With the opportunity to work with the engineering and business students over the past few weeks we have seen several approaches to problem solving and have tried to learn from them. One example of this occurred after participating in a review of the engineers proposed solutions to solving water problems in Longido.

We were happy to see some creative solutions forming and the application of technology in useful applications; one realization we made was that the research and data inspiring the proposed solutions was heavily quantitative. While we had been more focused on who the water was going to and what they needed, the engineers were more focused on how the water was getting there, how much water it would be, and how clean it would be.

This is a good example of how collaborating with different faculties or departments can lead to a better informed solution to a problem that needs to be looked at from multiple views.  By using qualitative data and quantitative data to look at this issue it’s evident that there are multiple problems and that they affect one another. Knowing this we hope to do our best in not creating more problems than we attempt to solve.