"Community-based Conservation in Madagascar" by Armand Randrianasolo & Froggi VanRiper

[Applause] thank you Alex for that nice introduction and thank you guys for coming as Al said there are some storm and then you still coming so very privileged to be in front of you today to talk the Madagascar class not purely scientific but it's just information about the class that her and I did as we co teach the class I'm going to she's going to talk about the current status of the class I'm going to give a little bit of a history background how the class evolve to what it it is today so specifically I'm going to talk about how the class evolve and what are the framework or the facts factors that led to the establishment of the class uh and then I will say when we started and what are the design of the class and how that design is Evol has evolved through years the one thing that it's a cliche I guess to say that uh the class probably never happen unless there is a kind of of good connections with wasu from MBG that good connections kind of set up everything for the class because without that we cannot do anything especially for this particular class which is built from the field instead of writing a proposal to get money to build the class meaning there is no money in the beginning for the class uh wasu and has been also working in Madagascar but uh MBG has been there for quite some times and that's kind of a a relationship also the mission even MBG is not per se a university still involved in teaching capacity buildings research and service to community and that kind of align things with wasu which is basically teaching uh research and then service to community uh that's in 2008 that kind of a relationship was solidified by the team from Madagascar who came here specifically to build the class and then have some Workshop ATU uh you can see uh Christian Jan all of the member and Mr the British one uh bur show so uh he's a very big part of our team in Madagascar and then the long-term presence of MBG in Madagascar also one of the framework where without without that basically we don't have the class so that's a very important element that to mention here that with MBG with the longterm in Madagascar possibly no class Madagascar class ATU um with our activities the reason is like we've multiple type of activity that we have been doing for past 40 years um it's give us opportunity to have trust by the government and by the people in Madagascar and if you have those trust you can have also the opportunity to build any kind of collaboration within Madagascar or outside Madagascar and and that's what's as I would say why it's important to mention here that that long-term presence or uh action of MBG in Madagascar led to the establishment of the class 40 years in Madagascar we are everywhere now in Madagascar we are the name of MBG Missouri Botanical Garden is very well known in Madagascar at the government level at the University at Community level so we are very well known and we are about 11 12 s the way you say it but for me it's 11 site that we are very active in Madagascar uh you can see the name on it green those are MBG site and you can see that it's fruit out Madagascar there is another one somewhere in close to here and and um uh that means that we do a lot of activities in at the community level and um a little bit of stories uh story actually about Madagascar MBG Madagascar side in 2000 before 2000 we do a lot of research in term of exploration in term of uh capacity building and the malagas side of the team said hey it's not enough for us just to describe species or produce distribution map we want to do more to save the biodiversity of Madagascar and we they talk to the leaders of the program at that time Mr pet Lowry and P Lowry kind of make sure that that's demand of the team will be fulfilled so in 2000 around 2001 there was a trouble in term of politics in Madagascar in 2001 2002 but we set up a new program called conservation and because at that time uh there are already big organization like WWF conservation International already doing conservation in Madagascar so we need to kind of strategize in a way where we need to kind of fit in in term of conservation in Madagascar because we don't want to step on the foot of somebody already doing conservation so but we realize that there are some sight there are some ecosystem that those big organization neglect so those are the one that we are trying to get on and usually those are kind of a small s uh I give you an example for the ecosystem called literal Forest which is in the east of Madagascar it's already fragmented and nobody really cares about literal Forest at that time so that's where we went in and then we the approach that we did is about um uh commun based conservation we want to do things with the community because the forest is small enough and if we do it with the community probably we are more successful so we launch with the first site that we did it's mahab site which is on the east coast of Madagascar this site about 1500 hectar of forest all on Sand and there are communities living around that side so in 200 uh come back a little bit in 203 I was tasked to lead the team of MBG to set up this community based conservation at the side uh it was not easy it took us one year before the community accept us to work with them uh actually the first day I was kicked out go home Armand we don't need to be here you are going to take our forest that story is actually in news magazine on Science magazine news or in Science News Magazine so so yeah I think you saw that stuff too all right uh so this forest and you can see all of the community around it which is in one commune commun is in Madagascar kind of a low administrative kind of a as assignment or like a county county in in in here and there are some Villages around the forest so we dealt with that and then we um this is the type of forest it's a literal Forest I said on Sand it's not very tall it's kind of rain forest because it get a lot of rain from the sea but it has a very specific kind of a uh composition and it's about 10% of Madagascar floristic composition is from this type of forest that's why it's important to put it in a kind of um protected area network represented in protected Network in Madagascar so that's why we went to do this in in the his when you do did the community based conservation it's not like we go to the community and then go home to to the capital city we live with the people and we have a compound those those are a community living those are the around the the the forest but living with the community allow us to know day by day what they need and uh that's the strategy that we did that's the the way we work uh we work with the community and then live close by and know every day what happening in the community in 2003 as I said I was tasked to bring the team of MBG to deal with the community and uh right after they accept us to uh to work with them and one way for them to know that you are really uh s sticking around and not just kind of lying to them is to have a sacrifice of cows I didn't put the picture of that but some are very cruel for some people some are for me it's it's okay because I've seen that many times but the picture here young araras take a megaphone and tell to the people I'm here if you are here with me we will do it together this is after this one is the spiritual King in the community after he called the the spirits saying if the troop of Arma are going to do good things for us please help him out if not and then Chas him like hell that was what that's actually that's what he said so I respond I said hey I'm here I'm a man of my world my team will be here we will be here forever if you want to we open your arm to me so and then after that we kind of have some kind of or sessions to know to get insight of what the community needs and align that to our goals so um those are doctors from the region the Community member and then still we did a lot of uh a kind of a meeting with the community to to to kind of nail this down so that's but what I'm trying to say is the creation of that site was also one of the things that allow us to build the class without the site in mahab there is no way that we can have class to go to mahab so right after that that we are the community agree with us that we can work we do a lot of things first step is to do restoration uh we have nursery and those are for restoration those are for reforestation because those are exotic plants like e calyptus and so on and I have the community to plant the to do the work with us so they can be proud for the themselves to do the things and then at the same time we thinks that maybe teaching people about environmental educations setting up some program we did that in 2003 also starting with kids but at the same time we recruit some locals to do the work with us and that's give the Practical benefit for the community and that's where the trust starting to be on place from the community but doing all of that I had a problem the problem that I had was even that a cry on top of my lungs hey don't cut the forest if the belly of the people are empty they still go to the forest to cut some woods and get some quick money if their kids are sick they will go to the forest run in the morning cut some wood and sell it and get money to buy the medicine so I didn't have any kind of I was struggling to find alternative to give to them to get income from different Source than the forest so when I came back one time from mahabo I arrived here I was going to my supervisor who is Jim Miller at that time time and jimer also at that time with wasu have a different kind of project which is property intellectual property with the law school so I told him I said this is a very good project for MBG to do but the problem is I struggled to find the way how to put good alternative activities to give people to generate some income for people from different kind of thing that the forest so by when he kind of went to meeting for that uh intellectual property somehow he talked to one of the law professor about this project and then that law professor said why don't you go to the business school and the business school probably can help you about your problem and I ask myself business school what what what I need to say to them I'm not a businessman so we went anyway I give my talk for 20 minutes and then they have only one question for me during the meeting those guys are with trench coat and all that and I was with my and I said in those very nice room at was you and they said what is the product from your community and they said basket that's what the people weave and those basket I show them the picture okay let hot you up with a lady that we help to for a business that collect basket from different part of the world and the lady was from what I called the Blazing basket project which is a long story if I tell you here so those are the traditional basket but when we met with the lady she said we need to change the pattern of this basket so we can attract the American people in the market of American markets so they change it it took almost a year and uh change the type of basket and uh it's it's attractive and we did get a first order 900 basket from the community this type of basket not the traditional one send it over here two months later 10,000 basket so the flux of money going to the community those basket um those is 50 Cents one week to weave 50 cents that you get with this type of basket free Ser I mean it's like a free small medium and big for one type of basket it's $7.50 if yeah that's the lady buy the basket asket through to the people from the community so there is a big big margin there so the people in community work with me we set up all of the things like a qu quality and all of that and then send the basket over here sold at a whole food store that where the basket so so this give an idea for the the person that help us to connect with the blessing lady he wants to know what is the impact of the new design on the local market of of mahab for basket so that's create the idea to have a class of students to go to Madagascar to study that effect of innovation that they call it so that was the P Pioneer of the class this MBG wasu Madagascar class so the first student actually this is the managing director of Scandal Center at wasu at that time linked to the uh business school but he report directly to the chancellor and then We Gather about five students the first trip in Madagascar the class started March 2007 so if you count 2024 now has been I don't know I cannot do the substruction basically so uh this is the first trip that we have he is from studying economy is she's an MBA from China she's from um Brown School law school and Art and Science so two different uh I mean from different field that was our first class the class at wasu at that time was just reading papers about economy about poverty especially those guys from Colombia University in New York and then NYU the the two thought about should we give money to the poor people directly or should we I mean those kind of things that we discuss for a semester a lot of paper to discuss and then the role of the student is go to Madagascar and then write a paper so I call it paper based class but a year later Mr uh Ken Harington the managing director of the Scandal Center was sick so he he was asking a lady her name is Judy mlin Park a professor at business school and for her she changed the class to Project based class meaning we get some problem from Madagascar statement and then based on that the student built project and then the idea was to give students experience in life experience learning and also um for business school um skills for entrepreneurship that was the idea so she we did that for a few years and um uh very successful we have about 20 students in a class an average every year we go student bring their project they need to sell it to the community based on the problem statement that you get from the village and uh it's it went very well but we are connected with the this Center of experience here learning from business school and that's the the class the history of the class from paper based to Project based but the big problem that we had is every year student bring project but there is no follow up and that we are going to hear from the change so that's why I'm saying the evolution of the design of the class that it goes from this paper based to Project based but also something else that she will explain um those are the students I think uh the student are very very happy about going for the trip to Madagascar but I I think they learn also something in a class for the session in St Louis we have different people that coming um including our president that giving lecture about iucn all of that organization involved in biodiversity and explain to student what all of those were and how us is not part of the CBD and so on and so on so so um students very engaged when they have the project very competitive because we have usually four project five group five students in each group and very competitive uh this mentality or American mentality to be compete in a good way so um they they're trying of course they're trying to have a good grade because 50% of their grade are the one in Madagascar when to see if they really engaged to do selling their project to the community and doing pre presenting the project so I guess I'm going to stop very very soon but I wanted to read a couple of things from students after the class and I've received probably 10 plus more uh kind of a thank you from students uh what they said so he is one she didn't write my name correctly because there should be a d but it's okay she's inspired about what she learned during the class and like I said it's not this is just an example several students you Chang my life my life is changing so and then one time we receive from a parent he's a surgeon foood surgeon from Chicago very wealthy and then his daughter went with us and when the daughter what the daughter did when she came back from the the field he wrote a letter to me and Judy saying I'm really mad is at you or I mad at you not about you mad at you because you changed my daughter from I guess kids to a woman and that kid become traveling never travel anywhere jump from when she was in the field jump from the window because she saw a spider and she saw a line of ants she cannot sleep in a rain with a banana leaf because too noisy and she never been to Africa but after the trip she went to Korea she went to Vietnam she went and then that's why the dad mad because we changed completely the the girl so uh in a good way and then another one and you can read I put a little bit of kind of a board the one that but it's it's rewarding for me to receive a letter like that because that means that what you do is kind of in a good way instead of so that's I have for kind of a story about the class of Madagascar Madagascar class at wasu as I said if I can summarize the relationship with wasu that we have is a good things it's a big framework that we can build and it's one of the many that we have with wasu here and uh in term of a project in term of collaboration and the existence of MBG in Madagascar is also a good thing for us here because we can have the opportunity to build within Madagascar or outside Madagascar a lot of collaborations so I I give you the stuff and maybe I can all right how's that work is it picking me up um all right so I'm froggy van rer um went with Arman this year uh to Madagascar with our with our first inaugural Environmental Studies collaborative class um and so the first first thing I have to share with you is that uh obviously Co put a little bit of a pause on traveling to Madagascar and in the window between when the travel uh was curtailed uh and this past Academic Year um it seemed like it was the right time for the business school to to step back from this class for Judy to move closer to retirement and um we wanted to find a way for wasu to continue this collaboration that benefits the community in mbu that you know that enhances our relationship with Missouri Botanical Gardens and that gives our students the opportunities that armont highlighted um and so the logical place for this to go next was the U Environmental Studies program which is where I am and so after sitting down um Armand with Robbie uh with members of the wasu Environmental Studies program that had previously been involved in some capacity we talked about what this could look like moving into the future uh and so obviously I'm not a business Expert that's not where my strengths are in particular I teach sustainability in business classes but those um they're not classes in entrepreneurialism um fortunately uh the efforts of community-based conservation are around the concept that uh the community needs ways to uh like armont said build their economic capacity um their nutrition their health and safety anything that is going to protect the community against needing to exploit the resources of the Forest unsustainably right uh and I was like that's still in my wheelhouse right uh and business skills might be one of those right entrepreneurial opportunities may be one of those but there are many more as well and so the way we conceptualize this class we have I'm very lucky to uh have a group of every year 12 new students who come in are accepted into what we call the Pathfinders environmental leadership fellows program mouthful but these Pathfinders as we're going to call them for short here are uh like I said 12 undergraduate students each year come to wasu from a wide range of different disciplines and they all pursue different um Majors uh and they sometimes there are a few in the business school there are uh ones that that actually do get an environmental studies degree um some of them get law degrees Premed degrees um we've got students in in the maths students in um trying to remember a range of different Humanities women gender and sexuality studies they range a whole number of diff different disciplines but the what holds them all together is their passion for environmental leadership moving into the future in a sustainable way and so we thought those are a great group of students to take to Madagascar because one of the things they do in their first year here at washu is uh we want to do a lot of place-based learning we want them to love and feel a sense of home and place and so their freshman year in the fall we take them camping a lot so they're used I tear up I really love this um the students are used to getting together supporting one another experiencing um the the physical discomfort of living you know without a lot of infrastructure they've gone and they've done overnights at Tom sock and they've done overnights at Johnson shins and they uh they spend time Outdoors so I know they're coming to me with that strength I know they're coming to me with a sense of social environmental justice which is one of the other classes that they take before they uh they rise into the sophomore level they learn the you know the sort of colonial histories of the environmental movement and how we can be part of combating and and you know reversing the course of some of the harm that colonialism has done so those form the core of the people who we decided to take with us physically into the field in Madagascar in add addition we thought I've got enough room in the class in the physical classroom during the Spring to accept other people who are excited about this but don't necessarily have the ability to travel or the desire to physically go to Madagascar but still want to be part of this kind of work and so in total the classroom is a place where up to 20 students could enroll uh to be a part of preparing these projects for the field uh and this is what the class looked like this year we're missing a couple of faces on the day we took the photo but um half of these or well 12 of these students or 10 this year were Pathfinders and the other 10 were other students from disciplines all across wasu from all the five different schools uh four we didn't have anybody from Brown because they're only Masters there um the way that the class worked was we had sort of a learning phase where we really onboarded them heavily with some conservation knowledge um you know knowledge about Madagascar we read heavily from uh things about the principles of community-based conservation um and then we also had uh a lot of our lectures we had Laura ianti come with tabita um rra is that how I pronounced her last name um and uh to talk about their nutrition research there um we had uh Chris birkenshaw phone in I think he was in France when he phoned in and he talked to us about what some of the projects look like on the ground and how the the conservation areas were established um uh we had U Janie um talked to us about the history of the uh so she called in from you know antano and described to the students the history of how we set up a lot of the um how youall set up a lot of conservation initiatives in Madagascar so that's sort of our learning phase we want to cram their head full of the stuff they're going to need to know to start making the right kinds of decisions okay and then we received problem statements much like the previous versions of the class received problem statements from these site managers working on the field the site manager working on the field in mbu like here are our exigent issues right now that we need solutions to um then during that three weeks they get to do background research on that that type of problem uh they get to write a sort of a paper it's sort of a lit review of sorts on you know the core information that I think they need to understand about this problem statement we'll talk a little more about what those areas were in a second um and then we spent some time communicating back and forth with our part Partners on the ground in Madagascar as they start to conceive of a potential intervention um we the goal here was to this year was going to be a little different from future years because it was the first year uh and so we had to launch things for the first time but the idea is whatever we create in this class has to be iterative so each subsequent class is going to build on the strengths of what we learn and establish this year so that the efforts of MBG in mahab can be fully you know um enhanced and actualized so during that connecting and planning phase they're really really buckling down now all throughout this uh these conceed connect and plan the background readings and assignments the students are doing are heavily methodology based they're learning qualitative and mixed methods for field research in environmental and social sciences um and then at that point they have a fully fleshed out research plan that they're going to take into the field which may or may not have an A a baseline intervention attached to it um at the end of that and then the nine to 12 students go into the field with that um so here are the four areas they broke into each of these teams we had malaria um prevention and response and awareness we had sanitation uh we had fuel efficiency a cooking fuel um consumption and we had nutrition as some key problem areas in the Moab Community uh and so here are the 10 students who and you might recognize another face in there Heidi got to go with us that was our surprise guest this year um in the classic uh annual picture with Christian Kamara in the middle there uh at the MBG headquarters so we arrived in uh in antana narivo and we got to tour the MBG offices the students finally got to meet in person a lot of faces that they may have seen over Zoom or or names that they've seen in email and um and sort of learn a little more about what MBG is doing and see their physical headquarters and then uh they presented each of these four groups there were two to three people on the ground with their project they got to present to the MBG team what their proposed intervention and research was now this was by no means the first time these people had heard this um you know it was obviously established in Partnership but um for a lot of folks working in the the building they may not have been involved up to this point and this is a chance to get more insight and input and feedback on the plan and to refine it yet further um once we had given our presentation in uh Tana we had a 2 and a half day travel out to Mo Habu into the field site um long bumpy roads in a you know in a in a rented van with a very skilled driver and this was a great two and a half days to get really close to each team was assigned a cultural advisor SL translator I never want to underplay the role I I I have yet to come up with a better word for what this person is and so cultural advisor translator is the best thing I can come up with this is not a mere conduit between the you know the academy and the community one of my my personal passions in life is is to try to uh Elevate the the recognition of the value of what our on the ground Partners bring to the academy when we do collaboration in an environment like this um without somebody who is both translating the language and the culture and the context without that person being an active part of our research all we're doing is getting a really messy signal right um we get a there and it's not just functional static that you know that maybe makes your your your findings less valid it's it's functional static that can make the whole purpose of your research and your intervention uh unsuccessful we want to be fully invested with our partners and so that two and a half bump days of bumpy riding and eating we encourage our teams to spend really really close one-on-one time with their cultural adviser and they were further refining their research now that they could talk face to face and it was a little more efficient communicating so as you can see these are just some of the meals we sat down to and they're not just enjoying their food they are just pounding away at their their plans and and and everything um so also I wanted to to mention the importance of um Armand had mentioned the sort of political uh connections and the trust uh this was a moment we had to pause on our way towards mahabo and meet with uh this is the head of the environmental what's the ter I'm not sure his exact title but he's functionally the environmental representative for far fana which is the um the administrative unit in which the mbu uh Mano commune exists we had to pause there and um so you know there's been enough turnover that since the last time Armand was in town that this was a new representative and we paused and explained again the goal that we had in his in his community and received his good graces before moving in to the community so at no point could we can we ever leave anybody out of the and this is not a mere formality it's it's really important everybody is invested in the goals that we're trying to achieve so then upon arriving in the community MBG had done the groundwork ahead of time to invite U key members of all of the fukutani which are the like The Villages inside the commun to invite these um key members to this this Gathering where the students with their cultural advisers would present um what they were hoping to accomplish in the in the few weeks that they were going to be on the ground um and so I'm going to give you a little bit of okay go back briefly as you can see here we have the students standing up there they did the best they could to incorporate um the malagas language into their slides but for the most part they were making a statement and their cultural advisor was translating it both verbally and conceptually right um to what may have in many cases been uh an audience that is not um that that don't read the written language um the four projects that we had on the ground quite fun this project was a group of students who had researched the um the fuel usage of stoves uh the cooked stoves that are used in the community uh open somewhat open fire is the common method of cooking obviously in order to do that you need to gather Fallen wood or sometimes cut wood from the forest this can create a little bit of extra pressure on the forest um but even more importantly it takes a lot of time out of people's people's day and week and it uh contributes to health effects with cooking over a smoky fire which is usually a distributed obviously um unequally across the genders in a community uh and so this group found a Japanese design for a clay stove and there is um readily available clay in the mbu area that can be harvested directly um all that that you need is labor obviously and they brought this they had it translated into um malagas they made pictoral guides and held a couple of workshops where uh community members could learn to build this stove and the stove is is sort of designed around their existing cooking pot it minimizes The Escape of hot air it it channels the smoke a little bit um by no means is this a perfect solution but it's a significant improvement over the idea of the Open Fire fire um there was 40 people participated in these workshops in these two separate workshops and um there was a lot of enthusiasm about it now the idea wasn't merely to bring an intervention the idea was to see does this intervention help and so in each of these projects there was a baseline data collection element so these students in addition to have holding these two workshops um in know uh in collaboration with their cultural advisers they traveled with both a cultural adviser and another level of um of cultural translators so in addition to their cultural adviser who was an MBG staff member from Tana they also had somebody who was um a local community member who could further translate culturally to somebody who wasn't somebody who lived in mbu both the dialect and the cultural um and and Community knowledge that was needed to make that full understanding gradient possible to Traverse and so sometimes that person was able to sit you know quietly and witness the the interactions and sometimes they brought really really valuable additional context to those interactions and so the team would travel with their cultural advis their Tana cultural adviser their mahab cultural adviser this full communication gradient to people's homes that interview them about the amount of time they spend collecting fuelwood in a given week about who in their household is responsible for that about what they like and don't like about their current cooking Arrangements and all of that data has now been gathered and translated for the coming Year's students this spring to analyze uh and then we're going to gather that data again after we've seen who has adopted these cook stoves and how they have adapted them further further continue to gather information and propose further improvements to our interventions in the field so that's how all these projects are going to look they have a baseline data Gathering they have an intervention in in most cases and then they have a plan for how we're going to continue to enhance this intervention moving into the future um this was the malaria awareness team their research um in addition to our partners on the ground telling us what a problem malaria is and how it's been a growing challenge for the community with higher um trans or higher um rates of people Contracting it at even uh unacceptable rates of of of mortality uh the hypothesis this group brought in and many of you who have or live with children will be familiar with where this hypothesis comes from they thought if we teach a song about malaria awareness it's going to make its way from the schools to the households because no child can withstand the urge to sing repeatedly to their parents right uh I I quite love this one they worked with a local artist who is um a talented musician to take key facts about malaria transmission and prevention and turn them into a song and and train a group of middle school students to perform this song and then travel to the elementary school to provide this um education with this you can see this fabric poster they brought with them and this song to perform and engage the students they then performed this song for five the five different Elementary School classes um and then also at a a festival that was held for the community and the idea is again after taking Baseline household interviews about a malaria a aess to come back and in their case visit the exact same households again A year later and um gauge whether there has been an increase in malaria awareness and or a decrease in malaria rates in that household and I think a third Factor they're measuring is the number of times they've sought um assistance from the medical center for malaria symptoms as well so these are some of the factors that that group was measuring um you can see here actually probably one of the saddest moments in in our time there was this um first grade class uh this is the students standing in the back or standing in the back because literally there are not chairs in the school room for them to sit in there are enough chairs for the students up to about the last row and there are four children per desk um and so the students that we worked with the wasu students came back and said we really want the next group to start working on some intervention that's going to enhance the physical quality of the school resources um because they're grossly under underresourced in the school system uh third group one that's all all these projects are close to my heart but I am a sanitation researcher by out of History um and so this group uh was looking at Food security and sanitation historically a group had brought a um a composting toilet model to the community and we are told that while people were interested in constructing this this physical toilet and and interested in the idea of using a dedicated structure you know to to avoid um spreading exca in the environment when they came around to talking about what they were planning to do with it at the end of its its period of composting they said get away from me with that idea which is not at all uncommon we run into that quite frequently around the world the idea of contacting human exca especially using it on food not a popular idea so our hypothesis here was that starting out only with urine which urine is very well tested as a um a fertilizer uh around the world a very effective fertilizer that requires minimal um transformation because the uh it already has a much much lower pathogen load than feces does and so by bringing an image of a a test plot in ner where urine was used to fertilize Maze and you can very clearly see in this test plot that the two quadrants that were fertilized are rich and flourishing because of the phosphorus and nitrogen present in the urine and the two that were not fertilized with urine are you know they look like what you'd expect it to look like growing ma in a desert um they opened with this and then also brought some really clear instructions on how to safely collect dilute and apply urine to crops Our Hope was to find four what we called Champion families and champions would be a family willing to do the same thing to set up a test plot not to test whether this works because we know it works but to demonstrate to their community that it works and start to break down these barriers around the potential use of urine now we made sure the students who traveled out there could say yes I have eaten food grown with this method because my professor does it at home right um and uh and that we were able to provide them with supplies and and things like that well as we approached the date of our travel we were hearing more and more from the community uh the MBG um members on the ground you're going to have to move real slow you're going to have to be real careful um those of you who got our newsletters and read them we'll probably know the punchline already it was uh far more positively received than we ever could have hoped I almost left three of our four um Champion kits at home before traveling when our luggage was getting full and I'm glad I didn't um we not only had people chomping at the bit to become Champions but we had everybody else who participated in the focus groups um asking how they could put this into into practice in their own fields and so fortunately we were able to print a lot of of um pictoral guides for people to take home and safely use this practice in their fields um so also again we did in this case focus groups to gather Baseline information on household sanitation practices on attitudes towards EXA um on fertilizer use and we're going to gather follow-up information in coming years this is one of our Champions who has just set up her field um into quadrants and uh she's almost done building the beds and she's going to start growing we had four different people in four different fukutani growing four different crop types so I'm really excited we also provided them with disposable cameras to document on a month-by-month basis what their field looked like from above um and then we are going to print those out when we return you them for development print them out these are not folks who have a cell phone sit in their pocket for taking pictures every day um so it was it was it was fun to onboard people to the use of a disposable digital camera um probably one of the more amusing parts of the trip fortunately I got my my Humble Pie when her child handed me a delicious looking cassava root and I took a big bite before they laughed at me and explained that I was supposed to peel it first so we all had our share of cultural learning opportunities um I can't show you any photos of the fishing group uh the people that they interacted with on the ground um because those were private focus groups um but uh this is a team uh including tabita who some of you will have met she's made it back to our campus here in Missouri a few times uh who were focusing on food security and fishing uh and so they went and they visited three they tried to visit four different fishing villages and do focus groups with the fishing people and the spouses of the fishing people who do most of the preparation and of the the fish how we doing here I five minutes um we're at the very end already so um so yeah uh they I was really proud of this group it's very exciting to bring in intervention this group recognized the more information they gathered from their MBG Partners on the ground the more they recognized that we weren't ready for an intervention we needed to gather information and so they made the whole goal of their trip to gather robust information from the fishing villages on their needs um on on their practices on everything including um two Villages that do not have fishing cooperatives and two Villages that do have fishing cooperatives in order to compare and contrast and to find out what's working for them and what we can uh what we can work with and so um I was quite proud of them some of them some days that involved trekking on foot 12 kilometers to a village and all the way back home again to conduct these fishing uh focus groups so but at least they got to see the Coast you know so um uh you saw some photos of the commune I'm sorry the um the compound where we stayed um with the the ravanel Huts the The Bungalow that we that we lived in which are exactly the same structures that the Village um the people who live in the surrounding fukutani inhabits so that was a really lovely part of the experience to be you know living in those structures um I'll get in many of these cases and I will I will venture to say all of these cases the people who were willing to invite wasu students into their home with a translater and have conversations with them were willing to do that because they were uh they were invited by MBG to invite these people into their home right because that relationship has existed and the trust has been born we asked questions of the people who signed up to use the urine on their crops as a as a a champion family and we asked them what is your main motivator for doing this is it you know and and they said well you know I you know I want to be able to sell more vegetables and you know and and buy clothes for my students to go to school you know and and you know you know be able to afford you know medicine for my children and then we asked would you do this you know if it was brought to you by somebody other than MBG one person said I always want to try to be the first person to do anything I would do it no matter what and the other three said this is this is definitely because I trust MB this is because we have established a a trusting relationship and I know you would not bring something that would hurt me so I I'm ready to try this um so that I I can't emphasize enough how that 20 year history that started with Arman sticking it out when somebody told him to get the heck out we don't trust you right and to build that trust and to stay there all this time that's why we're able to do this um so looking into the future what we're really hoping to do with this U as you I've mentioned throughout we're going to follow up each of these projects we're going to a new group of students that will um the first part of the semester they will spend um onboarding the same way we onboarded the previous group but this time they're also going to be processing the data that these teams collected their Baseline information and then learning how they're going to carry on an effective follow-up study and then also be already starting to think based on the Baseline information what does what does a modification to this intervention potentially look like that's going to be effective right um we also you know we're we're hoping to uh obviously be able to be a model for other institutions to create Partnerships like this one that can achieve what we're achieving there and then maybe you know once we have achieved some longterm efficacy in M Habu maybe look at other MBG sites on the ground um so yeah I really excited to be here today talk to you