Jaspreet Khela

As a freshman at the University of Toronto in 2014, I had a strong conviction that the natural sciences were the only long-term, effective tools to positively impact the lives of the world’s poor. Now, as a sophomore, that conviction has withered away after finishing the exclusive Munk One program hosted by the Munk School of Global Affairs. The program is a melting pot of diversity of all types, from cultural to geographical to intellectual, which subsequently creates an environment where pre-conceived notions of important social issues are shaken, if not shattered, by the end of the year.

Many of the modern global issues discussed in the classes instructed by Dr. Kramarz and Dr. Wong shed light on the subjectivity and relative perspectives of innovating for the Global South through policy and entrepreneurship. As a mathematics and physics specialist, I was taken aback by the social complexity surrounding the issues discussed and the fact that there was not a finite set of solutions to these global problems.

Throughout the first semester, students worked in small lab groups to fill the demands of a particular industry or group of people from a social science perspective. As a member of the Global Health Lab, my team worked on a medication reminder system for pregnant women with HIV/AIDS in Botswana in order to reduce the mother-to-child transmission of the disease. This culminated in a case competition judged by esteemed faculty and professionals, with a the grand prize comprising of a trip to the University of Maryland for a social entrepreneurship symposium – running parallel to the prestigious Ashoka Conference – and a potential investment offer of one hundred thousand dollars from Grand Challenges Canada. To my team’s delight, we were fortunate enough to win the competition.

The Global Health group at the conference

At this point, I began to connect the dots. All of the theory and research that culminated in this lab project was strongly rooted in the notion that tackling some of today’s toughest problems goes beyond the scope of algorithms or quantitative methods. Highly effective solutions need to cater directly to the needs of the individual in a specific context, resulting in a loss of generality. With this mantra in mind, the team and I decided to pursue our promising project throughout 2015. We met with distinguished facility and scholars, all of whom echoed that mantra.

Munk One gave me a holistic understanding of what makes solutions to complex global problems successful; these solutions encompass the synergy of the social and natural sciences to alleviate demand-side needs, both in the Global North and South. Moving forward, my team is preparing to secure our partnership with Grand Challenges Canada and take our project from the drawing board and bring it into fruition. We hope this project will impact the lives of thousands in the developing world and create the global change that I once dreamed about as a freshman entering university; Munk One was the ladder, elevating me to make that dream that much closer to reality.