Projects

I'm using this post to tell people about the two main projects I'll be working on while I'm here in Kenya.  In order to receive academic credit for my internship I have to put together and submit a grant proposal.  As a student I want to try to write a grant that will help other students get through school.  Many organizations already help families send their children through primary school, however, educational aid tends to stop there for some reason (paying jobs tend to want more than an elementary school diploma).  Secondary school is supposed to be provided by the Kenyan government, however, the government fails to meet the demand and many private schools fill in the gaps.  Families in informal settlements have trouble paying the lump secondary school fee at the start of each term and have in the past asked Action Now Kenya for short term loans to help them pay school fees.  I want to write a grant proposal for a pool of money for these secondary education loans.  The interest accrued from the loans will fall into a scholarship fund for one of the students who has received one of our educational loans and is heading off to tertiary school.  I also want to try to make an internship/apprenticeship program for the students benefiting from the loans.  I haven't yet worked out the particulars but I looking at 20-40 loans at 6,000-20,000khs (75-250$) per term.  If people have suggestions or questions just write a comment (ps, i'm looking for possible donors/maybe a linkup program with US high schools).

The second project I'm working on is my final project for my class on urbanization.  I once saw a really cool map of the neighborhood of Los Angeles.  Each neighborhood had a little face on it.  The faces had the skin color of the majority of the residents living in the neighborhood.  The faces had other features--smile/frown, the shape of the face, the position of the eyes...--which represented certain variables like average annual income, average education level, life expectancy and so on.  I want to make a similar but cooler map of Nairobi on a program like google earth.  I want to interview a bunch of Nairobians and ask them to draw a map of Nairobi.  If the person gives permission I will write up some notes on the interview, make a place mark for where the person lives and impose the map they drew over the satellite image of Nairobi.  Hopefully, if I interview a lot of people from different parts of the city I can show how people living in different areas of the city interact with Nairobi spatially.  If they focus most of their activity around one area of town that part of their map will be more detailed.  On top of these interviews I want to take photos of the different neighborhoods and put links to the photos on the electronic map.  I also want to find quantitative data to put into the map.  A lot of other students in my abroad program are working on projects that could produce really cool information that I'll try to make maps out of.  I'd really appreciate advice or suggestions with this idea because the input I've had from other students has been really helpful so far.  Hopefully if it works out fairly well I could do the same thing for cities in the US.