Questions

Moria & Vial Refugee Camps (with Movement on the Ground)

• "How do we keep the roof of these tents from sinking?"

  Over years of use, the tents that we had set up for residents began to deteriorate. People had to crouch to move around.

• "What do we do about the rodents?"

  Many camp residents complained about the rats and mice that kept them up through the night. I started a mouse-trap program, which blew my mind when we conducted a survey to find out how many rodents each trap had caught.

• "What does working together look like?"

  A big part of MOTG's philosophy is working with, not for, the community. In 2020 I led our tent-building team, and in 2021 managed the resident volunteer program, but I think this is something I'm still learning to get right today.

Microgreens Farm

• "Why are my sunflower seeds always mouldy?"

  I didn't anticipate all of the challenges that came with starting a microgreens farm — heat, water quality, mould, and rodents were big ones!

• "How do I calculate the quality of life improvement that fresh vegetables/nutrition makes, when this is not life-saving?"

  Cost-effectiveness metrics often revolve around things like lives-saved per dollar or disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), which my project did not map easily onto.

• "Is the refugee situation in Greece a political issue or a humanitarian one?"

  It is disheartening when someone's hardship is a political choice.

Climate Strategy at People's Courage International

• "How could blended crop insurance be accessible to agricultural workers in Southeast Asia?"

  I hypothesised that the only way to make crop insurance accessible for smallholder farmers was to bundle it with loan programs. Not a novel idea, but the running thesis I worked with!

• "How do we keep rats off the rice farms?"

  Almost 20% of all pre-harvest rice in Indonesia is consumed by rats, and climate change is making this worse.

Global Development Incubator Internship

• "What are refugee skilling programs in East Africa missing?"

  Many programs exist to provide refugees with skills, but this does not necessarily translate to jobs. Many end up with the same over-saturated skillset (e.g., tailoring, barbering). We hypothesised that more market-informed skilling was essential.

• "How do I get the goat out of my hut?"

  In the course of my fieldwork I stayed in my friend Aaron's village in Apac, Uganda. When it rained, the animals were inclined to take shelter in my hut, which I really should have been kinder about... because as an act of revenge for kicking it out, one goat collapsed my mosquito net and pooped on my mattress.

Military Service

• "How do we get out of this jungle?"

  On more than one occasion, I found myself responsible for getting my Tango lost on navigation exercises.

• "How can we get more soldiers to clear their fitness requirements?"

  I designed incentive programs to foster friendly competition between platoons and encourage our recruits to train harder.

Card Game Design

• "What does it take to go viral?"

  I was told by card game companies I approached that in today's market, virality is a pre-requisite for sales. I then travelled across the US and pitched my game on college campuses with little (online) success.

• "Do any social deception games exist where one's role is uncertain?"

  I think this could be a really cool concept!