Contextual Innovation and Practice in Rural Bolivia and Beyond

Year after year, a changing climate alters anticipated and familiar weather patterns, opening up unknowns in the way people across the globe capture their water, grow their crops, and prepare their food. Researchers in the Contextual Innovation and Practice group at ARI (CIP) worked to tackle one small but significant element of this crisis by working with vulnerable rural Bolivian populations throughout 2022 to introduce contextually appropriate and climate-resilient renewable technologies in the Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus.

The project, funded by the U.S. Embassy in La Paz, Bolivia, as a State Department Public Affairs Section grant, was a collaborative effort between the CIP team and two Bolivian-based organizations; engineering non-profit Fundación Ingenieros en Acción (FIEA) and academic institution Universidad Privada Boliviana (UPB). The project team worked together to develop demonstration and training sessions that aim to bolster climate readiness through hands-on workshops focused on sustainable FEW technologies.

Sharing experience and expertise, the three organizations developed mobile demonstration and training sessions to be brought to 14 rural communities throughout the Sica Sica municipality of Bolivia (located about 115 kilometers southeast of La Paz). The development process included an in-country contextual investigation from the CIP researchers who traveled to Bolivia in March 2022 to meet with community residents, observe community conditions, and better understand which sustainable FEW tools would be of most use and which format of training delivery would be most effective for each unique community.

Importantly, the CIP researchers led the effort to implement a bidirectional flow of information, rather than a one-way delivery from research team to residents. This is a necessary step of contextually thoughtful project development, as design teams acknowledge that project clients offer the most specialized knowledge on the lived issues the team is hoping to help address. CIP methodology has found that integrating this knowledge, in addition to the refined analysis of CIP researchers, into the project development process ultimately leads to more sustainable project design and more satisfied project clients.

Following this rigorous program development phase, three renewable technologies were selected to be of most interest and use: a solar water pump, solar panels, and a solar oven. Personalized demonstration and training sessions on these FEW technologies were conducted by FIEA engineers in all 14 communities. Additional training sessions were brought to the UPB campus to demonstrate to students the application of these sustainable technologies in a context close to home.

CIP Research Engineer Alexandra Timmons returned to Bolivia in January 2023 to meet with the in-country team for the final stage of the project: monitoring and evaluation. Timmons and FIEA engineer Xiomara Echeverria returned to the communities after the training had occurred to meet with attendees, administer a follow-up survey, and ask them about their personal experience. The team was looking to find what went well, what work is still to be done before the formal project conclusion, and what could be improved for the future. The results found the demonstration and training sessions to be a great success, with 98% of participants responding that they found the session to be useful and informative. The team also found that many participants were interested in purchasing the solar technologies demonstrated in the training session, but that the guidance provided on how to do so was insufficient. In response, Timmons is working with the FIEA team to offer step-by-step instructional packets on how this can be done. Now the team is looking to the future to expand the impacts of this project effort.

In October 2022, the CIP team hosted academics, engineers, and industry professionals from Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, and Zambia to a Global FEW Climate Change Summit. Summit participants shared the nuances to the climate-driven issues faced throughout their countries, as well as acknowledging the many similarities. Using the FEW demonstration and training project in Bolivia as a foundation, the Summit team is preparing to submit a grand international proposal to develop a network of regional hubs around the world. These hubs will house community-specific and contextually informed physical and social data, climate challenges, engineering innovations, industry developments, and more, and network with the global cohort of hubs to ensure this information is not siloed. By building a clear information sharing network, the team intends to strengthen context-minded efforts across the globe and help make engineering designs more effective for the populations they hope to serve.