What’s new in the lab?

Our team made great progress this week by understanding our weak-points and our strengths. We identified a unique piece of the Ballard Center is understanding an issue from a 360 view, which is something our team is able to accomplish as we combine viewpoints and experiences from all those involved in a problem. We're excited for how we will communicate this value to those we work with and to new potential partners.

This week, we met with a few different organization leaders who work in Bolivia. Additionally, meeting with a local nutritionist helped us validate a few of our working theories as well as gain additional insights surrounding malnutrition.

We met with Wain Colleen from "Aliados", an agricultural non-profit doing work in the region. We continued to refine and update our knowledge database regarding the issue of malnutrition in South America.

This week, our team was determined to put our minds together and select and focus on one of the several poverty related-issues in the Andean Region. In our Tuesday meeting, we collectively studied the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) and highlighted the issues that caught our attention. We also studied the Church’s goals relating to poverty in the region which notably include supporting women and children. Our group decided to split up into three groups of two and come up with a proposal for three topics we found most important.

On Thursday we came prepared with our proposals which included possible work with malnutrition, single parent households, and/or with BYU’s GEO lab. Each of us presented the advantages of working with any of the proposed areas of research. We ultimately decided to create a case study in which we can learn from a local family’s viewpoint on the topics we have been researching. From this case study we hope to obtain a better understanding of how we can make a positive impact for families in the Andean Region and eventually help the community as a whole.