Bromeando Duro

We strapped on our boots, and it’s a good thing Noam Angrist and I brought them from the states. Our hostess Ana Ojeda laughed at the idea of me finding size 12 boots in Bluefields. After a brisk 2 mile walk up the stone and mud path to el sitio where the trucks dump the garbage they collect. The four of us myself, Noam, Camila Caballero, and Malika Flanagan got our first glimpse of the working conditions of the women in the collaborative, Luz del Futuro.

Ten women carrying poles with makeshift hooks divide themselves into groups of five around two piles of garbage. They stand on a slurry of mud and garbage about a foot off the ground stabbing and pulling at the piles with their palos. They spread out the pile looking for aluminum cans and plastic bottles that they can get clean.  A woman sees a beer can, she picks it up, taps it against the palo to knock off some of the sticky mixture of paper, mud and who knows what else, that covers everything in the piles, then she throws it into the bag for aluminum and scrap metal. Organic waste, tin cans, and glass bottles are ignored or shoved out of the way. On the surrounding hills is an audience of zopilotes (vultures) silently watching the women, or picking at mortizos in the tracks that the garbage trucks have made in the muddy ground. The dogs on the other hand join the women in digging through the trash as they look for a meal. Every once in a while nature’s silence is broken by small black birds calling to each other.

When we arrived we stood around awkwardly for a bit wondering how to start. Noam and Camila moved towards the near pile, and I walked around to join the second group of women. Malika had cut her toe earlier, and so she became the designated videographer for the day. Margarita (president of Luz del Futuro) told me to use the Bernarda’s palo. Bernarda motioned to me. I took the tool and asked her what I was looking for. She pointed to a couple things that I should pick up, and I began to imitate the dragging motion of the other women. The women began to laugh a little as I struggled at first with the palo and asked Bernarda many questions about what should go into each bag. I began to get the hang of it and it would be quiet for a minute before a women would notice something in the trash and make a comment. The others would laugh and respond in kind. After we had been working for half an hour or so, Bernarda got my attention and told me the names of each of the women. Going around the circle, I repeated everyone’s name 3 or 4 times until I was sure that they would stick, which the women found amusing. Then, I commented that this was good I’d probably remember their names for the next 15 minutes or so eliciting another chuckle from the group. Feeling reasonably comfortable at this point, I asked if the women always laughed this much or it was just me. Bernarda answered, “Bromeamos duro.” I was floored, as I translated in my head, “We joke hard.” Through my laughter, I responded that my goal for the end of the trip would be to understand a few of their jokes.

To be continued later…

Anthony McHugh from Bluefields, Nicaragua on the events of 6/12/13

Tamale Take 2

Hello, everyone! This is Yiping and Coyin here! Today was our second full day here at Tamale and boy did we have a lot of new experiences! My day started off again with the wondrous baa-ing of the goats in our neighborhood (which have been my alarm clock for my time here in Tamale MIRIM CAULI). Afterwards, I wrestled my mosquito bed net in an epic duel in order to get out so I could eat breakfast and do stuff. But yeah! It was an early start today. We woke up around 7AM, got dressed and the usual stuff, before eating a breakfast of Ghanaian peanut butter and bread (and oatmeal too for Coyin)! Then, we chilled for a little bit and met some more Pure Home Water employees! Including PHW’s housemaid, Zainab. She’s this bubbly young women, who has a cell phone, can speak English (and the local language), who is Muslim, who is currently studying to be a school teacher, who has been working with Susan since 2007, and who got married last year (lucky guy . Coyin talked last time about finding someone who could help us carry on the project after we leave, and we think Zainab could be a potential match! More updates on that later though.

After our meeting with Zainab, we went on a tour of Susan’s ceramic water filter factory (Pure Home Water’s factory). We saw the place where the women have to get water everyday, and it was quite an eye opening experience. We are approaching the end of the dry season, so the little pond was almost completely dried up. The water was opaque and there was feces littering the pond’s surroundings. And this is the water the community of 800 people use. Water is so precious; I’ve always known that, but today, I gained a newfound understanding of exactly how precious a resource water actually is.

We also toured the eco-san latrine and the physical factory and we met all the women! However, they spoke no English and we did not speak their native tongue either (a language called Dagbani). For the first time in my life, I’ve felt a block due to the language barrier. But we made due with our sign language and smiles and there was also this SUPER CUTE BABY. However, the baby was scared of us and cry whenever we approached him. And then the baby would smile and wave us byebye because he wanted us to leave. But whenever we got close to the baby, he would start crying again. But other cool things: we had a legit Ghanaian meal cooked by the PHW cook. It was a rice/bean dish with a fish/tomato paste, and it was yuuummmmmyyyyyyyyy. We then went to hang out with the women, take pictures, and tried to learn as much of their language as possible. For example, we learned that ayule means “What is your name?”

In the afternoon, we had a community meeting in Taha (the village). All the elders there were….elderly. But they were nice. We didn’t know that in the Islam religion (Taha is a Muslim village), it was inappropriate for females to shake a male’s hand or something like that. So that was why everyone started laughing at us when we started shaking people’s hand. We were so embarrassed but good thing the elders didn’t take it too seriously. They had a good laugh and were quite understanding. We were there because one of the fellow students, John, was there to build them a toilet block and he wanted community input on what the toilet block would be like. It took them legit 15 minutes to decide!! SO EFFICIENT!! One of Susan’s friends traveling with us joked that in America, that decision would take 3 months. But yeah, then we went to the chief’s house and the chief gave us kola nuts so now we will live forever (lol jk but they are cool looking nuts).

We then went into town and boy, was driving crazy. But I bought a pair of sneakers by the roadside (I don’t think I got ripped off TOO much), and we drove around town with a PHW employee (Michael aka our Ghanaian father). We then had dinner (cooked by Daniel), and it was some legit fried chicken!! Then, the power went out (woohoo flashlights #prepared). So Michael then took us out to his sister’s place called club savanna with some flashing Christmas lights and lots of plastic tables/chairs set up outside. Coyin and I had gizzard on a stick, which was really delicious. It tasted like the ones I ate back home in China in my youth!

The power came back on when we got back to the house, and all of us started trying to get our new wifi-router to work (which is why we are able to post this in the first place)!! It worked. We checked email. Exciting stuff. Then we called it a night.

Overall, it was an awesome day. I got to see a whole new world. The Ghanaian people are so kind it’s unbelievable sometimes. Michael (PHW employee) left 70 cedis with a random kiosk counter guy whom he never met before to give to his daughter in 2 hours time, and the daughter actually managed to pick up the money in time. And then when we were driving to town, two random women jumped onto the back of our truck, and when I asked Michael if he knew them, he said no. They just want a ride into town, that’s all: normal stuff.

Coyin and I are doing well. Project wise, we are going to go hunt for Black Soldier Flies while we wait for our fly attracting buckets to attract them. So fingers crossed!

Lots of Love,

Yiping (on behalf of Coyin too)

Wunam (on behalf of Wunpini too)

P.S. Those are our official Dagbani names given to us by the community

Chill day in Tamale

(I’ve really got to be more creative with my blog post titles, so far it has just been __ day in ___ ………. very smart Coyin, very smart.)

Thursday – June 6, 2013

After the long journey last night, we decided to spend today in a more “chillax” way! Yiping and I gladly had our 12-hour sleep for the night, considering we barely slept well at all for the past four days due to non-stop traveling.

We woke up at 10:30AM, Yiping due to the non-stop baa-ing of the goats/lambs (HELLO MIRIM WE MISS CAULI HERE), and me probably just after a good night’s rest. We then got directions from Daniel, the house manager for Pure Home Water, and walked around the neighborhood. He pointed us to MyComm, the local Internet café, for Internet access and Relax Lodge, one of the local hotels/lodges for food. But food prices at the latter were a bit pricey, so we only had two lemon-flavored Fanta. The Internet café was sort of run down with slow computers, but it minimally served our purpose, so that was good. It was quite reasonably priced too, only 30 Pesewas for 15 minutes, 60 Pesewas for 30 minutes, 80 for 45 minutes, and a Cedi for an hour.

Lunch at home then was Ghanaian peanut butter and Ghanaian honey homemade sandwiches. The peanut butter came in a big, or rather huge blue tub, and the Ghanaia honey was contained in this semi-sketchy plastic bottle. We also made fruit salad as a healthy option. Thanks to Aditi / Carolina / Marisa’s training on me when making the two watermelon salads a week before that, I think I actually managed cutting up this HUGE Ghanaian watermelon pretty well. There is this particular type of watermelon here with no stripes!!!! I thought they were some giant melons at first, okay I guess they sort of still are melons. The mangoes here are also HUGE. And so sweet too. Oh dear they are the best mangoes I have ever had.

I think the rest of the day just passed by with us planning things, talking to Susan, and making changes to our project plans for the next few days. Then it was dinner time! We made tomato paste mixed vegetables with rice, and beans, but then towards the end of the dinner Bhavna brought us this REALLY YUMMY Indian yellow rice and some sort of spicy cake-like thing. Delicious. We also found out that Susan does this thing called “check-ins”, so at dinner time towards the end of the day we each tell everybody on the dinner table about our day.

One issue about our project that Yiping and I have been really scratching our head about is, who in the local community would take over the project and relay data back to us when we are gone? We wanted somebody who would fit these criteria: speaks English, has a cellphone, literate, knows how to weigh things and write down data, is willing to work with waste and flies, and last but not least is sincere and hardworking. So this is our problem to-solve for the day, since we decided it would be best for this person to work alongside us from the beginning, so s/he would feel a stronger sense of ownership over the project and would more likely be doing the work for the project when we were gone.

Any ideas, people?

Till then.

love, Coyin (and I think on behalf of Yiping again)

Summer= UROP

Hey guys! 

Hope you all have been having a wonderful summer so far (I sure have!), and I just wanted to share what I’ve been/ what I’m going to be up to this summer =)

To begin, I’m Prakriti (or Parki), a rising junior, and I have the amazing privilege of working at the Phillip Sharp Lab at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. The Sharp Lab is a pure biology lab, aiming to understand the very foundations of molecular biology, with an emphasis on anything RNA-related and the processes of alternative splicing and RNA interference. Given the fundamental nature of the research, the research has significant downstream consequences in understanding various disease mechanisms and pathology and will be useful in coming up with innovative treatments to them. Thus, it is extremely exciting for me to be surrounded my grad students and postdocs who are going after such interesting questions, constantly discussing their research, and to even be a part of the research process!

I’ll talk about what I’m doing and some other lovey-dovey things about lab <333 (maybe I’ll save that part for a second blog)

What I’m slaving at pipetting and tissue culture for <333- Overview

1)    Understanding how RbFox2 is co-regulating alternative splicing that leads to Nonsense-Mediated Decay for RNA binding proteins.

2)    Understanding how chromatin-remodeling influences alternative splicing patterns regulated by RbFox2.

3)    Cloning Setd2 and Dot1L (histone methyltransferases), and other RNA-binding proteins.

Okay, so there’s a lot of jargon, but hopefully I can make the terms clear to understand!

1. RbFox2= Fox2 is an RNA binding protein. It generally binds to a UGCAUG motif, and plays a crucial role in regulating alternative splicing.
2. Alternative Splicing: When you transcribe your DNA to make mRNA, the mRNA consists of introns and exons. Introns are long non-coding sequences (they don’t contribute to making protein) that need to be spliced out of the transcript to create a contiguous sequence of exons. However, not all of the exons are always included in the final transcript, so alternative splicing is where you have different patterns of exons in the final transcript, because they have different levels of inclusion.
3. Nonsense-Mediated Decay (NMD): Mature mRNA transcripts have a 5’ G-cap, 5’ UTR, coding region, 3’ UTR, 3’ poly-A tail, and a stop codon before the 3’UTR. When you have a premature stop codon (PTC), a stop codon that appears before it should, the mRNA transcript gets degraded instead of translated into truncated protein. This prevents the buildup of toxic proteins that are detrimental to the cell.

What I’m slaving at pipetting and tissue culture for <333- In detail

1)    Sometimes, the transcripts produced from alternative splicing introduce a premature stop codon, which then undergo NMD= AS-NMD. Research contends that the presence of these transcripts don’t always represent “noise” in the alternative splicing process, but actually represent a functional process. It turns out that AS-NMD is used to regulate protein levels (especially for splicing factors like SR proteins/ hnRNPs), plays a role in development (you want to express certain proteins at certain times of development), and can be involved in negative feedback loops for protein expression. In summary, AS-NMD is an important post-transcriptional gene control mechanism, and naturally, its misregulation can lead to downstream issues.

It turns out that RbFox2 actually binds to these transcripts for other RNA-binding proteins! We hypothesize that it co-regulates the NMD process for these proteins, and we want to understand trends across different genes and tissues, and perhaps even uncover the mechanism by which it does so.

2)    Chromatin describes the state of DNA interaction with various proteins (histones). The state of “openness” of the DNA is important because it affects what processes the DNA can undergo. The more open DNA is, the more able it is to undergo replication and transcription. Since splicing is mostly co-transcriptional (it actually happens at the same time as opposed to after transcription), we want to understand how different chromatin states affect alternative splicing patterns that are regulated by RbFox2. This is actually really important. Believe it or not, but adding methyl or acetyl groups to certain amino acid residues on histone proteins influences, or at least correlates with, different molecular processes and even disease phenotypes. The chromatin landscape is very dynamic and while the significance of many of the chromatin states are not well understood yet, you can bet there is a lot to uncover and understand the connections between those states and molecular biology processes that they affect.

3)    Finally, I’m cloning histone methyltransferases! And I’m SO much better at cloning than I was last year!! These are enzymes that add methyl groups to lysine residues on specific histone proteins (details not so important), and our hope is to see how overexpression of these methyltransferases can affect alternative splicing mechanisms =)

***

And thus is a brief (it wasn’t very short though) summary of my research! It excites me SO much, and has been keeping me in lab for 10 hours a day, reading and re-reading papers and reviews to better understand the intricacies of what I’m investigating, and to really, appreciate the big picture of where my research fits into the larger network of questions and answers of molecular biology. I really love what I’m doing.

A pretty exciting thing is happening next week! My grad student Mohini is presenting her poster at the RNA Society Conference in Switzerland next week, and she’s featuring some of the data that I produced! And my name is on her poster… right next to Phil Sharp’s- just the association blows my mind ><

Anyways, I hope you guys followed/ enjoyed what I was saying, and if I was able to give you the tiniest appreciation for molecular biology, then I would say the past hour writing this was super worth it

Till more lab adventures next time!
Parki =)

First day in Ghana

Wednesday – June 5, 2013

Hello, world!

Today was our first full day in Ghana. We woke up at 4:30AM today so we could get a 7AM bus to Tamale. There are two buses daily between Accra and Tamale, one at 7AM and the other at 3PM. It is a 12-hour bus ride going through approximately 800 kilometers (if you do a quick speed calculation, you can probably tell that the roads are quite bumpy and there are no highways in the journey, so at times the bus was moving at about 30km/h). We found out later that the bus could sometimes be ten minutes early to the destination, but could also sometimes be five hours late. In our case, thankfully it was only about 13 hours for us! Jasper arrived at 5:30AM to pick us up from the apartment. When we got to the STC bus station, which is not in the center of Accra by the way, a few men wearing Vodafone polo shirts came forward to help us with our luggage. They moved our suitcases to the middle of a hallway in the bus station, to what looked like a line leading to a giant weighing machine. Apparently the bus charges luggage by weight aside from the standard bus ticket prices! I thought that was interesting. There were also separate charges by specific electronic items.

The bus left right on time, which we were not expecting and were thus quite happy about. That was the start to a 13-hour journey! Overall it was a very comfortable ride. The seats were spacious and each seat comes with an arm rest and a foldable lap table. There was also more leg room than an average economy coach on the plane. The bus was interestingly “Chinese” as we could see Chinese words on the bus windows and on the signs in the bus. The bus stops every two to three hours for a restroom/snack break, including some major stops like Linda Dor, and Kumasi. Yiping and I shared a box of Jollof rice at Kumasi; it came with a chicken drumstick and some salad on the side.

We also met some interesting people on the plane, not to mention some very adorable kids who would wave at me whenever I turned back. At some point, the bus stopped to have a Ghanaian man carrying a gun in his military suit come up the bus. That scared Yiping and me a little, since we just woke up from a nap, and the first thing we saw was this big Ghanaian soldier with a gun. I think we were thinking about the movie “Blood Diamond”, which we both watched not too long ago. Along the way, we also saw interesting changes in vegetation and building structures. Tree trunks were used as attachment poles for electrical lines, and some bamboo-like sticks were used as pole support for buildings in construction. The vegetation changes from a more tropical scenery (think banana trees, coconut trees and palm trees) to something Yiping could only describe as “Boston-like”. Not completely true, but we didn’t know enough geography to find out what it was.

At about 8PM, we finally arrived at Tamale, the major city in Northern Ghana. Susan arranged for a Pure Home Water employee, Daniel, to pick us up at the bus station. We got to Pure Home Water house in Tamale, and went right away to an Indian neighbor’s house for dinner. Our neighbor sells these water tanks – Polytank – in all kinds of shapes and sizes to the surrounding community. I think they are some sort of water storage device, because we saw these tanks in almost every courtyards. Our neighbor also showed us the Moringa trees he planted in his courtyard, and told us the different uses of Moringa trees and its products.

That pretty much sums up our day. Yiping is taking a shower as I am writing this, and I think there is only cold water in the shower. Which isn’t too bad, considering how hot the local weather is. The fan in our room broke, but we will be buying a new fan tomorrow. We are sharing a room together, with individual beds and Malaria mosquito netting on top of each bed. This is my first time sleeping with a mosquito net, so I’m actually a tiny bit worried I’ll be having nightmares about mosquito nets tonight. Other than that, Ghana is well and we are happy to be here. Let’s see what our adventures hold tomorrow!

Love, Coyin (on behalf of Yiping, again)

Traveling day in the world

We flew in from Boston via Amsterdam last night, arriving at the Accra airport at around 8PM. We managed to get all four of our suitcases safe and sound after waiting for about 45 minutes for our suitcases in the baggage claim area.

Since we had some delays in getting our visas, we were not able to get in touch with the rest of our travel team – Susan, Jane and John – while they were on their way to Accra themselves, a few days ahead of us. We knew we had to get to a friend’s apartment to spend the night in Accra before taking a bus to Tamale, but the question was how. As two foreign girls traveling in the African continent for the first time, we were a bit worried about getting to the regulated taxi stand correctly so we could get a taxi to the apartment. So before the trip, I read up a bunch of stuff about “getting taxis at the Accra airport” and saved the notes so we could figure our way around.

 At the Accra Kotoka airport, after getting our luggage, we still had to go through a mandatory customs check-point before we could leave the airport. We opened our suitcases so the customs staff could go through our stuff. We were prepared for hostile airport staff like what we would usually face in other airports, but the customs staff members were surprisingly friendly! When they found out we were going to Tamale from Accra, one of them who was from Tamale exclaimed, “Tamale? It is a very nice place! You would love it!”

That successfully calmed our nerves down, as we were all ready to be two fierce defensive Asian girls in the face of the aggressive illegal taxi drivers as we headed out. Who would knew, another surprise was on the way! Just right before we left the airport,

FAST FORWARD TO SEE THE NEXT POST BECAUSE I’M GETTING LAZY IN STORY-NARRATING

Love, Coyin (on behalf of Yiping too)

Anthony’s Preparation: Part 1 Getting to Bluefields

As of yesterday, I have finally figured out “the details” of my summer experience. You know those pesky little needs of food and housing and transportation. I’ve known that I was going to Nicaragua for the last 3 months, but now I have a place to stay. It’s a delightful feeling knowing that I have somewhere with a roof and a bed waiting for me as I travel to a strange new place.

Here’s my itinerary for the summer (this is good for me because I haven’t written one yet and people keep asking me what I will be doing):
Day 1: Managua
On June 10th I will leave Indianapolis at 2:11pm, have a lay-over in Atlanta from 3:46 to 6:40pm, and arrive in Managua at 8:29pm. Upon arriving in Nicaragua, I plan to meet Eric “Daniel” Alegría, Libby McDonald’s husband as of last week, and have dinner (and a beer, according to Libby). Afterwards, I will get a taxi to Hostel Managua Backpackers at the address

Colonial Los Robles Monte Los Olivos, 1 c. Norte, 1 c. Oeste, 1/2 c. Norte Casa #55

Upon arriving at the hostel, I will make sure it’s ok that 4 of us will be staying under the reservation we have made for 3 people. If not, chaos will ensue, and then I’ll figure something out. The rest of my team (Noam Angrist, Camila Caballero, and Malika Flanagan) will arrive at 12:30am and make their way directly to the hostel.

Day 2: Transit to Bluefields
Hopefully on June 11, we will all wake up in the Hostel Managua Backpackers, pack up our stuff and make our way back to the airport to fly to Bluefields at 2pm. I believe we are supposed to arrive 2 hours early, so that they don’t sell our tickets (Libby has had students miss the flight before). We will arrive in Bluefields at 2:50pm and settle in at the Carribean Dream at this address:

Barrio Punta Fría
De la esquina del mercado municipal
30 metros al sur

Now if you look closely you’ll notice that this is not a street address it is directions, to understand the way that Nicaraguas assign addresses copy/paste this link and learn away!

http://vianica.com/nicaragua/practical-info/14-addresses.html

After settling in, we will most likely make our way to the dumpsite where the women of Luz del Futuro live, and get a tour of the area. We will get there by taking a taxi to a road near the dumpsite and a young woman named Ana Ojeda will flag us down. That is the extent of the plan for the 11th
To be continued…

Anthony McHugh

Law and Order: Engineering Claims Unit

I may not be a lawyer, but I have spent a lot of time gathering evidence and helping prepare cases in my internship. Okay, so there probably won’t be an Engineering Claims Unit spinoff of Law and Order, but engineering projects can often end in court or in mediation. You’re probably wondering, how does someone get sued for engineering? Laws are rarely broken, but contracts can be or they can be debated. In most civil engineering projects like bridges, roads, buildings, one party plans the work and then hires a contractor to build it. If either party is unsatisfied, they make claims for more money and if they can’t resolve it, they go to court. Before my internship I was vaguely aware of this process, I was actually sued in my project class, but in general it’s something we don’t really cover. My job for the World Food Program (WFP) was to dig through tons of emails, contracts, and other documents to find evidence to refute the contractor’s claims. In one case, I was successful and found evidence that meant the WFP didn’t have to pay. In another case, the evidence was not there and WFP ended up having to pay the claim, as well as travel expenses and legal fees.

One question I had was who would sue a humanitarian organization? However, they have the right to be paid for their work and their profits also help feed people. Still, the general practice of suing for claims is a way to increase profits in the construction industry. My second question was why does this happen so often? It’s common not just in the WFP but in many engineering projects. The key lies in contracts which are based on communication. In any project, it’s important to communicate with your partners and clearly state your expectations. If WFP had done this, they could have saved valuable time and money. I know from our experience in Engineers Without Borders that things go more smoothly when we talk to our community partners in advance and try to discuss every possible issue. A final important lesson I learned from this project is organization. Getting sued is a pain, but having to dig through messy files is worse. Having a good organizational system makes things much clearer. The Field Engineering Team has introduced an organizational system that works pretty well, but most of the old files are complete messes.

This blog is dedicated to Davide, the most awesome WFP lawyer, and my mom, with whom I watched a lot of Boston Legal. (Random aside, Boston Legal was not filmed in Boston but actually in my home town at our School District Office).

Ciao,

Marisa

Grade Tracker

Advanced Excel Grade Tracker for Teachers

It’s hard to say I did much of an ID project this summer. However, I did help out a little with Engineer’s Without Borders, saw a lot of needs in Mexico, and worked a ton on promoting an Excel grade book tracker. (That’s not including drafting about 12 pgs of the iHouse implementation plan and doing an ID informational interview yesterday)

But, I would love for you guys to check out my grade tracker at http://web.mit.edu/jabbott/www/excelgradetracker.html. After hours of searching online, it is definitely the most powerful grade tracker workbook out there, but I’d love to hear your feedback.

I’m also planning on making a webpage listing the top grade trackers online. There are way too many trackers that frankly were made by non-MIT people that obviously knew nearly nothing about Excel. Google unfortunately doesn’t yet know the difference, but I seek to change that. Looking forward to your comments. See you all soon!

My Summer in Washington D.C.

Hey everyone, this is Tiantian. This summer I am working at the Center for Global Development (CGD) here in D.C.

Like most internships in this area, my employer is not paying for my summer job. I was lucky enough to get funding from the MIT Washington DC Summer Internship Program. As a program participant, I was offered the freedom to choose where I want to work, a stipend, free housing, and opportunities to attend various seminars organized jointly by the program and various organizations in DC.

At this point, you might wonder, what development work is there to do in DC? I have to say, the experience here is very different from implementing a project/working in a developing country. Having said that, DC is probably one of the best places in the US to learn about development/international aid. There are several reasons why this is so.

First, US is a major donor of international aid and the majority of decisions on how this money is spent are made in Washington DC. Despite the fact that foreign assistance only constitutes roughly 1% of the US national budget and there has been cuts due to the ongoing economic crisis, US spent a staggering $34.72 billion in 2011 in aid. Being in DC puts you at a closer distance to all that are happening in the US foreign aid business. Second, as a corollary of the first point, there is a high concentration of people/organizations in the area who are involved one way or another in aid/development. Just to give you an idea, my center, a development work-oriented think-tank, is within 20 minutes’ walk away from the World Bank,  IMF and the WHO. Large NGOs such as Oxfam and development consulting companies such as Chemonics also have offices here. The plethora of seminars and networking events you can manage to attend by working here is simply amazing. Third, as oppose to working in the field, working in the development/aid circle in DC offers you a difference perspective. Instead of focusing on a particular project, say getting a treadle pump to work in rural Ghana, working here kind of gives you a bigger picture of what is happening. For example,  what are the big donors interested? Where is the US government heading in terms of international assistance? You also get a better sense of how certain bills/policies that have relevance to development get passed/not passed here in the US. For example, Michael Clemens, one senior fellow at CGD just managed to convince the US to remove the ban on Haitians from obtaining H-2 visas. And believe it or not, migration can be an important part of development and economic growth in developing countries. In all, if you are an MIT student and you are passionate about development and policy making, you should apply to the MIT Washington DC Summer Program =)

More on what I am doing. Besides trying to network and learn as much as possible about US foreign assistance at a close distance, I am busy with assisting the research projects taking place in CGD. The main project I am working on is evaluating the impact of Janani Suranksha Yojana (JSY), a conditional cash transfer program rolled out nation-wide in India. This scheme was put in place to encourage women to go to a proper facility for child delivery. Considering that India has recently been put in bad light internationally for being one of the worse places to be a woman and  on the way to miss the MDG on maternal health, I was gladly surprised by the existence of such a scheme. My daily job involves a lot of quantitative analysis, data management and STATA coding, none of which I had much experience doing. (On the first junior staff meeting, I realize I seem to be the only person who is not an econ/math major in the room > <) On a more positive note, I still feel motivated knowing that impact evaluations such as this one are critical to creating better programs in the future. Plus, I have learned more Indian state and district names that I had in the past 22 years that I am alive