December 22, 2004
******************
A: FROM MENTOR NANCY WHITE IN WA
A quick look to the "two thirds" world will offer many environmental problems that may benefit from a technological system... it just takes the kind of creative thinking you and your group have. Here are some examples:

1. How to have internet in areas with no land line phones and no satellite dishes
2. How to deal with the huge amount of trash generated by water bottles in an area with no safe tap water to drink (they have to boil or drink bottled water)
3. Creative ways to deal with erosion caused by deforestation, particularly in urban and just-outside-urban areas (many of these places have no suburbs. Things just peter out)
4. Ways to train more people how to administer HIV medication - in South Africa they now have the medication, but insufficient trained medical personnel to administer. What sort of technical solution might help in educating the potential personnel?

I could go on forever. I guess the point is, sometimes here in the US we are isolated from the large and pervasive problems that exist elsewhere.