Nancy is Alive & Thriving

Helloooooo everyone! ≽^•⩊•^≼

San Cristobal’s Main Square!

I have made it to San Cristobal alive and have not been hospitalized! (More than some can say). I absolutely love San Cris so far. It’s incredibly lively, with rich culture and delicious food everywhere. We’ve visited so many stores selling a variety of foods and trinkets. We even met a man who entrapped us and shared his entire life story with us for about an hour (scary). Despite that, the villa we’re staying at has been fantastic. I’ve enjoyed chatting with my friends, and our projects are really starting to take shape. I’m genuinely excited to dive deeper into researching UVC’s sanitizing powers which makes me feel cringe! 

One of the most exciting aspects of taking these courses abroad is how hands-on the learning process is! Visiting various NGOs and comparing their methodologies has been incredibly inspiring and makes me want to learn more about different NGOs in the area. The people working at these organizations are extremely dedicated to amazing causes, and it’s fascinating to learn about the challenges they face in getting communities to adopt their products. 

La Mesita Azul, photo taken from their website because I forgot to take a picture of the slides 🙁

I particularly enjoyed the Canataro Azul lecture, he was able to walk through the entire design process of their product “La Mesita Azul.” It was intriguing to learn how the initial design, which included a pump, was theoretically better but actually less effective in practice since it didn’t meet the community’s needs. The organization listened and applied the consumer feedback and made changes that improved the product’s usability and community health. This approach of valuing the community’s perspective over mechanical design principles is something that I found super interesting and would love to hear more instances in which something like this happened in the field.

Brian and I listening in class

Over the past week, I’ve learned so much about overall design. We now have more class and discussion time, allowing us to engage more with our professors and the material that we are learning. The presentations are actually super helpful and give a lot of information into understanding the mindset needed to create products that genuinely benefit communities. The questions posed to us help us develop a deeper understanding of the problems we’re trying to solve and the people who will be impacted by the solutions we are trying to create.

Pedestrian Street in San Cristobal

Tomorrow, we are going horseback riding!!!!! Which seems super fun and despite being around horses a lot as a child, I never got to ride one so this will be a new experience for me. I will update with more information about our excursion when we come back from the blog tomorrow. I love San Cristobal thus far and I’m excited to keep on exploring the city for the next two weeks.

And without further ado, goodbye OEDK blog for this week! I’ll leave you with this video: Super Cool Video

-Nancy Martinez