Community Development in Nepali Brick Kilns
An interdisciplinary team seeks to understand the challenge of poverty in the brick kilns of Nepal, and finds that community members hope to improve air quality, critical infrastructure, and education.
Students from Civil and Construction Engineering, Anthropology, Life Science, and Sociology at BYU were joined by students from Kathmandu University's Community Development program to understand the interrelated social problems connected to extreme poverty. This community analysis project is connected with a larger BYU field study project, led by faculty in the department of Public Health, who are studying the long-term effects of near-constant exposure to hazardous air (PM 2.5). The study locations are the brick kiln factories of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal, where thousands live in conditions of extreme poverty.
The purpose of the project is to understand health and well-being impacts and work toward proposing sustainable interventions to improve living and working conditions. However, for solutions to be truly sustainable, it was necessary to understand a comprehensive picture of the broader community context. This approach to problem identification and solution finding is grounded in the Ballard Center's Social Impact Cycle.
The biggest part of loving the one was actually spending time with the people we want to serve. Asking them questions and learning about what was important to them as individuals was eye-opening and allowed us to know the needs of the community. As we’ve analyzed data, read articles, and developed more questions, these responses have guided our work.
Meet our friend Binsa, a member of one of the brick kiln communities in Nepal, whose story is very similar to many others in her village:
The most difficult part of this project has been determining the scope of the issues facing the Brick Kiln Communities of Nepal. We initially went to Nepal planning to focus on air pollution and COPD, but after talking with community members, we determined that we needed to widen our vision and let go of our preconceived notions. While in Nepal, we interviewed over 100 people to understand their needs and identify the scope of the challenges they were facing. Additionally, throughout our time there we spent over 250 combined hours observing and recording what we noticed in the community. Our research also included studying the environmental conditions that could impact these people. To accomplish this task, we tested the soil and water for nutrient levels and other parameters such as pH and e. Coli (for the water).
After returning, we worked on mapping the problems we identified based on our observations and personal interviews. This allowed us to visually connect the myriad of issues facing that community. As a team, we have spent dozens of hours cleaning up our data and working to identify themes from the responses we collected. Eventually, we concluded that the main problems that we needed to focus on during intervention design were Air Pollution, Infrastructure, and Education.
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Co-creation and collaboration with local agents has remained a high priority through every stage of our project, from the design to the execution and onward.
