Caring from Afar
Using travel to shift your perspective and have a measurable impact
What is it that you truly care for? Family and friends for sure.
But what else? Chances are there are many matters that you hold close to your heart that aren’t close to home. Issues that you desperately wish you had a direct impact on — but where it’s a struggle to connect your actions to the outcome. And it’s not an easy problem to solve.
You can give a dollar to a homeless man on the corner, but can you end homelessness in your city? Donate to a charity when a disaster strikes but do you know what is sent abroad? As an activist it becomes clear quickly that the greatest efforts are spent within your sphere of influence — which is to say that you can work hard to improve your neighborhood or you can expand your sphere of influence.
Choose your battles with care and then care deeply
Graduating from college I thought hard about the issues that I cared about — the world that I wanted to live in as I grew older. It stood out immediately that preserving biodiversity hotspots and building sustainable cities were the most important challenges that I felt emotionally connected to.
How unapproachable and overwhelming these issues were! How the hell would I start?
It’s amazing that even with graduation right around the corner, and a degree in aeronautics, I felt unqualified to approach these matters. Perhaps I was and am still — but I believe I must at least make an attempt. We fall in love knowing we may get hurt, perhaps we should approach our professions in a similar way? Offering our productive years to causes that we care about because even though we know we might fail — still compelled to try.
“The system” is the byproduct of the choices of billions of people
When we think of the world we live in it’s easy to get lost in this grand orchestra. Billions of humans each playing a part weaving a tapestry so complex it’s impossible to pull it apart without getting tangled or lost. Hard to see where your efforts are best applied.
Often you can’t tell if you are a part of the solution or the problem.
If you haven’t yet heard of the Maker Movement you’re in for a treat. Makers are a new community of people inspired by the intersection of technology, the arts and grass-roots efforts. And they create incredible projects — often open-source, low-cost and DIY (do-it-yourself). Makers take matters into their own hands.
Rainforest Connection refurbishes old cellphones to create solar powered devices that detect the sound of chainsaws in the forest. Activating a volunteer network to prevent illegal logging.
Open Source Beehives designs easy to assembly laser-cut hives and is tackling the problem of colony collapse disorder. Creating a connected system with sensors informing owners of the health of their hive.
OpenROV produces underwater submersibles — an affordable DIY alternative for explorers of the world. They developed OpenExplorer.com to encourage discussion and collaboration between adventurers.
Then enter Make Ventures, a new experiment in maker tourism and volunteering. Our organization arranges travel to remote places in the world engaging individuals in building technology that has the potential to solve global environmental and social issues. When they return from their voyage not only do they have a better real-world understanding of the problem -they have tangible skills and knowledge about tech designed to address it.
And they become makers.
For our first voyage (of many to come) we have partnered with The Hydrous and OpenROV. We are teaching people to build OpenROVs, 3D scanning coral reefs and educating them about the challenges of reef conservation. We will donate some of the OpenROVs to research and educational programs for a year so that they will have a direct impact, while our volunteers are endowed with the skills and knowledge to continue solving the problem.
My next objective is noticeably more ambitious — I am building a team designing an augmented reality interface for the OpenROV. This will allow people from all around the world with access to a computer — but otherwise unable to afford traveling and scuba diving — to view these reefs in an immersive VR environment from the comfort of their homes. We’re working with researchers to design sensors integrations and a research portal so that the data collected while the ROVs are in operation go directly to serving the region they observe. And the virtual tourism supports reef restoration.
We need to leave our homes to realize how privileged our lives are …
The idea of maker tourism was bouncing around in my brain for a while before I realized that it was an effort worth pursuing. In order to really believe in the concept I had to partner with Alex Fang, President of Surf for Life, an organization that empowers communities by building school houses, hospitals and community centers in places that need it the most. Learning about the organization that Alex has built taught me that critical requirement for Make Ventures to launch — tired, worn out, pushed to their limits. They want to know beyond a doubt that what they do makes a difference.
Our volunteers are extremely intelligent individuals — they are insightful and critical and hungry to work hard. They aren’t looking for a vacation — they’re looking for a challenge and a measurable impact.
Make Ventures is about more than booking a resort and enjoying a few days in the sun. It’s about getting close to the action; learning about the real obstacles that need to be overcome from the professionals that fight to work around them; putting our heads down to master the fundamentals of a bit of hardware, electrical and software engineering. And ultimately it’s about a long-term engagement with a community. Learning from experience and expanding one’s realm of influence. Reuniting with a sense of accomplishment and connection to the people that your project supports.
In Maui we are serving the young corals fighting to survive in a shifting climate. Connecting to schools to teach children to build robots and care about our oceans. Supporting researchers yearning for more data to make educated decisions about preserving these ecosystems. Gaining experience starting initiatives supported by local community efforts and engagement.
It is the first of our efforts. There is much yet to be done.
Care and connection is unscalable — and yet that’s why it matters
The oceans cover over 70% of the earth’s surface and there is so much yet that we have to discover about them. Occupying less than one quarter of 1% of the marine environment, coral reefs are a critical biodiversity hotspot — home to more than 25% of all known marine fish species.
And they are dying.
We have already lost 27% of the world’s coral reefs. And if present rates of destruction continue, 60–90% of the world’s coral reefs will be destroyed over the next 30 years. But I believe there is something we can do.
The hard work of this generation is not designing the solution — we have the technology to solve so many global problems — but creating the political will and shifting the cultural mindset to empower those efforts. And the real cost? Emotional investment in the outcome. And that we can control.
“The greatest threat to our oceans isn’t pollution, overfishing or climate change, it is the fact that our oceans are out of sight and out of mind.”
‘Internet of Things’ can mean more than a connected thermostat
The Internet when it arrived changed the world more than we could have imagined. Now with the emergence of an Internet of Things right around the corner we can accomplish far more with it than we have yet imagined. We can have ‘ears in the forests’ and ‘eyes in the oceans.’ Becoming both stewards and explorers of the Earth.
Sometimes the best impact we can have is at home, and sometimes we have to leave in order contribute more directly to the world we want to live in. Sometimes it takes developing new technical skills to be able to help those who touch our hearts.
We can do more than just raise awareness — we can change the ecosystem.
Kachina Gosselin, write on lessons in entrepreneurship. She encourages you to engage deeply in the matters that matter most to you. And recommends traveling the world, picking up a DIY-mentality and maker skills to expand your understanding of the world and sphere of influence. If you would like to attend the next Make Ventures voyage please contact her at kachina@alum.mit.edu. If you want to propose or partner on future trips feel free to get in touch.
This article was inspired by the OpenROV team, The Hydrous, Open Source Beehives, and Rainforest Connection. Special thanks to Cole Hamron for feedback and editing.
