Arriving at La Plata

Posted by jfrant

The landing gear extended as the small propellor airplane prepared to descend into Buenaventura. Looking out the window, I was struck by the drastic change of scenery. The andean highlands of Bogota, characterized by vast urban areas and extensive agriculture in the valleys between steep mountains, was replaced by a dense tropical paradise that looked more like a diorama than a real city. From above, I could barely pick out the brown houses within the thick layer of green.

Even before the air-tight seal of the airplane cabin was cracked open, I could feel the heat penetrating the windows. Colombians divide their territory into two categories: the andean highlands are known as tierra caliente and the tropical lowlands are known as tierra fria.

The hour-long boat-ride from Buenaventura took us through the choppy water of the Pacific, around a jagged coastline that reminded me of Thailand, and into the flat, calm waters of Bahía Málaga. Getting up to speed, our boat jolted to a stop. We had hit the bajos – an enormous area of the bay that is just barely covered with water during low tide. After calling for a rescue boat, we waited nearly thirty minutes for the tide to rise enough to inch our way through deeper channels of the bajos.

Arriving to the community of La Plata, the first thing you notice is a sky blue fiberglass dock that is moored in place with fluorescent orange polls. Wooden houses dot a 300 yard stretch of beach on the island. Walking down the dock, you must pass by the restaurant. Hungry from an early morning and a long day of travel, our group (two Columbia students, and six UniAndes students) were treated to a generous helping of piangua ceviche – a mollusk that grows in abundance among the mangrove forests of Bahía Málaga. The cabin, in which I would be spending the large part of the next two months, is about thirty paces from the restaurant. A quick glance around the cabin revealed enough room for approximately twenty visitors, two toilets with a working septic system, a sink, four showers (two per gender) with rain-water fed showers, and mosquito netting covering each bed.

After a few days it became clear that the promising shower system was rarely functional, but each shower also comes equipped with a drum filled with rain water and plastic bucket that work nearly as well and use quite a bit less water. Bahía Málaga is one of the wettest places on Earth and therefore does not require a complex water system to provide fresh water. Rooftops and barrels throughout the town are modified to collect as much rainwater as possible.

The two Colombias

Posted by jfrant

It was already dark by the time I arrived in Bogota. I was extremely grateful that Monica, the sister of a friend of a friend in Boulder, had agreed to wait for me at the airport. The flight had arrived 15 minutes before the scheduled 9:35pm arrival time, but because of walkway malfunction, it wasn’t until well after 10:00pm that I was able to get my bag and find Monica waiting patiently in the airport lobby. Luckilly my letter from the Universidad de los Andes (UniAndes) – one of the most prestigious and expensive universities in Colombia – made my passage through immigration and customs easy, otherwise I might not have made it out of the airport by midnight.

I apologized for the delay and told Monica about the broken-down walkway. “Bienvenido a mi país desordenado (Welcome to my disorganized country),” she said as she explained that the airport was brand new, but that things rarely run smoothly in Colombia.

This fundamental contradiction between development and inequality, discord and prosperity is a theme that came up again and again throughout my first few days in Colombia. Everywhere you look there are two Colombias, the one for the rich and the one for the poor.

This stark divide is visible across the city: in the heavy security that separates the city from UniAndes (which Monica described as another world “otro mundo”), in the squatter neighborhood that stands like a disorganized pile of rubble against the backdrop of a billion-dollar residential development, and most dramatically in the north (rich)/ south (poor) divide that splits Bogota in half.

Monica, while dropping me off at my hostel in La Candelaria, told that she rarely ever goes to the center of the city, and while she didn’t say it explicitly she implied that the area to the south of the center was not an area she would consider visiting.

Later, on top of Monserrate, after hearing of the north/south divide from our tour guide, Andres, my fellow classmate and traveller, Olivia Snarski, waxed philosophical: “That’s so interesting, I want to wright a novel about a tragic love story between the north and south,” she said evoking images of in my mind of Romeo and Juliet and he West Side Story – classic tales if star-crossed lovers.

The socio-economic stratification in Colombia not just informal, it is also institutionalized in the country’s progressive tax code. People receive a tax ranking on a scale of one to six, one being the poor (like those living in the squatter settlements I described above) and six being the ultra rich (those who can afford to send their children to UniAndes without a scholarship). This score is based in part on ones income and in part on the neighborhood in which you live. Andres said that even if his ecotourism business were to take off and he started making fistfuls of money, he would still be considered a level two because he is a rent-payer living in Candelaria. Both Monica and Andres used this scale to describe the neighborhoods we passed as we traversed the city on our respective tours.

It has only been a week since I landed in Bogota. First impressions abound. Ask me again in two months whether these impressions stand up to the test of time.

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Here goes something

Posted by jfrant

Driving to the airport this morning, a massive cloud burst drenched the road about 15 miles around Boulder. Torrents of water gushed over the highway making driving difficult. After a week of sunny weather while visiting family in Colorado, I could only imagine that this was Mother Nature’s way of giving me a reality check on what to expect for the rest of my summer working and traveling in Colombia.

Having my mom with me on the morning drive to the airport has become somewhat of an unofficial tradition. The last time we made the trip together I was on my way to the concrete jungle of New York City to begin my first semester at Columbia’s School of International Public Affairs (SIPA). This time I’m off to another sort of jungle – the mangrove forest that surrounds Bahía Málaga, Colombia.

As we drove through the downpour I could tell that my mom, a world traveler and adventure seeker in her own right, was trying not to be too nervous for me. “Well, it’s not like we haven’t prepared you for this sort of thing,” she said more to calm herself than to reassure me.

Since as long as I can remember my mom, a retired school teacher, would take her summers off to travel with me. Unlike many tourists who go to Central America to stay in gated resorts, we would stay in the eight-dollar-per-night hostels and travel by local bus, seeking authentic foreign experiences off the “gringo trail.”

“Mom,” I replied, “I think you’ve actually pre-disposed me to this sort of thing.”

(Don’t worry dad, our backpacking trips in the Colorado wilderness and on the Appalachian Trail are also to blame.)

I’d be lying, however, if I failed to admit that I am also a bit nervous. My summer field placement (aka internship) will begin with a week-long orientation at the University of the Andes. My visit will then take a swift and decisive turn off the gringo trail. From Bogota, I will fly to Cali (home of the once-notorious Cali Cartel), take a bus to Buenaventura (Colombia’s most important port city and also one of its most dangerous), hop two boats to Bahía Málaga (a secluded bay that is visited by more humpback whales than tourists). My final destination is close to a Colombian naval base that features relics of the increasingly high-tech illegal drug trade. Progressively more complex boats and submarines, built by drug lords to smuggle cocaine, are displayed like rotting carcasses – a testament to Colombia’s decades-long internal conflict.

Hidden along the banks of the various tributaries that funnel into the bay are numerous afro-Colombian communities. Bahía Málaga is one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet due to the high number of endemic species, but the people who live there are also among the poorest – with poor infrastructure, low numeracy and literacy, and high maternal mortality.

These afro-Colombian communities primarily subsist through agricultural and extractive activities (mining, logging and fishing), but the pristine natural environment that surrounds them provides enormous potential for ecotourism – not to mention that Bahía Málaga is the number one calving ground for humpback whales in the world. The goal of my field placement is to identify and develop opportunities to grow the ecotourism industry as a source of income for local communities.

I can’t begin to describe how I feel about the opportunities, challenges, and uncertainties that undoubtedly await me…nervous is an understatement, but with the help of my colleagues (Yoon – a fellow SIPA student – and Rosangela – a Colombian student) I’m confidant that we can make a valuable contribution to the sustainable development of Bahía Málaga.

It’s times like these that I’m reminded of the final Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, and Calvin’s last words: “It’s a magical world, Hobbes ol’ buddy…lets go exploring.”

Here goes something

Posted by jfrant

“Mom,” I replied, “I think you’ve actually pre-disposed me to this sort of thing.”

(Don’t worry dad, our backpacking trips in the Colorado wilderness and on the Appalachian Trail are also to blame.)

It’s times like these that I’m reminded of the final Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, and Calvin’s last words: “It’s a magical world, Hobbes ol’ buddy…lets go exploring.”

SIPA Team Competes in Policy Challenge

Posted by jfrant

Blog reposted from the Columbia – SIPA website.

SIPA was one of four newcomers in a field of nine schools that took part in the 2013 National Public Policy Challenge, held in Philadelphia on March 16 and 17.

The invitational competition, hosted by the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania, asks teams of students representing some of the nation’s leading public policy schools to develop and present a policy proposal and civic campaign plan to achieve significant change in their home communities.

Earlier this spring, the Office of Academic Affairs solicited proposals from students interested in competing. Selected to represent SIPA was a proposal for more efficient disaster-relief management, developed by a team comprising Lakshmi Balachandran MPA-DP ’13, Jesper Frant MPA-DP ’14, Eric Smyth MIA ’13, and Seisei Tatebe-Goddu MIA ’13.

The proposed initiative, known as ReliefMap, had been conceived by Frant in Professor Anne Nelson’s class on New Media for Development Communication. It would respond to large inefficiencies in matching donations by volunteers and organizations to the actual needs of citizens in the aftermath of disasters such as Hurricane Sandy.

Advised by faculty members Ester Fuchs and Sarah Holloway, the team prepared an in-depth implementation, marketing, and finance plan for presentation to the competition judges. While the team did not win the competition, members said they received positive feedback and valuable comments on how to take the idea forward.

“The process of developing an idea that was not only technically feasible, but would also ensure interest and large scale adoption by government agencies, disaster relief organizations and common citizens was extremely valuable,” said Tatebe-Goddu.

Meeting team members to solicit feedback, Associate Dean Dan McIntyre of Academic Affairs praised them for their efforts in a tight timeframe and noted that SIPA had received word of the competition relatively late. McIntyre said his office would make sure participating students have more time to prepare for the competition in 2014.

“We’re already looking forward to next year,” he said.

— Lakshmi Balachandran MPA-DP ’13

Pictured above (L-R): Professor Ester Fuchs, Seisei Tatebe-Goddu, Eric Smyth, Lakshmi Balachandran, Jesper Frant. Not pictured: Professor Sarah Holloway.

In Global Food Systems, MPA-DP Students Get Their Hands Dirty

Posted by jfrant

Blog reposted from the Columbia – SIPA website.

Against the backdrop of the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, Professor Glenn Denning’s class in Global Food Systems took a break from classwork to visit the Rodale Institute, an agricultural research organization specializing in organic farming.

Having studied food systems and farming methods from around the world all semester, the students welcomed the opportunity to explore agricultural practices in person. “It’s rare that we actually have the opportunity to be on a farm,” said Olivia Snarski MPA-DP ’14. “Our academic brains were buzzing because we were able to visualize the application of our agricultural development knowledge.”

Welcoming the students to the farm, the associate research scientist Dr. Gladis Zinati gave a review of the research being conducted by the Institute. While organic matter only accounts for 5 percent of the soil, it is critical for maintaining overall soil health, she explained. In order to maintain healthy soils the biological components must be kept in balance. Particularly, one can predict the health of the soil by the types of protozoa present – too many ciliates could mean trouble.

After an organic lunch of oven-baked pizza, the students got their hands dirty. Pitchforks in hand, the students helped to aerate compost — decayed plant material used as organic fertilizer. Many of the students were shocked to see steam rising from the center of the musty dark-brown pile. Well-maintained compost, Zinati and her colleagues explained, has a high internal temperature and, if aerated properly, produces an entire world of beneficial fungus and bacteria that can be used to improve farm soil quality.

Rodale is at the forefront of research into farming best practices. Rodale’s Farming Systems Trial is America’s longest-running study comparing the effects of organic versus conventional farming practices. “It was very interesting that organic farming methods were shown to have equal yield as conventional agriculture,” said Marissa Strniste MPA-DP ’14.

The trial also found that conventional farming has a negative impact on soil health – reducing the carbon content of the soil. Denning argued that this finding does not hold true in all situations, especially in a resource-poor setting with highly degraded soils. “The idea that chemical fertilizers are universally bad for soil health is simply not correct,” Denning said.

“Used incorrectly, chemical fertilizers can be bad for soil health and the wider environment,” he continued. “Used correctly, they can help restore degraded soils, achieve higher yields, improve food security, and save lives.”

Among the agricultural innovations that the Rodale Institute demonstrated to the SIPA students were the use of compost tea and zero tillage. Compost tea is made by steeping a bag of compost in water. The solution is then sprayed on farmland as fertilizer and to improve the biological content of the soil. Zero tillage avoids the disruptive use of tills and plows, which can lead to soil erosion. Instead of plowing, a leguminous cover crop is rolled with a metal barrel leaving an organic mat that suppresses weeds and fertilizes the soil. Both innovations could be used in resource-poor settings to extend the impact of limited available compost and reduce the cost of agricultural inputs such as fertilizer, herbicide and labor.

With 1,000 Days Left to Reach MDGs, A Look Back and Forward

Posted by jfrant

Blog originally posted on the Millennium Villages website.

The 1,000-day milestone to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was on the minds of presenters and audience alike at the Earth Institute’s Sustainable Development Seminar. The seminar gathered professors Jeffrey Sachs, Prabhjot Singh, and Vijay Modi to take a critical look at how far the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) has come in the eight years since its founding and analyze what still needs to be accomplished.

Sachs kicked off the seminar with an overview of the MVP, which he described as showing a pathway to achieve the Millennium Development Goals in very poor settings in sub-Saharan Africa.

Given the time-bound nature of the goals, Sachs noted, “part of our self-assignment in this project is to run, to hurry, to try to meet a timetable, to try and promote action.” In a project like the MVP, where the goal is to break the cycle of extreme poverty, Sachs argued, “it’s better to try and miss than to slow down and not try.”

The MVP built off the epistemic community knowledge of development best practices, and initially started with the implementation of quick-wins – which include long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets and improved agricultural inputs to boost crop yield. The quick wins, however, while important are only part of the equation. As the project moved forward, ideas about how to meet the MDGs evolved along with the Millennium Villages themselves.

Sachs described the next phase of the MVP as falling into four categories: moving from demonstration to design, expanding beyond interventions to systems-based approaches, harnessing the unprecedented expansion of information and communications technology, and integrating public investments with business.

This next phase can create an environment of innovation in the MVP that has fostered the creation of new approaches to development. The health sector, in particular, has experienced a sea change.

Singh explained that moving to a design and systems-based approach forced the MVP to rethink the delivery of healthcare in poor, rural settings. Improved primary health facilities, the project realized, only get you about half the way to achieving better health outcomes due to constraints on access.

Community health workers (CHWs) extend the reach of primary healthcare systems expanding access for the rural poor. The growth of mobile telecommunication has allowed the MVP to develop platforms to enable managers to monitor the CHWs they oversee in real-time. Actionable data not only empowers managers and health workers, it provides critical information on how to improve the health system and make it more adaptive.

CHW programs have been implemented across the Millennium Villages, but the CHWs must be scaled across Africa in order to have a measurable impact on global development. The One Million Community Health Worker campaign aims to do just that.

With the 1,000-day MDG countdown underway, many countries are still far from achieving the MDGs, but new approaches to development born from the MVP have put ending extreme poverty within reach.

Summer field placement to the world’s most productive whale calving ground

Posted by jfrant

Looking back at my life, I realize that (for better or worse) I have a tendency to be a guinea pig. I was the first to graduate from Washington Elementary School (an experimental bilingual program), I was the first high school exchange student to Mante, Mexico through the Boulder-Mante Sister City Project, I was among the first students at the University of Colorado earn a certificate in International Media, and I will be in the third graduating class to receive a master’s in development practice from Columbia University. So, it should not come as a surprise that I will be in the first cohort of master’s students to spend my summer field placement in Colombia (with an -o- not a -u-).

This summer, I will spend approximately 8 weeks working with an afro-Colombian community inside the Uramba-Bahía Málaga National Natural Park, which my program describes as the “most productive calving grounds for whales in the world…notable for its high level of endemism.” Despite the natural beauty of the surroundings, residents of Bahía Málaga suffer from debilitating poverty, lacking access to clean water and sanitation, and with minimal access to education and critical health services. A full description of the field placement is available here (see PROJECT PROFILE #5).

[googlemaps https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=205338961251887176338.0004d873bf63e433e653d&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=5.266008,-76.838379&spn=7.652325,9.338379&z=6&output=embed&w=425&h=350]

Key goals of my interaction with the Community Council of La Plata – Bahía Málaga will be to:

Develop community council’s strategic relations with the public and private sectors of Buenaventura and the department of Valle.
Develop a strategy to build the capacities and opportunities that will allow the council to create knowledge-based autonomy (managing and channeling opportunities for the long term empowerment of community leaders).
Build alliances to strengthen ecological and cultural tourism and forestry enterprises.

The program description exceeds any expectations I had for my summer field placement. I am excited to work with and learn from the people of Bahía Málaga.

More information about Bahía Málaga: http://bahiamalaga.org

ReliefMap: A 21st Century Approach to Disaster Response

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This weekend I participated in the National Invitational Public Policy Challenge, hosted by the Fels Institute of Government in Philadelphia. Nine teams from across the country were selected to participate. I, along with my teammates Lakshmi Balachandran, Seisei Tatebe-Goddu, and Eric Smyth, had the honor of being the first team from Columbia’s School of International Public Affairs to participate in the annual competition.

Our idea is a disaster relief platform called ReliefMap meant to help facilitate the matching of citizens’ needs to disaster relief organizations after a natural disaster like Hurricane Sandy. You can read our full proposal here.

While our team didn’t make it through to the second round, it was a valuable experience that raised the profile of the idea, which if implemented would greatly benefit the City and its inhabitants WHEN the next disaster strikes. The other teams had very interesting and well-thought-out ideas, some of which were already at the pilot phase. I can’t help but wonder what might have happened had we had a little more time to develop the idea and reach out to key stakeholders in New York City government.

[scribd id=130936375 key=key-1evb7yze15ft0sro03tk mode=slideshow]

Knowing when not to say “no”

Posted by jfrant

View of Manhattan from Brooklyn…it’s not all work.

Last semester I took only four classes and had few extracurricular activities, but that was more than enough. Endless group project meetings and Stats/Econ problem sets kept me beyond busy and struggling to keep my head above water. You would think that when planning my activities for this semester I would have taken into account my trials and tribulations from last semester and paired back my responsibilities. I did the opposite.

I kept my course load to 13 credit-hours, but instead of one massive semester-long project (Sustainable New York City ) I now have two (Business Plan Social Enterprise in Senegal; Implementation Plan for Scaling Up Community Health Workers in Mozambique). I am now the president of the New Media Task Force, a student organization whose mission is to educate SIPA students about the importance new media for international development. I took a part-time work-study job with the Earth Institute managing the social media for the Millennium Villages Project. Oh, and I joined a group of students selected (from 8-15 other student groups*) to represent Columbia at the National Invitational Public Policy Challenge. The competition is the weekend before spring break in Philadelphia and a 10-15 page proposal (I should probably be writing that instead of writing this blog post…positive procrastination?) is due on Monday.

Despite the workload, I’m having a blast. Still, I’m looking forward to an uneventful spring break (after the Public Policy Challenge, of course) and the long bike ride I plan to take on March 18…eight days and counting.

*Don’t ask.