colLAB: Bridging East Africa's Digital Health Divides

The first of its kind at the University of Kansas, this humanities-based lab explores how virtual resources are transforming the ways East Africans experience health, global connections, and social change. Comprised of seven students and ten faculty mentors, our lab has partnered with the Center for Community Health and Development to conduct research and develop content for the Community Tool Box (CTB), an open-access website hosted at KU containing resources for people who want to build healthier communities, and Mufindi Orphans, a Tanzanian NGO founded by two KU alumni. Mufindi Orphans provides social, educational, and healthcare resources for vulnerable children in a village in southwestern Tanzania. In Mufindi, the lab will collaborate with the community on projects to learn about digital technologies, development, healthcare, and everyday life in rural settings. The lab incorporates monthly lab meetings and workshops, a weekly research proseminar, interdisciplinary individual, group, and peer mentoring, Kiswahili training, and a summer field school in Tanzania following the Summer African Language Institute. This project is funded by a three-year Hall Center for the Humanities Research Collaborative Program grant, the College of Liberal Arts & Science Research Excellence fund, and an NEH Humanities Connections grant.