INNOVATION SUCCESS STORY WINNER EARTH UNIVERSITY
Fabretto Children’s Foundation
As a child in the rural coffee growing region of Nariño in southwestern Colombia, Didier Bolaños Gonzalez faced an uncertain future. Clashes between paramilitary, guerilla and government forces demolished much of his hometown, twice. His mother suffered from schizophrenia and his father, a rural peasant, was growing poppies for the drug trade. In his teens, his home was destroyed in a flood, he was stabbed in a mugging, and he had to support his mother and siblings for months while his father left in search of work.
In spite of this adversity, Didier graduated from high school and earned a scholarship to study in Costa Rica at EARTH University, an institution established with the support of USAID. While at EARTH, he grew increasingly determined to help the struggling farmers in his region even before graduating. With the support of his hometown radio station, he recorded a radio spot inviting farmers to submit agricultural questions. In less than a month, more than 30 inquiries had rolled in. Didier recruited classmates and formed student teams to tackle the questions by tapping into internet recourses and EARTH professors. One of the first resolved cases was a farmer with several tilapia tanks. In spite of continual feeding, his tilapia were not gaining weight. Together with an EARTH professor, the students discovered that the fish species he was growing had low weightgain capacity. If he wanted to produce more kilos of tilapia he would have to look for an alternate species. “When I heard this, I cried,” recalls Didier. “You’ve got to wonder how long he had been doing this, and we gave him a solution.” Recent ASHA-funded technology improvements on the EARTH campus, such as fiber optic lines installed in the student dorms and Internet Protocol telephony, have played an important role in the project’s success. Didier and his team created a webpage, a Facebook group and maintained a Dropbox account, which have kept the student teams organized and helped them raise funds to cover their expenses. Didier also envisions that the Facebook platform could be a communications channel with farmers in the future. However, because of the limited connectivity and computer skills in his region, the student teams have had to rely on IP telephone calls. Didier, who graduates in December 2015, believes that this project could be replicated around the world and hopes to attract investment that could help him fulfill this dream. “Small farmers have questions that don’t always require a government study to resolve,” says Didier. “We can do diagnostics with pictures, and using basic technology like a cell phone, we can get farmers the answers they need to improve their practices and their quality of life.”