Updating water ideas

Three years ago I wrote an blog based on my research around water and making it clean. Coming up in the next several days are a few follow ups on that idea, followed by my first solo attempt at building a cheap filter.   If you've been keeping up with me, I'm in Eastern Africa … Read more

Burundians with mobile phones

Without going nuts and writing a dissertation like I normally seem to get into, I'm going to try and talk about one of the projects what I've been doing for the last several days. As I mentioned, I've got several going on while I'm here in Burundi, the primary of which is implementing a mobile … Read more

projects

I'm in Burundi again nearly a year after I  first arrived on the African continent.  I'll be here for about a month (till late June), working on a bunch of different things.  Primarily I'm here to help Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities (HROC) as a technical consultant for the Frontline SMS implementation they are using for … Read more

government as a rational tool

In my previous blog I talked about the effectiveness of the RILA on lobbying congress and how it illustrates the methods that FCNL and others teach about changing the face of our legal/policy reality.  Something that bothers me about this though, which I did not mention in the blog, is the fairly obvious reality that … Read more

Understanding effective lobbying

Two blogs in one week after such a dry spell, it’s crazy I know, but I’m feeling in the mood to write these days. I wanted to highlight  a few things based on my experience at FCNL, in DC/Congress, and in my understanding of human nature from this excerpt of this article in the NY … Read more

reading update and thoughts

I have been sick for a good long while now, some where over a month.  I think I cleaned my sinuses with water that was treated, but unpurified which started an infection.  Initially I thought it was an allergy attack, but some where around week 2.5 after two visits to the doctors here I gave … Read more