Author: Jeffrey D.Sachs
Publisher: Penguin Press
Publication date: October 1, 2006
http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/endofpoverty/

Last weekend I finished reading this book and watched Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, all in the span of 24 hours. Thoughts of global warming, the threat of a permanently altered planet, and extreme poverty killing thousands every day were swimming in my mind. While I felt a sense of urgency, I also felt conflicted. Because it’s hard to feel urgent about both. In fact, history shows it’s hard for the US government to give urgent attention to more than one crisis at a time. So what to do in the face of such cultural monsters?

Interestingly, and perhaps the deeper cause of turmoil, author Jeff Sachs lauds the industry that the film Inconvenient Truth condemns for polluting our planet. And I fear they’re both right. Industrialization and widespread globalization are contributing to global warming, especially as previously agrarian laborers move to cities and create more epicenters of activity. Working in more skilled jobs (industries that are often culprits of polluting), these laborers eventually purchase cars and add to the carbon dioxide the human race collectively emits. And yet, this is a success story. A human being has climbed out of extreme poverty and, as their children grow, and their grandchildren are born, the generations that follow him will enter the world on a higher rung of the the socioeconomic ladder. Further removed from the extreme poverty that afflicted their ancestors.

In fact, a ladder is the analogy Sachs uses most to describe extreme poverty and its escape. He explains that people living in extreme poverty can’t grasp even the bottom rung of the ladder. They don’t have the basic necessities to sustain life: food, clean water, shelter. Without basic sustenance, it’s impossible to pursue education or consider means of income beyond than subsistence agriculture.

Sachs cites Malawi as an example of the “the perfect storm” of extreme poverty. All of these characteristics culminate, compounded by AIDS and Malaria epidemics, into a “horrific maelstrom.” And unfortunately, “the world community has so far displayed a fair bit of hand-wringing and even some high-minded rhetoric, but precious little help.”

“Currently, more than eight million people around the world die each year because they are too poor to stay alive.” Sachs gives us the newspaper headline that we will probably never see: More than 20,000 people died yesterday because they couldn’t afford the basic necessities required for human life.

The situation Sachs addresses in The End of Poverty is a tragedy that’s occurring as I write this review. It was a crisis when I got up this morning. And as you poured your coffee in whatever corner of the world you’re reading this, people were dying of hunger, thirst, and disease. By the thousands, every day. This is not an impending crisis; we’re in the climax. Though a grave problem and one of great consequence, global warming is still mounting. Nature is showing the effects, and scientists are predicting the consequences that will be felt by the human race in as little as ten years. This is not a trivial matter or one to be minimized. But if the United States is to mount an immediate offense against one crisis or the other, I think millions dying senseless deaths takes precedent.

Is there hope? Sure. If Macroeconomics 101 put you to sleep in college, give Sachs a second chance to teach you some basic economics. Does the name John Maynard Keynes ring a bell? Keynes wrote around the time of the Great Depression and fathered Keynesian theory, which asserts that both the state and private enterprise play important roles in developing a healthy economy fit for long-term growth. Important for Sachs is Keynes’ emphasis on scientific and technological innovation as a means to long-term economics growth. He predicted this kind of growth even in the throws of the Great Depression in America. His predictions came true. Technological and scientific innovation has for the most part eradicated extreme poverty in America and the rest of the developed world. We’re not talking about computers or the Internet, either. Scientific and technological advancements as basic as paved roads, which allow goods and services to be traded freely and with ease, are impediments to economic stability and growth in underdeveloped nations in Asia and in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The remedy? Unfortunately there’s no one-size-fits-most panacea. Sachs emphasizes the importance of grassroots programs and small-scale initiatives tailored to specific needs and demographics. The rest of the world often imagines Africans as one ethnicity, facing similar challenges. When the truth is, more than a dozen countries make up Sub-Saharan Africa, an area widely-regarded as one of the most needy. It’s no surprise that small-scale operations aimed at specific countries, even specific towns or subsets of towns, are most effective.

And this is where open source comes in. Specialized aid efforts, targeted at specific regions, using the expertise and know-how of those involved. Now imagine all these how-tos and that information gathered by aid organizations is documented publicly, available for mass distribution. Even mass reproduction.

When knowledge is shared, and intricate mistakes and successes are made public, the world can take real steps toward the end of poverty.

What is possible

The primary goal of Red Hat High, in this stage of its development, has been to prove that kids can do amazing things with free software. So how did we do? What did we prove?

We can’t showcase the work of every single camper from this year’s Red Hat High, but I’d like to highlight the work of two students in particular.

Sid V.: Heart Rush (download the ogg audio)

Heart Rush was created by Sid V. using Audacity, Hydrogen, and content from freesound and ccMixter. First came the beat: Sid played with a number of beat patterns in Hydrogen, then mixed them down to .wav format. Then came the remix content; Sid searched for cool stuff that matched the beats per minute of his Hydrogen beats. Then he put it all together in Audacity. Have a listen, and remember: Sid is 13 years old.

Cody L.: Dog Meets Hydrant (download the ogg video)

Dog Meets Hydrant (my name, not his) was created by Cody L. using Blender and some of the pre-formed models provided by the Blender instructors. Cody focused on the dog’s fur (textures), the dog’s ambling gait (movement), and the dog’s… relief (fluids). It’s a classic story, told only the way a 14-year-old can tell it. See for yourself.

And remember: these are works created by kids who, a week before, had never touched any of this software. Let there be no doubt–kids are clearly capable of learning how to use free software to great effect.

What’s next?

What’s next for Red Hat High?

As exciting as this week was, for counselors and teachers and kids and parents, it was still only a program for fifty kids. How do we build a program that will help fifty thousand kids?

The very first goal of Red Hat High was to prove that the concept was valuable–to prove that, if you give free software to kids and say “go create something insanely great,” they will do exactly that. I hope that we’ve accomplished that goal.

We’ve still got a lot to learn, though, and a lot more to do. Here are some ideas on how we can go further.

Focus on consumable curricula.

I’ve spent a lot of time talking with teachers over the last few years, and whenever I talk about the great things that free software can do for them and for their kids, the response is often something like this: “that sounds great, but I don’t even know where to start, and I don’t have much time.”

It’s not only possible, but critically important, to produce progressive, project-based curricula around free software tools, in simplified and easily consumable forms. There are a lot of free software tutorials out there; Nicu Buculei’s Inkscape tutorials are among the best, for example, and we drew heavily from these for Red Hat High. But wading through them can be a daunting task for the typically time-starved teacher, especially when many of these lessons are written by well-meaning power users who don’t realize how much they already know.

A strong community of teachers and free software enthusiasts should be able to develop, validate, and license simple lesson plans, with the explicit goal of teaching kids to do stuff that is both cool and immediately useful. It’s my hope that Red Hat High can serve as a model for that development.

Bring teachers into the process.

If I have one regret about this year’s Red Hat High, it’s that teachers didn’t have the opportunity to participate more directly. Of the fifty kids who participated in Red Hat High this year, roughly a half-dozen had teachers for parents. Those parents were among the most excited and engaged parents in the whole group.

It was great to have such enthusiastic supporters of free software at Red Hat High, and the kids learned a lot from them. Ultimately, though, the best, most experiences, most motivated teachers will be actual teachers–assuming, of course, that we can provide them with the subject matter knowledge. Which is why curricula come first.

When these curricula are more well-developed, it will then be time to reach out to the teachers. Their time is constrained, though, and it’s important to understand which levers to pull to liberate that time. Here’s a key lever: professional development. Teachers can directly increase their earning potential through professional development, and in many school districts, those development opportunities are actively funded. Providing these opportunities to teachers, in continuing education programs that reward them more directly for participation, could be just the thing to spur those teachers who have the interest, but not the time, to learn more about free software.

Find targets of opportunity.

Here’s the exciting thing about working with free software: anywhere there are underutilized computers, there are opportunities to teach.

Go into your local library. It’s very likely that there are computers there, of a recent enough vintage so that could comfortably run a lot of great free software. It’s also quite possible that those computers sit, unused, for long stretches of time. That’s an opportunity.

Or check out programs like Computer Clubhouse Network. Sponsored by Intel, the Boston Museum of Science, and the MIT Media Lab, its mission is to provide a creative and safe after-school learning environment for underserved kids to learn technology–a perfect fit for the Red Hat High mission. There are over a hundred branches of Computer Clubhouse worldwide. That’s another opportunity.

There’s no shortage of opportunities to use free software to do good. There may be a shortage of knowledge, but that’s a problem that can and should be fixed.

Find people who care enough to do something.

None of this happens without the right people. If you are a passionate user of free software, and if you care about teaching kids, then you can make a difference. Visit the Red Hat High advisors list. Read the archives, and if the thought of helping appeals to you, join the list and introduce yourself. We can use all the hands we can get.

It was a great Red Hat High 2007. But Red Hat High 2008 is only 11 1/2 months away, and it’s time to get back to work.

  Episode 04 takes us on location in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Where the first batches of XOs have been delivered and deployed. Meet the teachers using the laptops in the classroom. Where besides doing daily assignments on the machines, some students have already learned programing. Local culture has permeated the project, and as a veteran school principal explains, an improved education is set to equip a new generation of Brazilian citizens. Watch past episodes.

Iraq war veteran and Marine reservist, Jonathan Kuniholm, lost his arm to an IED (improvised explosive device). Kuniholm returned home to the US and was fitted with a prosthetic arm. But he soon became dissatisfied with the mobility and range of motion the prosthesis allowed. Like all who love to tinker, his frustration led to invention. And Tackle Design was born.

As IEDs are used more by insurgents, more service men and women come home amputees. Kuniholm reasons they deserve high-quality, low-cost prosthetics that match pre-injury limb function as closely as possible. Partnering with three college friends, Kuniholm and company set out to give them just that.

Learn more after you listen: Read the Wired article.

Duration:	07:45
Get the audio:	[OGG] [MP3]

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - No Derivatives 3.0 License

Build on past work.
Most sustainable housing projects are new builds, many of which are costly. That is until Toronto-based Work Worth Doing, a hybrid design studio and think tank sought a different approach. Work Worth Doing created Now House™, a project whose mission is to improve existing houses. Now House will turn a 60-year-old WWII house into a near zero energy home — one that produces as much energy as it uses. The project will begin with retrofitting one house, then move on to a community of wartime houses, then the plan is to improve a million similar homes within Canada.

This Old House. Can it become even better than new?

Work with the community. Now House’s multi-disciplinary team consists of designers, architects, engineers, homeowners, and sustainable building experts — all collaborating to make sustainability financially accessible and scalable. To begin the design process, the team invited 60 experts in the sustainable building business to an integrated design charrette, a brainstorming session to pitch ideas of how to transform the home.

Open the knowledge.
The goal of Now House is simple. It will empower homeowners and contractors with the knowledge to dramatically improve the energy efficiency of existing homes through a few relatively easy modifications. After the completion of the first house, Now House will release the retrofit design instructions to the public through multiple channels, including the Open Architecture Network. By keeping the knowledge accessible, the Now House team hopes to create a foundation for others to modify the designs to fit their homes.

Now House team.

The Now House collaboration and retrofit yields benefits across a number of areas. The cost can be reasonably managed and financed by the owners of these wartime homes. Starting immediately, the near-zero energy cost protects homeowners from increasing energy costs, providing an annual net savings of about $1000. GHG emissions are reduced by 5.4 tonnes per house annually. If the one million wartime houses across Canada were Now Houses, the reduction is even more impressive, accounting for 3% of Canada’s Kyoto Protocol goals. Indoor and outdoor air quality improves, leading to healthier homes and communities.

Will democratizing sustainable housing be enough to change Canada? It’s too early to tell, but it’s a start. Open source makes sustainability designs available. Nobody owns it, everybody can use it, and anybody can improve it. The Now House is one project created by one small team. What would happen if one hundred teams created projects like this? Stay tuned to see how collaboration can turn a country around…

Stay tuned for part II.

This is actually the second summer we’ve run Red Hat High. We learned a lot of lessons in our first year. The biggest lesson: We’re a technology company, not a summer camp company. It took the truly heroic efforts of many Red Hat employees to make the camp happen last time, and it was clear that we wouldn’t be able to duplicate those feats. Thus, our partnership with Science House at N. C. State.

They run summer science camps for a living, and they know their business. In preparation for this week, the nice folks at Science House arranged the counselors, the dorm rooms, the meals, the off-hours entertainment, the access to student health, the transportation, and lots of other details that we wouldn’t have even considered. Which has allowed us to focus on the part that we can feel like we can be good at: introducing technology to kids.

Tim and John (l. to r. at the front) demonstrate Inkscape.

It seems to be generally accepted that successful business people feel passionately about what they do for a living. Personally, I find this to be true; the most successful people I know tend to work long hours, and frequently they spend their “downtime” talking and thinking about work as well. Not because they’re trying to be “a success”, per se, but because they love what they do, and the hard work is a byproduct of that.

Red Hat High, therefore, is a program that seeks to connect kids with technologies that will help to develop those kinds of creative passions. Inkscape, Gimp, Audacity, Blender, Javascript–these are all tools that allow kids to be immediately creative, with a little bit of help.

So our first goal, months ago, was to recruit passionate users of all of these pieces of software, knowledgeable users who could pass their enthusiasm on. Some we asked to develop and teach curricula; some we asked to speak about their unique experiences using the software in the real world; and some we asked to observe, so that they could help us expand the Red Hat High curriculum beyond this local camp.

The Curricula

Máirín helps students with Inkscape.

Máirín Duffy, of Fedora and GNOME art fame, led the development of the Digital Illustration curriculum, based around Inkscape. The project: create a web comic.

Neil helps campers refine their widget ideas.

Neil Horman, Red Hat software engineer, led the development of the Web Programming curriculum, based around Javascript and Google gadgets. The project: build a basic Google gadget.

Groo works with a future animator in the Blender lab.

Jason “Groo” van Gumster, an independent animator and designer based in Richmond, Virginia, led the development of the Digital Animation curriculum, based around Blender. He was assisted by Sam Brubaker and Jonathan Williamson. The project: create a ten-second animation sequence.

Eileen addresses her class, and that’s Jef in the foreground.

Eileen Matis Wong, Red Hat designer, photographer, and former professor, led the development of the Digital Darkroom curriculum, based around Gimp. She was assisted by new Fedora Project Board member Dr. Jef Spaleta, who came all the way from Fairbanks, Alaska to observe and assist. The project: create an online photo album.

Adrian plays the hand trumpet.

Adrian Likins, Red Hat software engineer and musician, led the development of the Digital Audio curriculum, based around Audacity and other free audio software. He was assisted by Steve Salevan, music director for WKNC, the award-winning college radio station for N.C. State University. The project: produce two minutes of original audio content for a Red Hat High radio show.

The Special Guests

On Monday night, John Bintz and Tim Daniels, two experienced digital cartoonists and Inkscape developers, showed all of the campers how they used Inkscape in their own work. Tim drew a comic using Inkscape, in real-time on a Wacom tablet, while John described what he was doing. First they sketched the basic outline in blue, then they inked. Within minutes, and with some advice from the audience, the scene was complete.

Bassam assists a student in the Blender lab.

Then Tim showed them how painful it was to trace and fill a curved shape by hand. He drew in point after point after point and connected them all, and complained the whole time about how slow the process was. Then showed them a nifty tool in Inkscape to perform that task automatically… and then pointed out that he, himself, had written that tool. It was a real lightbulb moment for the kids.

On Tuesday night, kids and instructors were treated to a screening of the groundbreaking open source animated movie Elephant’s Dream, by the director himself, Bassam Kurdali. Bassam made the trip down to Raleigh to show his movie, and to tell the kids the story of how Blender became open source. Some of the kids weren’t too clear on the movie’s storyline, but everyone was amazed by the effects, and the kids in the animation track besieged Bassam with questions.

The Trip to Digital Circus

Campers exit Red Hat HQ.

On Wednesday afternoon, we took the campers to visit the School of Communication Arts at Digital Circus. The campers toured the facility, visited some classrooms, and talked with college kids who were doing projects very similar to what the kids in Red Hat High have been working on all week.

When the kids reached the 3D Animation classroom, they were very impressed by Maya — until one of them asked for a free copy. “A full license of Maya costs $7000,” the instructor said, which elicited an outraged reaction from the kids. “But Blender is free!” they cried in unison.

Then the teacher started to show them some of the things Maya could do, and he was clearly surprised at the kids’ clueful responses. “These are vertices,” he’d say, and then they’d say “yeah, we’ve done that.” “Okay, this is texturing.” “Yeah, we’ve done that too.” “Okay, this is FK and IK.” “Yeah, forward and inverse kinematics. We’ve learned about that.”

For me, that moment has been the highlight of Red Hat High so far: standing there behind these kids, watching the professor become more and more frustrated at his inability to stump them — when they’d been in class for three days. It’s incredible what 13-year-olds can accomplish when you put them to the test.

Next time: Graduation Day, and where we go from here.

More information

• See all the photos from Red Hat High.
• Red Hat High wiki
• Inkscape
• Gimp
• Audacity
• Blender