Where there is curiousity, opportunity ensues. A young man picking and scavaging through trash to create. There is hope for the world. How exciting to listen to someone who wants to change his world for the better. Kelvin is going to do well in life.
Meet Kelvin Doe, an inspiring 15 year old from Sierra Leone who repurposes rubbish to create his own electronic gadgets. Known in his community as DJ Focus, because of his belief in focusing the mind to invent new things to better his own life and the lives of those in his community.
Kelvin has attracted the attention of the like of MIT, becoming the youngest person in history to be invited in their ‘Visiting Practitioner’s Program. Kelvin’s story is a fascinating and inspiring one, and well worth a look.
Even in some of the most impoverished places, there are individuals as young as Kelvin who are striving to better their lives and the lives of others around them through the power of technology and engineering.
Inspiring Teenager from Sierra Leone turns trash into technology.
h/t Nom
December 6, 2012 at 10:07 pm
Good thing he isn’t here. Poor and black, the creativity would be cruhed out of him by the Dems welfare (caste) system
Good luck youngster.
December 7, 2012 at 7:39 am
You are spot on Mary. He would have learned that he “didn’t do that.” I am so in agreement with you. Stifled and passed along without an education, he would be thinking about anything but creating.
December 7, 2012 at 10:35 pm
It’s really amazing to watch. Engineers like me are familiar with that tendency to take things apart and put them together even as a child. But, to take old junk apart and make it work as something else takes a special kind of genius.
December 8, 2012 at 3:35 pm
I love it. I loved to watch people tinker with stuff as a kid. My friend got in trouble when he was 14. He was arrested for breaking into the jewelry store downtown. There was some lock mechanism that he was dying to figure out. He didn’t take anything. He only wanted to study the lock. The guy is like so many MacGyvers that I have met in my lifetime. They always want to figure stuff out.
December 8, 2012 at 5:47 pm
December 7, 2012 at 10:42 pm
Nice to see a natural curiosity and drive to build exists in a kid today. There is hope yet for more out there!
December 8, 2012 at 3:36 pm
Imagine if this kid went through some of the junk yards that we have here in the US? He’d be building a spaceship to travel to Mars.
December 8, 2012 at 5:48 pm
exactly what poor Africans without electricity need – radios & hip hop music. 99% of my night school class is black & hispanic immigrants taking advantage of Barak’s $8k/per head in occupational training stimulous – all are male. half have masters degrees & most have bachelors. they’re whining that UI benefits have been reduced to 6 months now due to the evil Republican governor who just doesn’t understand their financial needs. nobody wants to take entry level pay to get off UI bennies. here’s a better solution – stay in your own country and America will train your women in skills that can improve the community:
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/solar-mamas/ Rafa is a liberated Bedouin woman who at the end of the documentary passes her electronics course & tells the village goatfuckers and her islamofacist husband to get a life, while she powers her tent with solar electricity. go Rafa! she has her own facebook page but no invite to MIT yet.
December 8, 2012 at 6:02 pm
She’s an adult. You have to be a kid to get the invite to the MIT camp. Surely there is something else that we must do to showcase Rafa. She is absolutely fantastic.
December 8, 2012 at 8:11 pm
Electricity isn’t a requirement for living, either. People in the US went from having it as a novelty, to having it as a tool to a labor-saving utility. Then they went to it being a necessity and then a feeding tube of laziness.
These poor villages need to have electrified factories to produce wealth like the US did in our manufacturing boom time.
December 8, 2012 at 9:37 pm
It’s not a requirement, but darn it sure helps. I agree, we have so much now that everything is a given. You know 15, I think that ht e universe is about ready to give us another lesson soon. We don’t seem to learn.