Videos
Derek Brine, Alumni
- Year
- 2008-2009
- From
- USA
- Sector
- Innovation Incubator
- Location
- Kenya
- Degree
- 2010
Master in City Planning, International Development Group and Master of Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering.
“…what I didn't know is how I would eventually develop a keen interest in eradicating poverty in places like where my childhood friend was from.”
Hearing a friend’s stories as a boy about what it is like to live in rural Indonesia was truly transformative for me. Stories of his having to haul water for drinking and cooking and sometimes being hungry for days made no sense to me. It was a challenge to my conception of the world. From that time on I knew I wanted to see and experience more.
I attended McGill University, which is one of the most international Canadian Universities, and received a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree with minors in anthropology, geography and management. My experience at McGill shaped my interest in other cultures into a focus on technology and international development.
At McGill I participated in the McGill University Canadian Field Studies in Africa Program (CFSIA); a semester long field school in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. After finishing the semester, I managed field operations for The Mikinduri Children of Hope Foundation (MCOH) and aided them in conducting detailed design, hiring local contractors and managing finances and logistics for the construction of an orphanage complex. It was while I was working in Mikinduri, Kenya with MCOH that I realized the potential for entrepreneurship to help organizations move towards economic autonomy. We developed a proposal to set up businesses on the site, forming networks with outside institutions, establishing export markets and developing a technology and innovation center.
The business plan I see myself writing in my tenure as a Legatum Fellow is a detailed extension and strengthening of the project started in Kenya based on the feedback from businesses that MCOH has currently been operating on the site, mainly a tailoring business. I want to explore how to determine what support is needed to ensure the organizational survival of enterprises set up in rural regions of developing areas. At the same time, I want to create new organizations that can help catalyze and advocate larger social-structural change and address the complex root causes of poverty.
