News & Events

Students work with two villages in India to reuse, recycle waste

June 25, 2009

One of the two teams of students selected this spring by the Deshpande Foundation to lead public health projects in India has produced a newsletter about its progress in the villages of Gumgol and Shivalli.

Team members Ibidapo, DeFelice, Polston and Johnston (l-r, rear) meet with residents of Shivalli.

Nicholas DeFelice, Oluwaseyi Ibidapo, Jill Johnston and Patsy Polston, master's students in environmental sciences and engineering and members of the "The Tar Heel Transformers" team, proposed the construction of a sanitary system to improve basic sanitation, indoor air quality and soil fertility through the construction of latrines and the conversion of human and animal waste to biogas.

After making the necessary contacts and developing strategies with community leaders, group members write, "Our plans for the next six weeks will include improving waste management, building a composting site, installing an Eco-san toilet, utilizing kitchen waste by installing a biogas stove, and educating the community children on sanitation and hygiene."

"I am so very proud of these students," says Jacqueline MacDonald Gibson, PhD, assistant professor of environmental sciences and engineering and academic adviser to Johnston and DeFelice. "They conceived of this project entirely on their own and have handled all of the logistical arrangements by themselves, on top of all of their ordinary graduate student duties."

Members of the second team, "Partners for Gender Progress," are Yasmin Cole-Lewis, Daniel Cothran, Jessica Feingold, and Jessica Izquierdo (master's students in health behavior and health education) and Rajeev Colaco (doctoral candidate in maternal and child health). These students are developing an educational program to teach young men about sexual health and gender equality. Expected outcomes from the curriculum include a reduction in new cases of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and reduction in gender-based violence.

Founded in 1996 by Gururaj (Desh) and Jaishree Deshpande, of Andover, Mass., the Foundation funds innovative, entrepreneurial, sustainable projects that benefit communities in the northwestern Kamalaka region of India.

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To learn more about the Deshpande Foundation, visit http://deshpandefoundation.org.

The newsletter, "Waste to Wealth," can be seen online here (pdf).

UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.

Last updated June 25, 2009

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