Amy Smith Shares Simple, Life Saving Design.

Summary:

            In this post, I will introduce to the video about a presentation made by Amy Smith. The topic of this presentation is that Amy Smith shared simple lifesaving design with the audiences. First of all, Amy Smith is a MIT engineer who creates cheap, applied solutions for problems in developing countries. Second, in this presentation, she mentions about a project that she has followed for years, it refers to the number one cause of death in children under fire: the smoke from indoor cooking fires. For example, in Haiti, especially in the rural area where people cut down trees for cooking fuels. As a result, Haiti now has 98% deforested and usually suffers horrifying flooding that lead to thousands of death because there are no trees to hold up the soil. In addition, the negative effects on people’s health are also considerable.  People in Haiti have no choice but compelled to cut the trees because they do not have fossil fuels and solar energy can not satisfy their daily needs. Therefore, Amy’s goal is to find solution for this problem; so Amy and her students went to Haiti and tried to find fuels made from things that exist in local. Finally, they came up with the idea that they used the waste of sugarcane after extracting all the juice. And they also the cassava’s porridge to bind all the sugarcane's waste so that the waste can be burnt for longer. Similarly, in India, Amy also applied this kind of technique on India, but instead of sugarcane’s waste and cassava, she used straw and cow dungs. In conclusion, Amy pointed out that this kind of technology is very interesting and necessary to people in developing countries because it is easily transferrable to the poor people or farmers in poor and undeveloped countries. In addition, it is not only beneficial for environment and people’s health but also beneficial for economy since people can make charcoal from waste and sell it to the market for people who need it.


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Response:

            In my opinion, I think this presentetion of Amy Smith is interesting and educational. In this presentation, she shows us a very serious and emergency issue in the world: millions of deaths every year because of smoking indoor fires in developing countries. And I really agree and support Amy’s solution to that problem in Haiti and India. Using local things or waste is a considerably efficient way to have to have another altenative fuels for cooking. Moreover, I am so amazed by the benefits that this technique brings to the evironemnt, the people’s health. In addtion, the poor people in developing countries not only have better cooking fuels but also earn money from selling them to the markets. Above all, I truly admire and respect the work Amy Smith has done and devoted to the people in poor countries. The technique to make better cooking fuels for those people is very essential because it’s simple and practical so the people in poor countries can apply it to their lives easily. Finally, I extremely agree one point of Amy in the video that we should make educational campaigns for poor farmers but instead of helping them stop being farmers, we should help them to stop being ‘’poor’’ farmers.

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