EngStarter - Engineering for Social Good

While billions of dollars are invested in technologies to support smallholder farmers, these tools require longer training and higher maintenance costs. Furthermore, reports show that communities experience a huge delay to access the most up-to-date agriculture technologies, leading to adoption of obsolete devices and ineffective equipment. We have a solution: EngStarter. EngStarter accelerates the adoption and diffusion of cutting-edge digital agriculture in fragile communities through engineering education and easy-to-apply kits. It is technology education and empowerment that users in fragile settings need, like the communities we work with in Kenyan and Jordanian refugee camps. This kit is the first truly native engineering education to empower smallholder farmers. Engstarter not only puts the power of electronics in farmers’ hands, but also offers a solution preps novice users to test ideas in no time, applying combinations like hydroponics, weather station, and over 10 different applications depending on the need locals identify. 

Food security is a worldwide problem that affect 800 million of people and smallholder farmers are the main player to provide food for families living in undeserved communities. However, millions of smallholder farmers with agriculture knowledge live in displaced communities but lack contextually aligned technology tools to apply it in their crop. Existing technology solutions require longer training and higher maintenance cost. Sometimes, even cash-based solutions are perceived as a temporary solution, but Word Food Program recognized that it is important to provide more sustainable solutions in order to achieve a meaningful impact in those communities.

In the short term, we will reach smallholder farmers living in two major refugee camps in two different regions—Kakuma, Kenya and Azraq, Jordan—by recruiting them through existing local partners. In order to understand their needs and accelerate our impact in their community, we rely on current projects that we are conducting in those communities and years of experience in industry and education that will translate our findings into a solid and realistic engineering kit, the EngStarter. We are currently running a pilot program in the Azraq camp and Kakuma camp, focused on the teaching application of Arduinos and sensors related to solar energy. To do so, our group collaborates closely with local partners, and we coordinate with international and local humanitarian organizations to understand their needs. Students’ feedback on their needs and challenges interacting with pilot versions of the kit have guided the creation of EngStarter from the ground up. We also have two years of experience working with former street youth in Eldoret, Kenya, with additional plans to implement the innovative kit in Kalobeyei integrated settlement (Turkana County, Kenya).

EngStarter is an open-source hardware educational kit designed to provide students with necessary tools, instruments, and pedagogies to build real-world solutions to their problems while learning fundamental concepts of electronic circuits, programming, and internet of things (IoT). By using a single kit, users can build +10 different applications that will enable them to test ideas within the fragile context where they are living.

The kit uses low-power components and different power sources. While the system uses power from the electrical grid, the system also operates with battery power for the computer module and controller unit to provide up to 4h autonomy at its maximum performance.

The intuitive and magnetic design (color-coded) allows users to combine different sensors in a way that best attend their needs, and users are ready to test their ideas in the field. The controller unit is the unit that monitors and control all tasks that need to be carried out. The actuators are pumps and motors that respond to commands. The communication protocol enables the system to connect with a mobile application via Bluetooth, which gives monitoring and controlling capability through a cell phone and internet connection.

The EngStarter has a set of modules, sensors, actuators, and communication modules on a compact storage case. As an example, the robust communication framework enables integrated system management with sensors by using functionalities that enable real-time processing and monitoring of environmental variables. Each sensor has unique ways of responding to signals and outputs that can be measured by the controller unit and the data acquisition system. It presents different levels of precision, accuracy, and resolution.

Given the educational purpose of the kit, sensors do not require calibration, and their functionalities can be tested using in-built libraries and simplified connections between sensors and the main controller. This kit also includes a series of actuators that enable students to build different types of applications that require different types of control. The existing actuators in the kit are a solenoid valve, water pump, DC motor, servo motor, and a stepper motor. The data acquisition unit consists of a module for measuring and storing physical or electrical signals such as voltage, current, temperature, light, soil moisture, and motion. The data acquisition module enables users to make data-driven decisions and inform potential testing procedures and data analysis during the prototyping stage.

The EngStarter emerged as one way to capitalize our research findings as an education lab and spread it across the world through an effective and practical kit. The EngStarter is a multi-purpose, compact, all-in-one prototyping system designed specifically for use in fragile communities by smallholder farmers. The kit has shields that include microcontroller,  shields, 30+ sensor modules, mobile and internet integration module packaged together with instructions, textbooks, and tutorials that can provide offline support to users with limited or no access to the internet. Together, these components and devices enable users to create and test a variety of ideas in a short time. We also provide an online platform for engineering content, curriculum, and activities. Our mission is to be the most integrated engineering education platform for fragile communities and provide teaching tools for tech enthusiasts living in poor regions and refugee camps to turn ideas into products, by providing open technology and social empowerment through education. We are rethinking education in poor regions from the bottom up. Help us build the education needed for the people in fragile settings - the first truly native engineering education for emergencies. 

The EngStarter is a multi-purpose prototyping system.  The kit has shields that include microcontrollers, 30+ sensor modules, mobile and internet integration module. EngStarter is an educational kit for smallholders in fragile settings that enable them to build solutions to their local needs through a DIY approach. It comes with a collection of electronic engineering design curriculum, coursework, and experiments. The EngStarter enables students to build solutions related to the farming application by addressing three main direct applications to farming: (1) water control management, (2) farming, and (3) energy saving. The water system delivers real-time information on water access and quality. It can also point out the origin of the toxins that are affecting the water quality and can be installed on water tanks to yield data on water consumption. The farming solution brings digital and technology tools to build a climate-resilient farming solution by installing different sensors in small farms to help to monitor soil moisture, humidity, temperature, and water resources. This solution can point biological soil properties and environmental parameters that will help smallholder farms to manage and take care of plants and small-scale solutions addressed for planting and food security. The energy-saving solution helps to solve the waste of energy by using technology to help monitor and detect human presence, light, and temperature. 

More than building solutions for those who live in fragile communities, we add them into our development process. That means that we give a voice to the population that live in marginalized places and we use our technical knowledge to translate their needs into a product that has direct impact in their lives. Technology itself does not solve problems. It is necessary to include human factors and community within the development process. This is where our project relies upon. Our kit offers a number a number of ways where community can be considered through a collaborative process where users, teachers, students, and smallholder farmers can have access to an open-community and platform where they have freedom and agency. This philosophy emerged out of 3 years of experience working in refugee camps and developing in-depth qualitative research where we investigate the role of technology in diverse communities, and our findings essentially demonstrate that people and community are the most important element to change a community. Our kit is an effective response to their needs.

Over the last three years, our pilot study has impacted +50 students both in Jordan and Kenya that attended a training that provided skills to use the kit. But, with investment in the development of our innovation, our target population could increase four-fold to ~200 students in just one year. Further, we plan to scale up to 4 sites (including Lebanon and urban Kenya) where our partners are currently deploying additional programs for displaced and fragile communities. Given the existing impact achieved so far and the current potential discovered in our initial market research, we expect to impact +5000 smallholder farmers indirectly around the world within the next 3 years. The EngStarter is designed to ideally support learning in a refugee context and addresses, in particular, the needs of refugees in more remote camp settings like Azraq and Kakuma, but is scalable to the needs for technical solutions (e.g., small scale kitchen gardening) in fragile urban settings as well. The first and primary target population is the pipeline of students in the Azraq camp and Kakuma camp who have already shown interest in the application and opportunities to use the EngStarter kit. 

Our initial goal is to create a meaningful and sustainable impact in these fragile communities. Thus, we worked to understand their needs and potential application of our kit to the market by interviewing displaced population, stakeholders, and potential customers. Given the existing data available today, we calculated that our product has the potential to serve hundreds of smallholder farmer organizations around the world within the next year. However, our impact can be much higher. Within the next five years, we expect to consolidate our kit as the first electronic and educational kit developed for and with people in marginalized places. That means that our open-hardware and collaborative approach open doors for the community to use our kit towards their needs by purchasing it directly from us or working with partners to distribute our kit across the world through universities acting in marginalized places, humanitarian agencies willing to invest in contextually aligned technology tools, or even hobbyist searching for solutions that will allow them to convert ideas into real-world solutions.

The main challenges that we anticipate are:

• Economic: Costs involving salary (opportunity cost of lost wages), transportation, and infrastructure to adopt our initial kits for field testing as well as buying equipment or tools in large quantity to enable us to reduce the cost of our kits and manufacturing parts to achieve higher quality standards 
• Social: Prior access to similar technologies and cultural differences pose challenges related to equity and social justice in users; interests, and uptake of the engineering lab kits. Local institutions, organizations, and humanitarian agencies play a significant role to foster the adoption of these kits by creating culturally responsive approaches to adopt our kits.  
• Political: Internal regulations hamper or enable users to take advantage of educational opportunities or access careers. The policy contexts for technical workers, for engineers, and engineering entrepreneurs differ even between countries.

Economic barrier: We address this by the kit’s portability allowing for evening/flexible study times and convenient learning spaces when resources and sites are limited in a community. We also plan to work with local partners and collaborators to provide an environment to support the cost reduction and technical support when specific parts or components are needed at a fair price.

Social Barrier: We address this by developing multilingual course materials, video demonstrations embedded in the kits, and easily accessible color coding and visuals on the learning materials.

Political Barrier: By preparing students with adaptable, hands-on technical skills demanded in multiple sectors, as well as entrepreneurial capabilities, we hope to support them in finding pathways within existing constraints. We also work closely with local partners to support the development and implementation of our course. 

We are a social enterprise that was created in order to capitalize and translate the research findings from our research lab into a kit that people in fragile communities need. Currently, we are embedded at Purdue University as a social enterprise and developing work overseas in Kenya and Jordan.

Our current team consists of professors with years of experience in deploying educational programs in marginalized communities, PhD researchers with strong experience in industry and focused in developing this kit as part of their doctoral studies, and students currently living in refugee camps which play a fundamental role to test our kit in the field and provide a realist approach to introduce our kit to marginalized communities. Additionally, we work with local implementing partners that facilitate our access to these communities by creating strategic relationships with humanitarian agencies and other organizations that can also be our potential buyers within one year.

Our project emerged from a real need reported by students and smallholder farmers regarding challenges with existing technology tools available to them. Then, our group composed of a multidisciplinary team with strong experience in education, industry, and marginalized communities, worked together along with people living in refugee camps to develop a kit that respond to real needs. Along with our professional and educational background, we have a research lab dedicated to investigate technology for diverse contexts as part of our engineering department, and our team has been validating our business within the refugee context over the last years.

EngStarter currently has two group partners for development and initial piloting:

• InZone: InZone pioneers innovative approaches to multilingual communication and higher education in communities affected by conflict and crisis. To do so, we design, develop and scientifically validate learner-centered and technology-supported pedagogical models. Our projects are located in three different regions, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, as well as globally.
• CARE (implementation partner): CARE works around the globe to save lives, defeat poverty and achieve social justice. 

Our key partners are humanitarian agencies, business and personal donators, electronic components suppliers, and book editors and printer companies.

Our key activities are: Website support and maintenance, mobile apps and support, customer service (schools, teachers, and users), and marketing in education and humanitarian fairs.

Our key resources are: Licenses and software platform, developers, testers, UX designers, and educators, hardware equipment, code base, and integration facility.

Our value proposition are: Democratize engineering education for emergencies and poor regions, focused on emergencies and adapted to their needs, engineering can be fun an have positive impact in the society at the same time.

Our customer relationship is based on: social Media, online platform available on self-service basis and premium access available along with EngStarter kits, help center with FAQs, mobile chat (WhatsApp),forms on a website, in-site visiting during training, following, and research, and contract with schools.

Our channels are: Online purchase (kits), partnership, and contract.

Our costumers are: Education institutions managing courses in emergencies, NGOs, users that wish to learn electronics and programming with immediate application, and engineering schools.

Our cost structure are: Research and development, developing and maintaining mobile app, software, and electronic circuits, marketing expenses, shipping and on-site visiting.

The EngStarter kit price is of $600. Our traction within the next years consists of selling 3150 kits by 2021. In doing so, we project a gross margin of 962K, 15% net profit, and 13K users growing 10% per month. Our initial plan is based on raising investment to support the deployment and testing phase our prototypes in large scale. Our testing phase also requires multiple interactions which requires additional funding for potential layout and hardware changes in order to guarantee that our product fits the needs in the market. The initial investment needed is calculated to be USD 100K for the first two years. After that, we plan to start to sell our kits to our potential customers by achieving a breakeven point within 3 years after that based on our initial projections. 

We are looking for opportunities to strengthen our network and find additional relevant potential partners to collaborate with in terms of improving our product or opening channels to reach potential markets in remote places. In January 2019, our product was selected as the best idea in the competition Innovate for Refugees [LINK?] and such an opportunity allowed us to implement significant changes in our business model and testing process. By participating in the Solve competition, we expect to achieve get even more exposure and find partners that understand the importance in bringing a solution like EngStarter to fragile communities.

Given the hardware element of our project, we intend to establish partnership with hardware providers (such as Arduino and Sparkfun) and domestic low-income farmer groups.

The EngStarter is a technology tool that emerged as a result of three years of experience in refugee camps. EngStarter is an open-source hardware educational kit designed to provide students with necessary tools, instruments, and educational methodology to build real-world solutions to their problems while learning fundamental concepts of electronic circuits, programming, and internet of things. By reproducing these applications through EngStarter, students can measure environmental variables through sensors attached to the systems, measure circuit efficiency, analyze physical constants, and examine potential applications beyond what is offered in this educational kit. Thus, the EngStarter was designed to help educational practitioners introduce technology tools that support curriculum that is socially driven by demonstrating to students’ different ways that technology can help them to solve local problems and foster sustainability.

The EngStarter can help educators to introduce problem-based learning in refugee camps by using the kit to scaffold important electronic and programming principles and help students to see and understand to what extent sensors and actuators can interact with the physical world. The EngStarter can also serve as a tool for students practicing fundamental engineering concepts while they focus on problems in the society.