Empower

Can grassroots initiatives foster innovation in Guinea Bissau? This is a question I came up with last summer while spending time in Guinea-Bissau, a small nation in West Africa, for my capstone research and a consultancy project. This summer, I have been working with a grassroots organization based in the country to try and answer it.

This summer, I was fortunate to go to Rwanda to conduct internal market research for To The Waters, a social enterprise that aims to use engineering, innovation, and entrepreneurship to promote access to water, sanitation, hygiene, and nutrition (WASH-N) in developing nations.

The 13-hour flight to Dubai consisted of me sleeping and conversing with the Bangladeshi woman sitting next to me; she was traveling with her daughter to see her family and parents back home. Two-thirds of the world’s population lives within an eight-hour flight from Dubai.

Five major components define a slum household according to UN Habitat: lack of access to an improved water source, lack of access to improved sanitation facilities, lack of sufficient living area, lack of housing durability, and lack of security of tenure.