As I arrived at FHI 360 for our second day of work, I was considerably more tired than I had been Tuesday morning – but as we had the chance to delve into our projects, I quickly found myself engaged and awake during another exciting day.
After our morning meeting, and during some of our free time, the four of us worked on our first project. Our goal was this: how can surveys on contraception be both accessible and fun for a younger generation? We were encouraged to implement social media platforms into our pitch, and we came up with a “Tinder-style” survey on contraceptives that matches the user with their best fit, but also collects data for the CTI researchers. A decision-tree format that allows the user to rank how they feel about certain side effects and tailor their contraception to them, and it can also provide information to the CTI team about which side effects and contraceptive methods are most important to women worldwide. I think we’ve made a great start on our pitch, and it was very cool to work on a very unique project that I hadn’t been expecting at a nonprofit like FHI 360.
Before lunch, Maddie and I met with Stevie Daniels to look at their photo database for the upcoming CTI social media exchange. Because of a very minimal budget for photography, all photos used by FHI 360 are either taken from creative-commons databases like Flickr, pulled from specialized photo libraries that only allow one-time use, or are taken by FHI 360 employees at their sites. It was cool to see all the beautiful photos taken by staff around the world, but the process of collecting those photos into one location and getting permission to use some was quite complicated.
The four of us went to lunch on the American Tobacco campus today as well. The FHI 360 offices are in a very convenient location: not only is it a 2 minute walk from cafes and Durham restaurants, it also overlooks the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. In the afternoon, we spent more time in meetings talking over new projects we will work on this week. One requires us to go through a few very long spreadsheets of contacts and categorize them based on their professional fields – we’ll be doing quite a bit of professional stalking through linkedin and their company websites. Our last big project will be a video that summarizes the work CTI has done.
Today was a great day at FHI 360, and I’m excited for tomorrow!
-Hope
