After a number of years of volunteering for IEEE humanitarian know-how initiatives, Samantha Mugeni Niyoyita determined she wanted extra than simply technical abilities to assist underserved communities turn into extra self-sufficient. The IEEE member from Kigali, Rwanda, participated in putting in transportable sinks in close by rural markets to curb the unfold of COVID-19 and supplied clear water and sanitation companies to individuals displaced by the Mount Nyiragongo volcano eruption in 2021.
Niyoyita needed to learn to deal with different points comparable to entry to high quality well being care, understanding totally different cultures, and changing into accustomed to native insurance policies. And he or she felt she wanted to reinforce her management and communications abilities and learn to handle initiatives.
Because of a scholarship from IEEE Good Village, she is now getting that training by means of the grasp’s diploma program in improvement observe from Regis College, in Denver. This system, provided just about and in particular person, combines principle and hands-on coaching on matters comparable to group outreach and engagement, well being care, the surroundings, and sustainability. It teaches management and different delicate abilities.
Along with bringing electrical energy to distant communities, IEEE Good Village affords instructional and employment alternatives. To be eligible for its scholarship, the scholar’s thesis venture should assist this system’s mission.
Niyoyita, who attends lessons remotely, is a course of engineer at Africa Improved Meals, additionally in Kigali. AIF manufactures porridge from maize and different cereals and fortifies it with nutritional vitamins and minerals. She has labored there for greater than 4 years.
“Good Village needs to empower its members in order that we are able to implement initiatives in our area people understanding what the most effective practices are,” she says.
She acknowledges she wouldn’t have been capable of afford to attend Regis with out assist from IEEE.
Digital medical data to enhance care
Niyoyita is now within the second 12 months of the diploma program. Her analysis venture is to evaluate the affect of digitizing the medical data of main care clinics, often called well being posts, in rural Rwanda.
“The well being submit data are largely paper-based, and transitioning to digital data would enhance affected person outcomes,” Niyoyita says. “This supplies quick access to data and improves coordination of care.”
She plans to guage simply how entry to digital data by well being care professionals can enhance affected person care.
Her scholarship of US $5,045 was funded by donations to IEEE Good Village. For the reason that instructional program was launched in 2015, greater than 30 people from 16 international locations have participated.
“I used to be lucky to obtain this scholarship,” she says. “It has helped me rather a lot relating to delicate abilities. As an engineer, usually we are typically very technical. Expressing ourselves and sharing our abilities and experience are the sorts of issues you may solely be taught by means of a social science grasp’s diploma.”
Many alternatives as an industrial engineer
As a teenager, Niyoyita was extra excited about topics that required her to purpose and suppose creatively as an alternative of memorizing info. She excelled at arithmetic and physics.
“That was how I received into engineering,” she says, including that she additionally was impressed by her brother, an engineer.
The diploma from Regis is along with these Niyoyita already holds from the College of Utilized Sciences and Arts, often called HES-SO Valais-Wallis, in Sion, Switzerland. She earned a bachelor’s diploma in industrial techniques engineering in 2015 and a grasp’s in engineering with a focus in mechatronics in 2017.
She selected to check industrial engineering, she says, as a result of she finds it to be a “self-discipline that gives quite a few pathways to numerous fields and profession alternatives. I’m capable of perceive idea designs—which incorporates mechanical and electrical—programming, and automation. You will have a wealth of profession alternatives and an opportunity to make an affect.”
“IEEE Good Village needs to empower its members in order that we are able to implement initiatives in our area people understanding what the most effective practices are.”
At AIF, she analyzes the corporate’s processes to determine bottlenecks within the manufacturing line, and he or she proposes methods to repair them.
“We obtain these cereals and clear and grind them,” she says. “We now have a cooking part and fortify the cereals by means of mixing. Then we package deal and promote them.”
She evaluates the manufacturing move and checks on the efficiency of the tools. As well as, she supplies technological assist when new merchandise are being developed.
AIF is benefiting from the coaching she’s receiving from the grasp’s diploma program, she says, as she is studying to guide groups, present revolutionary options, and collaborate with others.
A profitable IEEE energy convention to Rwanda
Niyoyita joined IEEE whereas a pupil at HES-SO Valais-Wallis as a result of she wanted entry to its journals for her analysis papers. After she graduated, she continued her membership and began volunteering for IEEE Good Village in 2019. She served as a secretary for its Africa Working Group workforce, which labored on humanitarian initiatives.
She additionally received concerned in organizing conferences in Africa. Her first occasion was the 2019 PowerAfrica Convention, held in Abuja, Nigeria. It lined rising energy system applied sciences, purposes, authorities insurance policies, and regulatory frameworks. As a member of the convention’s technical program committee, she helped develop this system and reviewed article submissions. She additionally was a speaker on the IEEE Ladies in Engineering panel.
Primarily based on that optimistic expertise, she says, she vowed to convey the convention to Rwanda—which she did final 12 months. As cochair, she oversaw the funds, convention logistics, and different preparations to “make sure that native and overseas attendees had a wonderful expertise,” she says. Greater than 300 individuals from 43 international locations attended.
Offering entrepreneurs with abilities to succeed
One venture that Niyoyita has placed on the again burner due to her work and college commitments is offering her nation’s technicians with the abilities they should turn into entrepreneurs.
Many current graduates of vocational technical faculties in rural Rwanda have instructed her they need to begin their very own firm, she says, however she has seen they lack the abilities to take action.
“Despite the fact that they supply problem-solving merchandise or concepts, they typically lack the advertising and marketing abilities and monetary literacy to have the ability to maintain their venture,” she says. “In addition they have to know the right way to pitch an thought and make a proposal to allow them to get funding.”
She want to create an after-school incubation hub to offer the technicians with coaching, entry to the Web to allow them to flesh out their concepts, mentorship alternatives, and advisors who can inform them the place to seek out financing.
“I used to be capable of get among the abilities from the grasp’s diploma program,” she says, “however most of them I received from my work and in addition from my involvement in IEEE.”
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