January 2020: Setting Goals and Launching the Mobile Repair Kits

​With the start of another academic semester in the United States, we are excited to introduce our Spring 2020 team and announce updates for the Maasai Automotive Education Center! First, let’s meet this semester’s new student team:

Kelly Anderson

Madelynne Greathouse

Ronnie Pedersen

Cassidy Hornsby

Xiaohan Zhang

John Michael Hayes

January Accomplishments: What have we done so far?

With classes starting at the beginning of January, our team hit the ground running. In order to bring our new team members up to speed on all that has been accomplished thus far with MAEC, we started the semester with full-team discussions, encouraging questions and ideas along the way. After this, we were ready to dive right in. With such a diverse team this semester, our individual strengths emerged as we began to understand how each member of the team fits into the roles this project requires. As a result, this month we have conquered the crucial task of establishing our goals for the semester. They are as follows:

This semester, our main focus is on the mobile repair kits. Our goal is to raise the funds to launch 20 mobile repair kits for implementation in March and June. So far we have:

• Took the first fundraising steps as we are working to broaden our social media presence and our fundraising capabilities. Thus far we are working to establish a grassroots campaign in congruence with larger corporate sponsors to fuel our movement forward.
• Started developing the curriculum that facilitates the launch of these kits, which will include tool descriptions and uses. So far we have assigned team leads to this and are working to develop a platform for this curriculum.
• Facilitated initial research and ground work for the communication sub-project that has been recently introduced. We are working with the Maasai guides to rethink the current communication system, as the radios currently in use are vulnerable to poachers. In the long run, a new system will be a great asset to MAEC as a whole, providing a better resource for communicating vehicle breakdowns while simultaneously ensuring the protection of the animals on the Mara.

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Much of the team’s work on fundraising and curriculum development will take place in the first half of the semester. It is with these goals in mind that we move with excitement into the month of February.

February Goals: Where are we going? 

    With an amazing foundation established in January, our team is ready to tackle some big goals for February. As we enter the implementation phase of the project, we are beginning to focus more on how we are going to fund our projects and really execute our solutions. As we briefly touched on before, our big three goals for February include the following:

• Secure funding: This is priority number one! The MAEC team plans on sending 7 mobile repair kits to Kenya in March. With each repair kit costing $300.00, we need to raise at minimum $2,100.00 by this time. Through a combination of funding techniques, our team will be working hard this semester and specifically this month to find investors and organizations interested in supporting our initiative. Checkout our Pitchfunder linked on the homepage if you or anyone you know is interested in helping out!
• Launch the repair kits: Implementing a full sized educational repair facility is a big project! To predict the demand that will be needed for different tools and repair items, the MAEC team will be utilizing the previously mentioned Mobile Repair Kit. The repair kit, pictured below, will be given to Maasai Tour guides in March to be utilized on the road to give us crucial data on their needs and demands. The tour guides will put a safety deposit down when renting out the repair kit to incentivize accountability and then will provide feedback based on what they did and did not use from the kit. From this, we will be able to plan what items to source for the MAEC educational/repair facility. Over the span of this month we plan on preparing these kits for use!
• Develop Curriculum: A major aspect of our project includes implementing a strong and effective curriculum plan for teaching the Maasai people on how to not only conduct their own repairs, but understand the vehicle they are repairing. In collaboration with students in Prescott Arizona, our team is creating an educational outline that includes how to use the tools we provide, how to fix different parts of the vehicle, and how the vehicle itself works. This month we plan to begin laying the framework for this curriculum that will later be implemented in our June trip to Kenya. 

We look forward to another amazing month and want to thank you for reading! If you are interested in learning more about the project, contributing to funding the project, or learning more about the team, please feel free to checkout the rest of our website!