“This is a conversation, not a lecture.” The Canadian diplomat and Ashoka Fellow scanned the room of 20 year-old interns and pulled a chair into the circle.
Corporación La Esperanza (CLE) has been offering free outpatient and residential drug rehabilitation services to underserved communities across Chile since 1995. They’ve gone from one clinic to seven throughout this time, allowing them to provide a much needed resource for over 500 men and women every year.
I initially became interested in urban mobility because I believe it is an extremely important, yet often neglected, factor in development. In a city like Quito, it is evident that in many cases, the ability to work one’s way out of poverty is highly correlated with the ease with which one can move.
Over the past year, I’ve been working on a business plan to start a kitchen incubator focused on supporting female entrepreneurs. Countless hours of research, Skype calls, and discussions with peers, mentors, and professors culminated in my decision to launch the pilot in Mexico City.
In 2010, I co-founded Bridges Academy, a literacy and leadership training program for at-risk youth in a camp for Internally Displaced People (IDP) in Kabul, Afghanistan.
This summer I have been given the opportunity to work with Dr. Steven Hong from Tufts University School of Medicine in collaboration with the Namibia Ministry of Health and Social Services (MoHSS). Many resource-limited countries in sub-Saharan Africa such as Namibia have been severely impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
June 2015 will be remembered as a historic month for Quito, and having the opportunity to learn about mobility in this particular context has been invaluable. Quito, the capital of Ecuador, is a city of about 1 million inhabitants nestled in a small valley surrounded by the Andes mountains.
Maya Ranganath and Benji Moncivaiz are two students in between their first and second year at the Fletcher School. This summer, they are based in Ecuador interning for the international jewellery business The Faire Collection.
