Who are we?
Our mission
Using the sustainable solar drying technology, leftovers of the harvest are nog longer spoiled. Instead with the right conserving techniques, it can provide a food supply for local villagers so they might overcome the hungry season. By exploring the market possibilites, this challenging project gives us the opportunity to work on a profitable model and to focus on market commerce along with the local youth as well.
We are three students from the Technical University Delft now working on this promising and challenging project in The Gambia. We will focus on spreading the innovative knowledge about solar drying and the associated entrepreneurial market approach through the country by visiting different villages in the inlands of The Gambia. We will work together closely with the local people because we are convinced that it is essential to take every step together with the locals. They will be incorporated with the building of a new solar dryer in a village near Jakaba, where the solar dryer was built last year. We will also work together with the local youth by organizing workshops and by gathering information about their culture which can be very helpful in understanding the underlying problems. We will strive to achieve our goals within the amount of time we have, so the continuity of the project can be guareanteed! But above al: we are really looking forward to our time in The Gambia!
Want to know more about our project? Visit our facebook page below or go to the Home page!
Lisanne Meijer
Hi, my name is Lisanne Meijer and I am currently doing my bachelor programme at the faculty of Architecture & The Built Environment at the Technical University in Delft. I am doing this project because I think it is a very challenging and instructive way of contributing to the current development problem in countries like The Gambia. By doing this internship in a deviant surrounding I hope to learn about how to work together with local people with a different cultural background and how to implement my technical and creative knowledge into the Gambian society in a practical manner: doing this bottom-up instead of top-down. This way the local community is involved in every single step we will take which enables them to continue what we started once we're gone. This way the success of our project and the continuity can be guareanteed.
Youri Penders
Hey, I'm Youri Penders and I'm doing my Bachelor's in Chemical Engineering at the TU Delft. I like playing sports and I like many different kinds of music, especially funk and soul. My motivation for partaking in this project is my interest for various and (to me) unexplored cultures. I have lived in Asia for three years and I have been to other continents, but never have I been to Africa. Learning and exploring the Gambian culture is by far one of the things I am most enthusiastic about and especially by setting up and implementing a project in collaboration with the Gambian people. I am sure we will accomplish this successfully along with everybody involved and hopefully we will leave behind a sustainable project completely in the hands of the local people.
Irene Schmidt
Hi, my name is Irene and I'm a mechanical engineering student at the TU Delft. Part of my bachelors degree is an one semester minor programme. I wanted to do something else than mechanical engineering. There were a lot of programmes to choose from, but for me it was an easy choice: the International Entrepreneurship and Development minor. I chose this programme because foreign cultures, development and entrepreneurship have always been interesting to me and part of this programme is an intercultural internship. In my case this is project DOMO and I believe that this will be an amazing learning experience at study and personal level.