My oh my… It’s been a long way since this whole thing started – with months of planning, ping ponging of ideas, confusion, some more idea ping pong, and some more confusion – everything worth it.
From the start, our unstoppable team of idealists, the magnificent seven, were ready to go full-on and I had many wild expectations for the whole journey, and now as I think of it, maybe my anticipations were not so far from what actually happened…
The team for the Nepali Project 2019 has been working hard since the first 5 students had their first meeting in November 2018. After a while, these students from Aalto University, Finland received the news of 2 new members that will be complimenting the made in Finland team. By the end of January, the number increased to 12, with the new members from the Asian Institute of Technology and Management, Kathmandu. Today, there are only a few days left for getting together and working for specifics objectives and perhaps, building a common one for all of them, always focusing in the rural village of Dhungentar, Nepal.
There is room and potential to combine our scopes.
Both angles taken by the teams are valid and extremely complimentary. In one hand, the team from the AITM arises at first sight from economical sustainability; while the direction chosen by the team from Aalto University is mostly seeing on the social sustainability sphere.
We started our day with an excursion to the Center of Resilient Development, a non-governmental, non-profit organization. They are focused on research about the sustainable reconstruction technologies in Nepal. But also do trainings and have built their own demo-house for other NGO’s who are having reconstructions projects.
We started the first day of our field trip with a meeting in a café nearby the guesthouse we were staying. Elias’ flight would not arrive before evening but the rest of us would have a workshop with three AITM students who would join our team to visit the first case site from the next day until Saturday.
