My Social Innovator: Amy Smith

Following my investigation of living on $2 a day, I decided to shadow and contact the social innovator who issued that challenge. Amy Smith, whose lab I followed on Twitter (@dlab_mit), has a history of designing simple and elegant technologies for developing nations as a member of the Peace Corps and MIT's D-Lab. Since I was intrigued by Amy's challenge to live on $2 a day, I decided to contact her and ask for insights on exactly how she accomplishes this task. Further, she also completes the challenge with the students that she instructs at MIT and I am interested in how groups of people accomplish this feat. My email to Amy, in which I ask for details on how she and her students live on $2 a day, is shared below. I also asked permission to share her response with my fellow Evoke players.

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Original Message to Amy Smith

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Dear Amy,

I am an Educational Technology Ph.D. student at Arizona State University and a current player of Evoke (www.urgentevoke.com). One of my missions is to investigate social innovation and innovators. Through this, I became aware of how you and your students live for a week on $2 per day. I am interested in trying this myself as a way to better inform my design process and appreciate my own abundance of resources.

I am curious if you have ever doc**ented, or would be willing to share, how exactly you and your students go about living on $2 a day. It seems like a very challenging task, because even after going without nonessential items, water, bill payments, clothing, etc. would seem to average out to much more than $2 per day. 

I would greatly appreciate if you could provide some insights on how you and your students accomplish the challenge of living on $2 a day. With your permission, I would also like to share this information with other Evoke players around the world.

Thank you,
John

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End Original Message to Amy Smith

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Response from Amy Smith

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???

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End Response from Amy Smith

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