SprogBlog: Powering African Schools with Playground Toys

Without a Village: About the SprogBlog

John and I are international health researchers, focusing on humanitarian development. We are part of the effort to eradicate global poverty within our lifetime. Giant Apollo-sized goals are nothing new to us after eleven years at NASA. In terms of visionary public sector efforts, we see solving poverty as more critical and less difficult than space exploration and we're just the generation tasked with the duty and inspiration to do this.

We research as doctoral students at Columbia University on New York City's Upper West Side. I study global health promotion, researching maternal survival and international development capacity building. John is in Earth and Environmental Engineering and researches pathogen transport in groundwater in Bangladesh. Our favorite research subjects are our three young children--Aidan (8), Eleanor (6), and Vivi (1).

The SprogBlog began in 2003 as my journal of motherhood just after the birth of my second child when we were still living in Houston for NASA. It was a time when I was particularly in need of support. Until then, I'd been more of a link blogger (at the Same River Twice) than a journaler. But in the SprogBlog I poured myself and our family into these posts, saying this was me, mothering without a village. Several years later John joined me in writing here. A lot has changed and we've blogged through most of it. Now, we have three children. We quit our jobs and moved to New York for our research at Columbia. In 2008, we found out our youngest daughter has a serious brain condition, which changed our lives, our perspective, and our plans again. Now, nearing our final semesters before graduation, we look forward to putting our education into implementation and rejoining the working world--even if we aren't sure where or what that will look like yet.

Our children and our dreams rock our world. We're a little crazy in our ambitions, which makes for wild drama most of the time. I hope it's worth your click. Welcome to the SprogBlog!

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Powering African Schools with Playground Toys

AfriGadget - Powering African Schools with Playground Toys

It's a teeter totter that generates electricity to power the school. John and I have been trying to decide if this is a treat for the good kids or a punishment for the bad kids... Go teeter totter!

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Thursday, March 27, 2008

Powering African Schools with Playground Toys

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Thursday, March 27, 2008

Powering African Schools with Playground Toys

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Slideshow

wordle

anniem's shared items

An American Moment

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