Partly because of the need to overcome the barriers imposed by limited access to electric power, I spent several months in 2011, together with a team of friends, developing a cheap MP3 system designed to enable sight-impaired users to upload and listen to audio books. In conjunction with the National Society for the Visually Impaired, we read books aloud, recorded them electronically, and uploaded them onto CDs. After the organization received complaints about the difficulty of tracking and finding desired books, we were inspired to develop a technological solution modeled after Apple's "iPod shuffle" system. We increased the capacity of our system to store large numbers of books in a portable format that included a "VoiceOver" title-identification function that allowed users to hear the title's name. To keep the product affordable, we duplicated iPod components in an electrical factory in Ramallah, Palestine. Our finished product cost one-third of the price of the iPod Shuffle and allowed 10 times the storage capacity. It was doubly meaningful achievement, because of the technical challenges and the tremendous value it added to the lives of users by allowing them to overcome their barriers to accessing, connecting, and participating in the world of their peers.

Finally, I hope to bring to Boston University my experiences as a participant in the Environmental Education Center's Clean-Up Campaign. While recycling trash, we also developed creative uses for trash that appealed greatly to the children in the community and that served as an effective learning tool to introduce concepts such as environmental responsibility and ecology to young students. We created modernistic sculptures of an unexpected variety of forms, including musical instruments and holiday themes, such as a large Christmas tree, entirely from recycled trash. We discovered that these types of projects provide effective recruiting tools to capture the interest of children. Initially, they were much more interested in this "artistic recycling" but their involvement then seemed to inspire their genuine interest in the recycling concept and in learning about ecology. Ultimately, what had begun as a casual pastime resulted in artistic displays that were featured at the Bethlehem Peace Center.

As a Boston University student, I hope to contribute to the institution's focus on Green issues in three different ways. I hope that my first-hand experiences living in a community plagued by insufficient access to usable energy in the present will help some of my colleagues appreciate that the global energy crisis is already a reality and not merely a problem of the future. I hope to contribute to technological solutions to the problem. Finally, I hope to contribute to developing approaches to increase popular awareness about Green issues in the larger community.