Reflections from Rwanda: Shaela

ASU through and through
By Shaela Patel, SolarSPELL intern

When I first enrolled at ASU, I had a stereotypical idea of what the school was going to be like. Never in my life have I been more wrong. And my experience as an intern with SolarSPELL, throughout all three years of getting my degree, has been the perfect representation of what it means to be a Sun Devil. From understanding new cultures, learning through doing, and, finally, traveling the world, I feel more than prepared for my career as a veterinarian ahead of me.

I found SolarSPELL through Handshake, ASU’s student internship and job platform. As a Conservation Biology and Ecology major, I was looking for an internship where I could apply my knowledge and passion for conservation to real-world action. I joined SolarSPELL as an Agriculture and Climate Change Content Curation Intern, curating culturally specific resources for SolarSPELL’s East Africa Agriculture library, used in Rwanda and South Sudan. Being part of the ASU Next Generation Service Corps, this internship with SolarSPELL was perfect to fulfill the public internship requirement of the program. However, because of the community at SolarSPELL, I decided to carry this internship past the one-semester requirement.

Read about Shaela’s experience curating agriculture and climate change content for SolarSPELL.

Throughout my semesters at ASU, I tried various new positions in SolarSPELL: a Wikipedia for Schools Curation intern, curating Wikipedia articles for the Southern Africa Education Library; the author of the SolarSPELL Wikipedia page; an organizational intern, creating student intern materials; and a creator of various Animal Park courses for primary school students in Lesotho. But the culmination of my internship and my time at ASU has been my Barrett Honors Thesis Project, which was the reason I recently traveled to Rwanda with the SolarSPELL team.

For my thesis project, I have been curating and creating content for the Animal Health section of the East Africa Agriculture Library. Videos are a core component of SolarSPELL digital libraries because they are a learning tool that can still be understood by farmers who are not fluent in English. Before my project, the Animal Health section had few videos, so I curated over thirty culturally-relevant animal health videos, and then worked with Dr. Anthony Martin at the UofA College of Veterinary Medicine to create eight veterinary education training videos to be added to the digital library. Over the past year-and-a-half working on this project, I have learned how to research, script, film, direct, edit, translate and adapt video content to fit different cultural norms. After the first drafts of the videos were done, the SolarSPELL team asked me if I wanted to test them.

Suddenly, I was thrust into preparing for a trip to Rwanda to test my videos. I created interview questions about veterinary care in East Africa for farmers and extension agents, and I also drafted a post-watch video survey for farmers to provide advice on improvements I could make to my videos.

Of course, travel required getting funding. I applied for the Barrett Global Explorers Grant on a whim, thinking that I had no chance of getting it. But as I quickly advanced through the application stages and presented my project over again, I ultimately was one of the three ASU juniors awarded the $5,000 grant to travel to two countries over the summer. The trip to Rwanda and now Kenya was real and happening.

My experience in Rwanda, representing SolarSPELL, Barrett, and ASU, was life changing. I had the original goal of conducting 20 surveys in Rwanda but ended up conducting 82 surveys and six interviews. I also got to be a part of a crucial aspect of SolarSPELL’s mission, which I had always heard about as an intern but never saw: training the digital library trainers. The meaning of my videos, my work with SolarSPELL, and all the pre-veterinary courses I had taken at ASU, finally clicked into place.

Wearing my Barrett sweatshirt with pride, I crossed the wooden bridge over the rice farm, filled waters in a commercial chicken facility, learned how to dance with kids in northern Rwanda, met with wildlife veterinarians who I aspire to be just like, tried what is now my favorite chili pepper — Akabanga — and opened my eyes to the importance of livestock care to rural farmers throughout Rwanda.

Having left Rwanda with memories far more important than any flunk on a chemistry test or a hot, sweaty walk to class, I am now finishing up my thesis project. I am learning how to code all my interviews, reviewing the survey feedback, working on edits and translation for the second versions of the training videos, writing up my thesis, applying to veterinary school, and beginning my final semester at ASU. 

I now know that being a Sun Devil isn’t just about supporting Sparky stomping on the bus during a Homecoming game. It means discovering new internships and activities, like I did with SolarSPELL. It means global engagement and inclusion outside of just your education in Tempe. It means growth and new points of view, which I learned in Rwanda. And it means taking full advantage of opportunities, believing in yourself, and making a lasting impact, like what I hope my videos will do for the more than 100,000 people in Rwanda, Kenya, and South Sudan who will have access to them.

The ASU SolarSPELL Initiative empowers offline communities globally by providing localized libraries and building the 21st century skills that people need to make informed decisions, increase their self-reliance and improve their quality of life. To get involved, visit https://solarspell.org/student-opportunities.