Hands, Haiti, and Humanitarianism

Our talk this week will be held virtually on Friday, 11/19 from 5:00 - 6:00. 

While I could go on about how interesting and amazing it is, I think I'll let Jade tell us all about this amazing opportunity to talk about interesting things in a impactful way.

Inhumane Humanitarianism: When good intensions have bad consequences

As a global society, we are coming to realize that our most critical problems exist in the context of complex adaptive systems that are difficult to model and predict. Working with people from various disciplines and backgrounds can help us better understand and adapt our solutions within these systems—whether they involve policy, new processes, or goods and services-- without causing major new problems and is one of the main challenges of humanity moving into future.

Offering effective humanitarian aid in areas experiencing extreme poverty, natural disasters, or acts of war requires a deep understanding the nuances of the needs of each of the parties that hold a stake—positive or negative— in that area.

Join Jade as she relates her first- “hand” experiences in the field of upper-limb prosthetics needs assessment—when it’s gone terribly wrong and what it looks like when it is done right-- and lessons learned from time spent doing collaborative clinical, design, and ethnographic research in the field in the low-resource, disaster affected area of Haiti.

Jade Myers

Jade holds positions as both Visiting Scientist at the RIT LiveAbility Lab and Adjunct Faculty within the Biomedical Engineering Department and the School of Individualized Studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She has served as Research & Development Associate and Haiti Project Team Lead for LimbForge (in partnership with Victoria Hand Project), a non-profit specializing in increasing access to quality prostheses for underserved communities throughout the world and has collaborated with Doctors without Borders (MSF) on international ultra-low-cost medical device projects involving 3D printing within low-income countries, disaster areas and war zones. Her team’s work has been showcased in such venues as Time magazine and was recently on display at Hartford University as a part of the Design Museum installation, “Bespoke Bodies: The Design & Craft of Prosthetics.” Its accompanying book features a prosthetic her team designed on its cover. Jade instructs and co-instructs several courses including “Medical Device Design,” “Wicked Problems,” and "3D-Technologies for Prosthetic Applications," an interdisciplinary, project-based class that leverages 3D-printing, scanning, and CAD to engage students in the many facets of prosthetic design. Concurrently a Mechanical & Industrial Engineering Ph.D. student at RIT, her research centers on finding novel ways to improve the design of prosthetic sockets using 3D-printable lattice structures, and she ultimately strives to increase access to low-cost, medical grade 3D-printed prosthetic devices for those with the greatest need across the globe. Jade is a 2012 alumnus of FLCC and was a member of its Honors program.

 

 

Looking inward to better what's outward...

 

HONORS TALK SERIES

Cultural Competence vs. Cultural Humility

Wednesday, November 10

5:00 - 6:00

Room 2310 or VIA WEBEX (password is HonorsTalk5 if needed)

Speaker:  Nasim Sarvaiya, Assistant Professor, Social Science

That's quite a title, isn't it?  There's a lot to unpack in it and rather than try to do it myself - since I am often learning right along with the other attendees at the talks - I asked Nasim to explain what it meant.  This is what she said:

Cultural humility goes beyond cultural competence in that it is a tool for an increased awareness of self in order to understand the "other" by going beyond learning about other cultures and reflect on one's own history. Cultural humility requires considering the "other" as an expert in his/her own experiences. Cultural humility is more engaging so that each can discover him/herself and their own beliefs in order to become more of aware of bias, stereotypes, and judgment.

This is so very important - today and every day.  I think there's a lot we can learn from Nasim about how to be better citizens of the world and I am looking forward to the talk.  Nasim herself comes from a pretty powerful background.  When I asked her to tell me a little about herself, this is what she shared with me:

 I did not have a straight and narrow career path. When in graduate school, I aspired to work with women centering on mainly women’s issues such as domestic abuse, prenatal care, women’s health, etc. My college advisor at that time suggested “exploring” men’s issues so I did my first graduate internship at a medium security prison for men. That experience changed the course of my career path. This began my new journey capturing human service work within the criminal justice arena.   ​Through all of my positions, I learned that no one is solely his/her crime, disability, circumstance, etc. Every individual was born equal and so much of who we are is molded by our environment in context of family, culture, sub-culture, race, and ethnicity to name some factors. 

I really hope you will join us for this important talk.  With all that is going on in the world around us, we need as many tools as we can get for how to engage with those around us in thoughtful, meaningful, and healing ways.  There is no other way that we will create a world that treats everyone with equal humanity, acceptance, and respect.