent piece of modern suspension. The largely adjustable prototype they are working with allows them to find the exact dimensions and key changes for the final, simplified design that will be reproducible by the rickshaw factory. This also includes testing a variety of different springs made of different combinations of rubber discs cut from old car tires. Today they began actual test rides, but after numerous runs through an obstacle course of bricks and small ditches, they encountered a substantial design flaw when the shaft holding the spring discs buckled. Fortunately, Ali, a masterful factory worker with an amazing mechanical intuition, was able to straighten the 1/4 in mild steel shaft to near perfection with a hammer and his eye in a matter of minutes. The team built a new system for holding the spring and will resume testing tomorrow.

Frame Redesign:
After a week of measurement and calculation, the frame team ordered supplies to build a first draft frame! Starting tomorrow they will finally escape their pencils and paper and start welding. The goal was to incorporate a truss frame into the rear section of the frame to increase strength to weight efficiency over the current design at the rickshaw bank. Such a truss frame was designed by D-Lab students a few years ago, but dimensions generated by the computer aided drafting interfered with the drivetrain and deviated from the standard in some important dimensions for usability: the wheelbase and the shape of the passenger floor. The new design will incorporate this truss design with corrected dimensions to match the existing standards.

Power Meter:
The power meter team has battled a number of stressful bugs, defective chips, and lack of needle nose pliers due to Micaela’s airport security incident. They are currently getting the sum of 3 different waveforms instead of the expected 1 as force output data, but will otherwise have to write their own update because I don’t know anything else."

A look at the suspension fork Photo: Luke Plummer

Janet Li (Urban Planning) ’12 is blogging from Cambodia, where the D-Lab team is working together with farmers and credit union members to build composting bins and a low-cost biodigester under the guidance of an expert in the community. The team is also gathering feedback on solar lantern technologies from 18 households without electricity in Kien Svay, developing and teaching creativity-building educational modules at a youth shelter in Phnom Penh, and learning from rehabilitative organizations about local needs and the potential for the Leveraged Freedom Wheelchair (LFC) to be used in Cambodia.

Greetings from Kampong Thom!
It has been a jam-packed couple of days as always. It seems crazy that we will soon be out of Cambodia – Heng just jetted off to Switzerland yesterday, Nabeela is heading back to Massachusetts tomorrow, and the rest of us have less than week left.

We have been traveling for the past few days – we were in Siem Reap for a little over 48 hours and are currently spending the night in Kampong Thom to do some work with our community partner FLIFLY at an affiliated office here. Here's a glimpse of what we've been up to since our last update.

Technology Evaluation: During our time in the Kien Svay province with FLIFLY last week, we completed another two rounds of interviews as part of the D-Lab Technology Evaluation program for solar lanterns. Working in teams, we collected back the solar lanterns we had distributed to nine rural households without electricity and redistributed them to another nine, conducting interviews about the families' light usage along the way. Together with FLIFLY, we decided upon a fair, randomized lottery to determine which nine families would be able to keep the technology at the end of our field trials.

Compost bin support: Following our successful composting workshop last week, which we are reproducing in Kampong Thom, several farmers expressed the desire to create compost bins of their own. Our team, including Alice, Carolina, Sara, and Kofi, continued to work on the design of the bin and later discovered the brilliant innovation of the farmers themselves, who utilized local materials to recreate their own highly effective compost bins. It was a great example of how the villagers learned from us, and how we also learned from them.

Meetings with local organizations: We continued to meet with organizations with whom we could potentially form partnerships for long-term work in Cambodia. These included the Center for Children's Happiness (an orphanage and school for children who were previously garbage pickers -- the kids were bright and very affectionate), Geres (Groupe Energies Renouvelables, Environnement et Solidarités, which works on large-scale environmental projects including cooking stoves, green charcoal, and forestry), Hagar (a rehabilitation center for victimized women, which also works on prevention education), Advanced Engineering Consultants (a consulting firm that also conducts educational workshops to introduce children to engineering), and Naga Biofuels (a biodiesel manufacturing plant that started as a way to supply energy to the Visitor Center of the Angkor Hospital for Children, which Alice's architecture firm designed).

Dinner with Heng's family: To thank Heng's family for everything they did for us, including helping us get our apartment in Phnom Penh, housing Kofi, and stuffing us full on more than several occasions, we took them out to a hot pot restaurant on Friday night. The food was delicious, and it was lovely to spend more time with them all. We also underwent a photo session to commemorate the night.

Fun with trash: At our third session at at A New Day Cambodia, the team of Cabrina, Carolina, Jessica, and Janet, along with students from ITC (Institute of Technology of Cambodia) and Harpswell, taught the kids about Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. We then asked them to build boats out of materials that other people had thrown away, with the purpose of transporting as many oranges as possible across a tub of water. As always, we were blown away by the children's creativity and cleverness.

Angkor Wat: Yesterday, as a break from our work, we took a whirlwind tour through the breathtakingly beautiful and sacred temples of Angkor Wat. We arrived before 6am to drink iced coffee and see the sunrise, and spent the next 12 hours exploring the world's largest religious complex. Built in the 12th century as the heart of the capital city, some temples were more in ruins than others; some had the roots of enormous trees wrapped around their walls; most still had their Buddhist and Hindu stone carvings preserved. It was an architectural wonder, and we all took photos until there was no space left on our cameras and smartphones. When we succeeded in avoiding the large crowds of tourists, visiting the temples was truly a spiritual experience.

The week ahead (our last one!) is short, but we still have much to accomplish before we leave Cambodia.

Janet Li (Urban Studies and Planning ‘12), Sara Comis (Mechanical Engineering ‘13), Nabeela Arshi (Wellesley College Economics '12), Cabrina Kang (Wellesley/MIT English & Education ‘13), Carolina Kaelin (Civil and Enviro ‘14), Alice Hartley (MBA ‘12), Meng Heng Touch (Physics ‘12). Jessica Huang and Kofi Taha are D-Lab trip leaders who in real life are full-time D-Lab staff. Jessica will be co-teaching the D-Lab Biodiversity course this spring and Kofi Taha is Associate Director of D-Lab.

Alice Hartley (MBA) '12 learns about the need for biogas from a family in Kien Svay.

Two technicians from the Veteran's International wheelchair workshop try out the leveraged freedom chair and provide valuable feedback. Photo: Carolina Kaelin

Students at A New Day Cambodia learn about basic circuitry and design their own flashlight using local materials such as old water bottles. Photo: Carolina Kaelin  

Chelsie Librun (Aero Astro) ´13, Nina Jreige (Bio Engineering) ´13, and Miho Kitagawa (MechE) ´14 are blogging from Honduras where they are working with la Fundacion San Alonso Rodriguez, an NGO  that provides remote communities with tools to improve their livelihood. Students, D-Lab trip leaders and the community in Miramontes are working on providing a yuca cooperative with a new mill; building a rice classifier and heat sealer for a local rice micro-enterprise in Brisas del Mar; and designing solar driers for family harvests and testing water in El Benque.

January 11, 2012
Buenas Dias Padres y Madres!

This is Chelsie, Miho, and Nina writing to you from the computer room of the Fundacion, the NGO we are working with here in Honduras. Even though we had a bumpy start coming back from the airport (our car broke down :/), the past two days have been quite exciting AKA lots of hard work! We scouted out our first villages, Miramontes and Brisas del Mar, yesterday after working on prototypes the day before. We learned a lot about the difficulties that each of the communities face and how we can better help them.

Miramontes has a 16-women cooperative that produces and sells yuca products (cassave and milano), however their methodology is outdated and tiring causing it to lose popularity with younger generations and forcing older generations to continue with the back-breaking process. Their yuca mill has been broken for 4 years, not to mention the fact that it was unsafe in its functional phase (it skinned the tips off of one women´s fingers!). One of our main projects this trip will be to try and provide the community with a new, safer, and better functioning mill for their yuca processing. As a side project we´ll be redesigning their hydraulic yuca press that has not been in use since they received the machine.

In Brisas del Mar, we are working with a rice cooperative, who are trying to start a micro-enterprise selling rice on the market. The cooperative has a very diverse group of people, from young to old, including men and women. They currently have a rice mill that has allowed them to even consider selling processed rice. There´s not much that we can do about the machine, but we are working towards helping them with other parts of the process. This includes creating an easy way to classify the different sizes of rice grains (larger pieces can sell for more on the market) and creating a heat sealer to help them package the rice in plastic bags.

Our days are long and hard, but rewarding. We are eating a lot of good (and cheap) Honduran food and trying to survive in a world of Spanish. Our next couple of days will be working on projects at la Fundacion, then we will be living in Miramontes and Brisas del Mar for a week.
 

Conversation with women cooperative in Miramontes, discussing the new design for a cassava mill. Photo: Benji Moncivaiz

In the back of the pickup truck. Left to right: Chelsie Librun, Miho Kitagawa, Nina Jreige Photo: Benjamin Moncivaiz