[Health] Fwd: People working on health content who should really be in touch

Wed Jul 21 14:06:43 EDT 2010

Wanted to forward this to everyone- Mark is doing some amazing work (or at
least planning to) in Uruguay and we should definitely recruit his help!

Beth

---
*Beth Santos*
Outreach Coordinator
Waveplace Foundation

Tel: +1 610 797 3100 x 44
Fax: +1 610 797 3199
Cell: +1 603 661 1273
http://www.waveplace.org
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mark Brul <markbrul at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 3:12 PM
Subject: RE: People working on health content who should really be in touch
To: Beth Santos <beth at waveplace.org>
Cc: digna at movimientofoundation.com

 Hi Beth,

Well, it is a an honor to meet a ‘OLPC rock star’. Me and my girlfriend
Digna are new in this OLPC community and are glad to become involved in
this. We also only recently spotted a living XO in its natural habitat. We
just arrived in Uruguay, after abandoning our lives in Holland for running
our voluntary project for a year. Let me explain a little bit about our
project named Saludame.

In 2008 I have been working as an intern for a small Uruguayan company
called Evimed <http://www.evimed.com.uy/>. I have been travelling a lot
through rural and remote places, doing interviews and observational
activities with rural physicians. Quite impressive I must say. In most areas
these physicians play a little role in providing health education on the
elementary schools (they do that voluntary, without any formal support or
whatsoever), telling basic things about e.g. sexual relationships, healthy
nutrition and habits or what to do at a dengue epidemic. Primary health
prevention. However, this is said to be too scarce. We want to combine the
XO’s, elementary education and primary health prevention.

Together with my colleague (Elisa Martinez, working for the Ministry of
Health) we put up this plan to develop a health intervention program,
supported by a XO software tool (whatever it might become). Most important
is that the project is designed from a health promotion methodology, whereas
the XO is supporting. My girlfriend and I have been working hard the last
year to erect a Dutch NGO, doing fundraising activities and actually
obtaining a grant from the Dutch Ministry of International Development Work.
We are also working together with Plan Ceibal, who covers some of the
development costs for software engineers of CeibalJAM. Perhaps a bit
complex, are you still there? J

Well, we are in a starting phase of the project. Next week we will be
visiting the community in departemento Salto, where we will work together
with the community (teachers, physician, nurses, parents and children) to
address the health topic and analyze the causes, problems etc. Based on the
contextual analysis and needs assessment for health education, we will be
developing the educational methodology based on health objectives we are
defining. The XO software, most presumably a game, will form a part in the
program. So, it is not only a game, but the experience/results of playing
the game will be used in the class room (and hopefully beyond) to make the
children aware of the health topic. Eventually we strive for an increased
awareness among children and a slight chance in behavior. Well, one must be
ambitious right?

Technology wise we are thinking of using Karma. It is said to be a good
platform for creating interactive content. Christoph and Pablo Flores
(ceibalJAM) have seen it in Nepal, perhaps you are familiar with it? I am
curious, do have experience with Karma and how does it differ (pros and
cons) to Etoys (don’t know it). For your background, I have a master degree
in biomedical engineering. I am not a computer scientist and talk on a level
of requirements. But my colleague in our project, Pablo Moreli of ceibalJAM,
is responsible for the software development.

The project will last a year, in which we will 1) analyze the community, the
needs and barriers, 2) develop a health intervention program, parallel to 3)
the development of an interactive XO software tool (presumably a game) that
is supported by 4) guidelines and manuals for teachers and children to
finally 5) implement it, run a pilot and do an evaluation. In June 2011 we
will return to Holland, being tired of all the work.

Concluding, we are starting a multidisciplinary project and are still in a
naïve and utopia state of mind to develop something tremendous. Next week,
after our visit to the community, I will update you and tell where we have
landed. J It is great to share experiences and ideas. Please tell me more
about your current activities for health and the XO.

Hope to stay in touch and good luck with the great efforts.

Best regards, que pases linda!

Mark Brul

*E: mark at movimientofoundation.com *

*M: +598 (0) 98 582 967*

*W: **www.movimientofoundation.com**  *

PS: perhaps we should post this on the Health OLPC list? I just signed in
for it, tell me…?

PS2: I am also working on a second, but smaller project for my university in
Holland. I work there only part-time. We want to connect a Uruguayan and
Dutch elementary school and interchange cultural and health topics between
the two classes. We are thinking of using digital posters with self-made
pictures/movies of the children’s life, house, school (cultural) and daily
nutrition like breakfast, lunch and dinner (health). If you have a good
suggestion of a program that is easy to use for children to make posters on
both the XO (UY) and Windows systems (HOL), but also to send them to each
other, please tell me!

*From:* elizabeth.ann.santos at gmail.com [mailto:
elizabeth.ann.santos at gmail.com] *On Behalf Of *Beth Santos
*Sent:* dinsdag 20 juli 2010 15:40
*To:* Christoph Derndorfer
*Cc:* markbrul at gmail.com
*Subject:* Re: People working on health content who should really be in
touch

Christoph, thanks so much for bringing me to Mark!

Mark, very nice to meet you. As Christoph said, I'm trying to get some
people together to make public health content on Etoys and other activities
on Sugar for use internationally, though my personal focus is Haiti, São
Tomé e Príncipe, Kenya and Tanzania.

We're currently making good use of the OLPC Health list, as we figure that
will best keep us in touch with anyone who may have been inactive in the
past but wants to lend a hand now.

What are you and your girlfriend hoping to work on in Uruguay?

Thanks again to you both! Mark, looking forward to being in touch with you.

Beth

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 8:00 PM, Christoph Derndorfer <
e0425826 at student.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:

Beth,

I'd like to introduce you to Mark Brul. He and his girlfriend will be
here in Uruguay for a year to develop health-related content for the XO
in collaboration with the folks from ceibalJAM like Pablo Flores. Over
the weekend (when we weren't eating awesome asado) we spent quite a bit
of time talking about this project and I thought that it would be well
worth connecting him with you since you seem to be on top of the ongoing
health-related efforts surrounding OLPC and Waveplace.

Mark,

it's no exaggeration to say that Beth is something like a rock star in
the OLPC community and doing awesome work wherever she goes. Currently
she's on São Tomé and Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea to work on an
orphaned OLPC project she encountered there last year and has since
championed in many ways. In that regard her story is somewhat similar to
what you have been doing in terms of getting funding, setting up an
organization, looking for partners, etc.

You can follow her progress and thoughts via her blog at
http://bethstepsup.blogspot.com/ or the Waveplace blog at
http://waveplace.org/news/blog/ (Waveplace is an NGO focused on
high-impact after-school OLPC projects in the Carribean - including
Haiti - and Beth recently became its outreach coordinator).

She's also led the recently increased activities in terms of health
related efforts around OLPC, I'd suggest you take a look at these notes
from a conference call that was held a month ago:
http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/health/2010-June/000287.html

OLPC also has a mailing-list dedicated to health-related topics
(http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/health) but looking at Beth's notes
above it seems as though Waveplace has also set up it's own list for
discussions.

Cheers,
Christoph

--
Christoph Derndorfer
co-editor, www.olpcnews.com
e-mail: christoph at olpcnews.com

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