I am very interested in the work that Mike Boudrea from Compas de Nicaragua is doing, especially in the biofuel project. I though it was a pretty novel idea to use the methane emitted from cow patties to power a stove, and one that I did not expect to actually be successful given how complicated and delicate of a project that must be. I think it is amazing that a project like that got out of testing and is now actually useful, because in my experience a lot of unique ideas like that which work theoretically end up falling flat once practicality comes to play. I really wanted to do something like this bioenergy project for my final project in LACS 20, but I realized that, even though I may (arguably) have the technical experience to design a similar scaled system, I don’t have nearly a good enough grasp on the hardships and limited agents in Nicaragua to know where to begin. I am really excited to travel to Tadasna and view the community with a fresh set of “engineering eyes”, because novel solutions are often thought of when a challenge is looked at from a fresh perspective. This excitement is tempered by my extreme fear of coming across as if I think I am some sort of “white savior” whose privilege makes me qualified to address every single problem. I am comforted by the fact that I do have a good deal of technical and scientific education, which means that I have quantifiable skills that I can apply.

I have very mixed feelings about Nicaraguan NGO’s, and I doubt that my feelings will ever be settled. On one hand, I think they do some incredible work and that they do really care about the communities with which they interact, and that the communities really benefit from their presence. However, I have fears about the long term impacts of continued support from NGO’s like these, depending on their model and vision. I see an ideal NGO’s role as aiming to be involved in a community for no more than 10 years, so that the NGO can pass along skills and get some projects off the ground without making the community reliant on the NGO. I am really interested to see how my perception changes once I visit Nicaragua and see quantifiable steps that Bridges to Community has taken to improving Nicaraguan’s lives, as well as seeing the individual interactions of people.