When Mario and I got word that having three modes of brightness on our light would probably be too complicated for people in rural Nicaragua, our team mate Matt who is sitting way up in snowy Minnesota rushed in for an international-style rescue operation.

While Mario and I are working here in Nicaragua, there is a huge amount of support being given to us by our team mate Matt, who is an electrical engineering senior at the University of Minnesota.  It turns out that three modes of brightness on our lamp is not preferred by the rural Nicaraguans – who really only need a “very bright mode” which operates for a couple hours and an “all night mode” which operates for about  hours on an emergency setting.  “Three modes are too complicated,” we were told.  So I gave Matt a call and asked if he could provide us with a code for our microchip that would give us two modes of operation instead of three and sure enough, he had it to us the next morning.  Matt had written the original code as well.  I feel that working with Matt as a backup support has shown to really further the project and surely people’s livelihoods.  I’m excited to be working on an internatonal team.