During winter break, I was fortunate to travel to Tanzania for a course on social entrepreneurship in the global economy—a class that bridges business and engineering through the collaboration of Professor Michael Goldberg and Professor Dan Lacks. This trip was also my first visit to an African country, and I could not imagine a warmer welcome to this incredible continent than our hosts provided us. Before the course started, part of the class met Saidi Amiri—a Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) fellow who visited Weatherhead last July—in his hometown near Arusha. We spent our time captivated by the incredible wildlife in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area during a safari and by our glimpse of daily life in a small village during a cultural bicycle tour. We next flew to Dar es Salaam, the largest city and commercial center in Tanzania, to meet the rest of our classmates and our hosts for the remainder of the trip, Bernice and Benjamin Fernandes. Bernice and Benjamin are siblings, social entrepreneurs, and spectacular ambassadors of their home country—they both embody business leaders as agents of world benefit! During our trip, we split into small groups—composed of engineering and business students—to meet with eight social entrepreneurs, whose business models ranged from gelato prepared with local spices to organic fertilizer for rural farms made from urban food waste. Having studied engineering in my undergrad, the collaboration between business and engineering students felt natural. Our conversations with the social entrepreneurs touched on many common entrepreneur dilemmas—creating value, converting customers, securing funding—and they each shared a passion to create businesses that positively impact their country. In addition, we traveled to Tumabtu, a small island off the coast of Zanzibar, to install solar panels and LED lights in a rural village home. My prior work as a lighting engineer came in handy during the install, though we faced many challenges installing the lights. For example, when our screwdriver broke, we could not simply run to a hardware store to buy another—thankfully, someone in the village loaned us a replacement. I hope the new lights will provide a lasting benefit similar to my memories of this day will have on my life. Since returning to Cleveland, turning on the lights reminds me of the many blessings I take for granted daily, which challenges me to use resources more responsibly and talents more creatively to positively impact others. My eight days in Tanzania bestowed knowledge, friendships, and life experiences that I would normally struggle to gather in a year. This single post scratches the surface of this course—for video footage of our trip, check out these videos (Link 1 & Link 2), which includes footage of the solar panels and LED lights we installed on Tumbatu, or the drone footage of the island below!
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