Presenting the NapoNet: Developing global competencies through communications technology in the peruvian amazon

Abstract

Since its beginning in 2009, the NapoNet Program has provided an opportunity for undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students to obtain technical knowledge and skills in a wide variety of aspects of Global Engineering for community development. The NapoNet team includes students from various backgrounds of study, and has partnered with professionals and academic entities in South America, mostly in Peru. The construction of the network began with a project driven by the United Nations-supported Global Fund for HIV, Tuberculosis, and Malaria to install a wireless network along the Napo River to provide a means of communication for villages along the river and primarily connect health posts. From this, the Grupo de Telecomunicaciones Rurales (GTR) installed transceivers along 445 km of dense, canopied rainforest along the Napo River. The University of Colorado at Boulder began this partnership to find ways to use the network to improve health and education in the Napo region. The NapoNet team represents a unique mix of backgrounds and technical abilities, which lends to an educational experience for all involved. Technical knowledge of the wireless towers is required, but several other disciplines have emerged as important to the progress of the team. One of the imperative aspects of the NapoNet project is an acute cultural awareness. The network has the possibility of serving people from several backgrounds, including descendents from Spanish colonies in Peru, as well as several unique indigenous tribes that call the Napo region home. Another perspective approached by this project is an intentional consciousness of the river and rainforest ecology. The commerce, as well as a general way of life on the Napo River, depends heavily on the river as well as the plants and animals that naturally inhabit it. Due to the inherent importance of the environment, the NapoNet team has provided the opportunity to consider its role in communications technology as well as in culture. An interest in the commerce of the region creates the need for an understanding of business as well. Global engineering for community development represents the foundation of the NapoNet project. The intricate intersection of communications, culture, ecology, and commerce are the applications within this greater purpose. Because these applications cover such a broad scope, the NapoNet team has invited members of varied backgrounds to participate in research together. Undergraduates and graduate students participate in projects with backgrounds including Information and Communications Technology, Education, Anthropology, Psychology, Environmental Design, Business, and several branches of engineering including Civil, Environmental, and Electrical Engineering as well as Engineering Physics. Technical projects with a global prominence have compelled each of these team members to step outside of their own areas of study and expertise to learn in a much more expansive and interdisciplinary sense. This in turn allows them to understand their own contributions more completely. Consequently, the learning achieved as a function of the NapoNet prompts members to stretch their abilities, create wider boundaries of comfort in approaching technical solutions, and accomplish an improved overall idea of what it is to participate in a global context. Data will be shared related to student learning experiences, the development of global competencies, and impact on the participating communities.