TKS Session 21: WBP: Hunger + Velocity Session 11

Today we took a break from all the technical sessions we’ve been having for the past month and looked more at how to solve the world’s biggest problems. For the velocity session today, we looked at the importance of reaching out to people, how to make connections, and what good emails look like. We then discussed the MotW, helpfulness. The goal was to try and find ways to be helpful every day this week. I tried to be a little more helpful with my friends by doing things like helping some of them understand the math we did in class, taking time to listen to their problems, being positive/supportive in situations where they didn’t believe in themselves, offer my help to take the computers back to the carts for my teachers, and other little things like that. Helpfulness is such an important mindset because that is the mindset where you are actively trying to make the world better and easier for others. You are trying to put off positive energy and make everyone feel more happier and pleasant. Helpfulness is the action that benefits both you and the person you are being helpful to. The importance of this mindset is that something as simple as helping my teachers by putting the computers away can have a great impact on them or simply make that moment easier for them. There is always a win-win scenario after being helpful.

Then, for the actual session, we reviewed a MotW from earlier sessions, unconventional thinking, as a reminder that in order to achieve unconventional outcomes, you have to do unconventional things and take an unconventional path. If you embody an unconventional thinking mindset, you may be called crazy or controversial, because you are doing things that stray from what the conventional thing is. People might avoid having an unconventional mindset because they have the fear of being called crazy or controversial, but that craziness or that unpopular opinion may be necessary to be a successful innovator, someone who can think beyond the status quo and the way things are, but instead think about what things could be.

We then got into the bulk of our session, looking at how to solve the world’s biggest problems, by using hunger as the target problem for today. We started by looking at some of the big obstacles that cause world hunger. There were three main buckets that needed to be targeted in order to come close to solving the problem:

1. Cost

2. Nutrition

3. Distribution

Whenever you are looking to solve a huge problem, you need to make it more specific than an overarching topic like “cost” for example. You need to create a problem statement. Your problem statement needs to include 3 things in order for it to be attainable to solve it:

1. Geographically bound: Where in the world is this problem?

2. Specific: What is causing the problem?

3. Quantifiable: What is the specific problem, who/what is getting affected, statistics

Your problem statement can then connect to a larger overarching global problem, like hunger. Breaking down these bigger problems into specific problem statements makes it easier to solve one problem at a time, contributing to getting steps closer to solving the bigger problem. For our activity, we created a flow chart analyzing the problems a specific country of our choosing is facing relating to the overall hunger problem. Then, we would take what we learned about the problems the country is facing that contribute to the hunger crisis and create a specific problem statement that focuses on one of the obstacles we found. The flow chart we created though had the problem where we did overall research on world hunger, and then we picked a location, rather than picking a location from the start. Here is the flow chart we made:

After making the flow chart and doing more research on some of the problems we found interesting to tackle, we decided to make our problem statement relate to the country Chad. We found that it was facing a lack of consistent rainfall and many droughts, contributing to a rough climate for crops and malnutrition in foods that the citizens consume. We then formulated our problem statement to be:

A severe lack of rainfall (specific) in Chad (geographically bound), receiving 800–1200mm/year (quantifiable), has left nearly 1.7 million people (quantifiable) across all 23 provinces (geographically bound) facing extreme hunger, as crop failures and the loss of livestock have created widespread food shortages (specific).

We then had to create a maximum 3-slide presentation.

Slide one would feature our problem statement.

Slide two would dive deeper into the importance of the problem and its effects.

Slide three would then show our solution to our problem statement.

The problems with there not being consistent rainfall in Chad as well as the recurring droughts are that the soil lacks the required nutritional minerals to properly grow crops, as well as it creates the obstacle to cultivating the usable hectares of land Chad has to grow more crops in quantity. The solution is to implement drought-resistant crops that can grow in Chad’s harsh climate and soil while still meeting the nutritional needs of the people. The crops are well-adapted to the poor enrichment of the soil and the lack of moisture that is present in the environment, so they will still grow in full. To implement this, we would partner with organizations such as ICRISAT and FAO to provide these crops to Chad and start planting them throughout the suitable hectares for agriculture in replacement of their current crops. Over the course of a 2-year implementation plan of the partnerships, R&D, production and distribution of seeds, as well as pilot testing, would, on estimate, yield enough crops to feed around 5 million people, which is more than enough to cover the current hunger needs of Chad. Here is our presentation:

While this entire process wasn’t perfect, it did shed light on how to break down larger problems and turn them into specific attainable goals that, once multiple of these goals are met, add up to create a meaningful impact toward solving a much larger problem. I really enjoyed today’s session and can’t wait for more of them! Also, be on the lookout for my monthly newsletter sometime this week to see what I’ve been up to during the month of January!