Robbin Engels
The prestigious honor gives the two bachelor students and their other two teammates an extraordinary opportunity to fly to Kenya in February, where they will tour the Manyatta slums in Kisumu for ten days to discover if their project plans match up to the opinion of Cordaid judges.
‘I don’t know how they will accept us,’ says Schreurs who studies Psychology. ‘Maybe they will view us as intruders or just as people who are going to help them; it all depends, but I think it will be a shock to see all those people living in the slums.’
Illing, who majors in European Studies, says she has a particular interest in development projects and glows with the prospect of traveling to Africa. ‘I really have to say I’m excited about the trip. You read about the subject, watch documentaries on it, study for months, but when do you get the chance to actually see it in real life?’
In autumn of last year, nine multidisciplinary teams were formed by two professors in the Centre for Studies in Technology and Sustainable Development (CSTM), Dr. Karen Buchanan and Dr. Annemarije Kooijman, who combined students from different academic backgrounds and interest to come up with feasible plans to improve the development of urban development in Africa. Illing and Schreursagreed that the secret to their success was that their all-female team, consisting of two Dutch and two German students, clicked perfectly from the onset of the project.
‘I think the most important aspect of the project is that we all worked really well together. Whenever we had any “conflict” or “disagreement”, we knew eventually it could be worked out,’ says Llling, who also mentions it was vitally important for the German team members to get a top grade in the course. ‘Wendy and I were satisfied to earn an average grade, but we decided to do our utmost best on the project for our team members because not everyone who applies in Germany to earn a master’s degree can get a spot, and it was essential for our other team members to get a high grade which pulled everyone in a positive direction.’
For their project, which the judges noted was ‘easy to implement’ and didn’t require ‘large amounts of start-up capital’, says Llling, her team created a simple plan to help local bicycle taxi operators maintain a sustainable way of living and earning an income. ‘One of our main project components is to have taxi cyclists solicit businesses to take out advertisements that will be placed directly on the bicycles.’ In turn, the generated revenue from the advertisements could pay for the cost to purchase a new bicycle or pay for the maintenance of one which is already owned.
Falling in line with other course requirements, the team also set out to try to improve the level of ‘social capital’ by thinking of strategies in a local context that might be able to connect operators to the society in which they live, bonding them to have more trust with one another through a common set of goals.
‘The two other components to our project were to increase social capital, lessening the need for microcredit loans and operators could ask local businesses, universities, schools and organizations, in the private and public sectors, to hire their transportation services,’ says Schreurs, who worked hard on the project but had to miss the final presentation in Den Haag due to an ankle injury.
The team further elaborated on their winning project in their business plan. ‘We thought in order to have our project operate properly, the taxi cyclists would need to hire one person to handle bookkeeping tasks and maintain good contact with all the advertisers.’
In final preparation for the trip abroad, team members are not only imagining what they will experience, but busy getting the required injections to travel to Kenya. ‘I just received injections for hepatitis A and B, yellow fever, typhus and need to take one malaria pill each week for three weeks before we leave,’ Schreurs says.
Left to right: Wendy Schreurs, Marieke llling, Rowan de Haan and Maike Herbst. (Photo: Gijs van Ouwerkerk)
