So I'm Barry Pittendrigh. I'm a professor here at University of Illinois. I'm also the director of a program called Scientific Animations Without Borders. And I'll talk a little bit more about this as we go further. But I'd just like to step back and sort of think about things from a 30,000 foot perspective. When we start talking about issues of post-harvest loss, one of the things that occurs is it doesn't matter where you go in the world, there are different forms of post-harvest loss. When one steps into more developing nation contexts, one of the fundamental issues is a lot of that post-harvest loss is occurring sort of more upstream in what we call a value chain. So, much earlier on in production, storage, before things get processed, that's where a lot of the losses occur. Interestingly, it's also part of that value chain, where, in many of these countries, you're dealing with individuals that speak very divergent languages, oftentimes have real issues with literacy, so they fall into a category of what we call low literate learners. And globally, it depends on who you talk to, but there's at least 800 million, if not well over 1 billion, people on the planet that fall into this category of being a low literate learner. So one of the things that we're very interested in is within the context of value chains, early on in value chains, where we're dealing with low literate learners that speak divergent languages. How can we bring educational tools to them, so that they can understand sometimes behavioral changes, simple technologies that they can adopt that can in turn help them get greater value out of the goods that they are involved with, again, early in that value chain. And one of the big issues is how can we reduce post-harvest loss? So, how can we reduce the number of insects that attack their grains in storage, for example? If they're processing something that's very early in the value chain, let's say, shea nuts, for example, that feed into a global value chain, how can we make sure that they used techniques that will optimize what comes out the other end, may reduce the amount of work that, for example, women have to put into that product, or in fact, reduce the levels of firewood that they have to use to produce that given product? And I'm using this example of production of shea. Additionally, there are very early on steps in the process, for example, with teff in Ethiopia. Traditional techniques use a large amount of grain to plant the crop. Other techniques that have been developed that are called row planting or transplanting, they allow people to use a lot less teff seeds. In fact, a dramatic reduction in the amount of teff seeds that they have to use. And that's seed that can now be put into other things, like the food supply. So if you look globally, there are these sets of challenges that come up again and again. Now I've worked in the area of international development for well over a decade, probably closer to about 14 years. And one of the things that seems to be a reoccurring issue is this challenge of how do we get educational information into the hands of people that are, again, low literate learners, oftentimes people that live in rural areas and people that speak very divergent languages. So, let's step back to the Ethiopia example. There's approximately 70 different languages in Ethiopia, we moved to Ghana. One could argue there's around 50 to 52 different languages in Ghana. So, we're dealing with this great diversity of language issues, and how do we get content that's absolutely scientifically accurate into the hands of these individuals? And how can we do this in a cost effective manner? We had actually developed sets of solutions that were dealing with post-harvest loss, reducing challenges that people had with pest attack in several West African countries. My collaborators came to the table with what I think are just fantastic solutions. But those are solutions that really revolve around educating people to adopt new techniques and approaches in order to reduce their problems of post-harvest loss and increase production in the fields that they're working in. But we ran into the same problem. And it was a problem that many other people have run into again and again and again. How do we produce this necessary set of content? One of the challenges that we faced is we went in and said, let's do a live action filming. And of course, I'm sitting here and we're doing a live action filming of me, is it's feasible if you have a certain set of resources. It's very feasible if you're all in one place at one time. But how do we bring global experts from one part of the planet, local experts from another part of the planet, and how can we be involved in a process that facilitates them working together without them having ever to leave the comfort of their own home? We realize very rapidly that there was massive changes that were occurring in the area of high quality three dimensional animations. So we've developed this system called Scientific Animations Without Borders, where what we do is we reach out to global experts where a new solution has been developed. We reach out to local experts about local techniques, local approaches, local strategies that they might take in order to teach other individuals about these approaches that will help people's lives. Then we can develop these scripts in a virtual manner by working with these people globally. And then we hand it off to a series of very creative people that we connect them with these experts, and we make these high quality two dimensional or three dimensional animations. What we strive for is making them absolutely accurate. So then they end up in the hands of farmers or people in the field, they are something that people can take, watch on their cell phone, and use it in their own daily lives. Now the next big challenge was this. How do you start getting these in numerous different languages? And I always say, it's nice to have resources. You need a little bit of money to get things done. However, one of the fundamental issues is you can move mountains with good will. So we've developed a system where we work with volunteers from around the world, and every one of those volunteers knows what's going to come out the other end. What will come out the other end when they volunteer with is as following. They know that a product will be produced that can go into people's hands that will do good for those individuals. Those animations that come out the other end are given out freely, so anybody can access them. And many of the people that we are trying to target to help live under $2 a day. Getting education to them is a fundamental right, and I think it's very critical that it gets to them in a manner that is easily accessible. And of course, if you have people living under $2 a day, you really have to get this information out in a free manner to anybody that can deploy it. Additionally, for those that volunteer and do the voiceovers, we put their names on the animations, so that they get the credit for what they're doing. So that's something that they are part of. It's part of the creative process. So for a small contribution of an hour or two of their time, they can work with us and get something tangible out that can be used in their community, maybe their home community, when they're abroad, or their community that they're living in, and help share that knowledge with other individuals in that community. So we can do this virtually. We literally send them the documentations. They can do the voiceovers in the comfort of their own home, email the materials back to us. We put the voice overlays onto the animations. And then in turn, we pass them back to them or anybody else that wants to use them for educational purposes only. So once this content has been created, we put it up in a set of systems where people can easily access these materials. So we have online systems where people can go in and download our materials, put them on cell phones, put them on projectors, put them on computers, put them on any type of audio visual equipment that they have in hand. And take them out of the field and start sharing them with people. And what this means is that other groups can come to us, and they can say let's partner. Let's create materials together, and then we'll take these materials back out into the field. So we have numerous partnerships in multiple countries, over a dozen countries, we have probably three, four, five, six dozen different collaborative groups that we're working with now. But we also have this second level of groups that come in, and they download our materials, they take it out into the field, and they start having impact. And they use it in ways that sometimes we may never have thought about before, but again, for educational purposes only. Now these groups come back, and they contact us, and they let us know how these things are being used, and we may never hear from them again. And that's fine with us. We're very happy that they're being used in this format. There's a third group of individuals and organizations that take these things out, download them, and they may use them in educational purposes, and we may never hear from them again. And that is fine with us, too, as long as they'll be taken out and used. So our connections globally with people with that sort of finished product, those animations that can now be used for taking out of the field, are being used in many different ways. We have many examples of individuals downloading them, taking them out into their villages and having impact and sending us a video clip, sending us pictures, contacting us about how people are using these materials. In some cases, we've had the wonderful opportunity to go out and visit with these people and see impact. One example is we produced an animation where we took neem extracts to use as an alternative, a neem is a tree that is originally from India, but is grown across many parts of Africa. And that tree, if you take extracts from the tree, you can take the water-based extract or an oil-based extract that's now put in water and spray it on a crop, just like you spray an insecticide. So we have many examples of groups that have worked with these materials. One notable one was an individual that downloaded, took it out into the village, and they decided that they should start reforcing their village in neem plants. So they started a nursery and started reforcing their village and these neem seeds, so they'd have this new resource. We have many other examples of TV networks in local countries taking the materials, using it in their TV programs. We're absolutely delighted with this type of approach and always happy to see those materials being used in different ways. We have connections with government agencies, for example, the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency. We developed content with them. They took that content, put it on over 600 tablets that we now deliver to extension agents across Ethiopia. So that they can open those animations in Amharic or any of the other languages that we have those animations in and use them in their educational programs. So, those just represent some of the examples, but what is very fulfilling about this project is, there's not a week that goes by that I will wake up in the morning, and I'll get an email where somebody has taken these materials and used them in ways that we never thought about before. So we feel very excited to have this opportunity to be part of a global community, where we can work with global experts who volunteer their time to help us create that content and then create the content with many wonderful people from around the world that dedicate a few hours of their time to put it into local languages. Many of those people take ownership of that and take it out of their own communities and use it in their own educational programs. So what we're really looking towards are developing this network, this network of people that can now create content, deploy that content, and work with them to deploy it into environments and situations where it's very early in these value chains, such that we can have this positive impact on the value chains. One interesting study that we did within the context of this was to actually compare deployment of these animations with just simply sending classic extension agents out into the field and looking at how many people adopted this given technology. What was shocking out the other end, it was equal. So deploying the animations was the same as sending extension agents out to do the traditional plugs. However, as we are very relieved, of course, having extension agents with animations in their hands were far more successful than either of these individually. So, our goal is really to develop content that will empower extension agents, NGOs, other organizations in the field to incorporate these into their educational programs, to begin talking points with the communities that they're working in, and hopefully generate excitement to change behavior and change how people are doing things. So they can increase their level of output, reduce post-harvest loss in this particular circumstances, and also, hopefully change the quality of their lives.
