Our IGNITE project at DukeEngage empowers students around the world through developing curricula on STEM skills and STEM knowledge to build, fix or create useful prototypes that can solve a problem specific to their community. This way community members can solve a problem along with the rest of their community instead of solving the problem for them. My specific role in the project is to teach students how to make a hand sanitizer pump. I whole heartedly believe in the idea of innovation specific to the community and therefore, was a little disappointed to find that, making a hand santizer pump is not something one can do on their own without having the necessary tools with measurements specific to each other. This makes the community building their own pump much more difficult (the goal is teach students with tools they can find at their home). Nonetheless, I found it useful to explain how a handsanitizer pump works and why it would be useful to have. I realize that it is important to be flexible when trying to achieve a community-oriented goal especially in these odd times. I have always seen resilience as a strength of mine, so it wasn’t difficult to figure out a solution that worked and make it happen.
