As Mount Holyoke students were wrapping up their summer travel, internships, and community service, incoming president Lynn Pasquerella was honoring a volunteer commitment of her own. With a team that included the Africa Center for Engineering Social Solutions (ACESS) and Mount Holyoke students Hilda Barasa ’12 and Yiting Wang ’11, Pasquerella traveled to Kenya’s West Lake District projects aimed at providing access to clean water and promoting “microbusinesses.”
“The overall objective has been to empower women in the communities and create sustainable businesses,” Pasquerella said.
One project involved testing a press used for molding clay water purification pots. Collaborating with the ACESS team, community members were able formulate a more efficient process using local materials.
Fish farming also promises to expand local business opportunities, but the team is still looking for ways to prevent predation by monitor lizards and transport fish effectively in areas lacking infrastructure. “I hope to work with the Center for the Environment at Mount Holyoke to try to address these issues,” Pasquerella noted, adding that this is the first time Mount Holyoke has been involved in the project.
Her involvement with the group began during her time at URI, when she met Clarice Odhiambo, an ACESS worker performing graduate work at Brown University. Odhiambo, a former Coca-Cola Africa executive, asked if university personnel could partner with the group to identify engineering solutions to communities lacking clean water.
Wang found out about the project while interning with the United Nations Environmental Program in Nairobi, Kenya. She contacted Pasquerella, who put her in touch with Odhiambo.
“The encounter was very much unexpected,” said Wang, “but I felt very fortunate to join Lynn and her wonderful team with Clarice.” Wang added that after her week-long trip with the team, the organization seemed to her based on a development model she had never experienced herself.
“It stood away from the usual political diplomacy of official development assistance from the West and approached it from a civic and institutional angle,” she said. When three engineering students from the University of Hartford taught the workers at the local construction company how to assemble the press and make the mold for the ceramic filter, she was inspired to watch the workers alter the plan with locally available materials.
Wang will continue to assist Pasquerella and her team at Mount Holyoke in designing academic and experiential programs involving ACESS.
Pasquerella’s engagement in social issues predates her ethical studies—she described working alongside her mother in a light switch factory.
“I saw women working on the assembly line, trying to make quota and knowing that if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be able to feed their children at the end of the day. There were no men … Class and gender issues became apparent to me then.”
The Kenya Project is now in its third year, and Pasquerella expects it to continue beyond its initial five-year commitment.
“We stay in same communities. There are challenges involved, so it’s important that we keep our commitment in terms of their evolving needs,” she said. Already struggling with poverty and high rates of HIV/AIDS, the community’s well apparatus broke, so finding other ways to access clean water has been vitally important.
Despite the challenges, Pasquerella said that the new constitution, passed at the end of August, has offered locals hope. “There is a great deal of optimism, and there wasn’t as much optimism two years ago, especially because of post-election violence.” Among other changes, the new constitution will allow women to enjoy the same rights as male citizens of the country. Many Kenyans have been disappointed, though, with the Obama administration’s failure to bring them additional resources. Citizens continue to struggle with rampant corruption, but they hope the new constitution will introduce a greater degree of transparency.
In the meantime, Pasquerella said she hopes Mount Holyoke will continue to fund students’ participation in similar projects in Kenya and other countries and provide mentors for these students. Having extensively presented her work abroad, she believes travel is a critical means of building social awareness. “I think the more that we get to know other cultures and how people live their lives, the better we’re able to think critically about complex issues in a world that’s increasingly globally independent… First and foremost, we come to understand we are not the center of the universe, and that there’s suffering we don’t hear about because we think there are parts of the world that don’t matter.”
