For the last 5 months I have been working on a project that will, I hope, save every family in Ethiopia enough money to send 1-2 children to school. If you want to know the details you can check out extreme.stanford.edu/projects/mighty_mitad.html

I was in Ethiopia for several weeks, delivering the work I did with several other students, and visited several villages that make the defective clay products I hope to fix. It was a very conflicted experience. It was a beautiful place filled with wonderful people, but they are amongst the poorest in the country due to their work. Furthermore, my product, while helping the masses at large, will actually hurt their business as well. I was hoping to visit them to both give them a heads-up and to give them an opportunity to join the business I'm getting kicked off.

Here are the children of the poorest of the poor, dancing in front of a burning pile of corn husks that are firing a pile of clay cookware, welcoming and smiling for the "ferengi" (white guy) who is going to hurt their families in some ways while helping many others.

This world is a complicated place, and doing "the right thing" often is attached to unintended consequences. Nevertheless we must do what we can for as many as we can. This village received us well and is partnering with our business, so I hope all will be well.

The tension here between the smoke, the tatters, and the smiles on the faces of the innocent perfectly embody the nature of trying to work on the hardest and most fundamental problems facing the world today. It is a poignant reminder for me and I use it in all my presentations about my work.