Afghan girls win European prize for solar-powered farming robot
reuters.com
reuters.com
A group of girls form a pretty messed up country had the willing and the guts to go ahead and submit anything to this competition, knowing full well they would be at a disadvantage compared to other first world countries, and coming from a very male orientated culture. Their parts where late and they only had two weeks to build it.
Meanwhile a single accurate quote about how they where disallowed entry into the US overshadows all commentary here, with people insinuating that their robot was rubbish and it's just a political hitpeice, consolidation price means nothing etc. Get a life and grow up, I'd like to see you have the guts to try anything like this, even with your inherent advantage of living in a first world country.
(Americans should know by now Taliban's stance on girls and education. US has been in that country since October 2001 FFS IIRC.)
If a student is female (1), in a robotics class (2), attending a school that had a robotics class (3), and planning a trip abroad to compete (4); the chances that their lives were at risk is zero. These girls are most likely going to an international school in the safest part of the country. It is expected that they will go to university abroad and after this experience, I'm sure a good number of doors opened up for them.
And I found no article yet, with technical details, about what they technically actual accomplished. The Reuters article is especially lacking any information, except stating that they succeded technically, but faced problems at the US border before and the latter they repeated many times, not just one quote.
So it looks a bit missleading and I would not call it journalism, if there is a agenda with it. And this seems to be the case here - directed against Trump and his Afghan ban etc.policy.
I mean sure, personally I despise that as well and I am highly against restricting people from going somewhere else, just because of their origin. And the girls are definitely courageous(their captains dad was killed by a suicide bombing this year) and maybe even did an outstanding job given their bad starting conditions ... but I saw nothing convincing so far, like the article implys, that they build even remotely something like this:
"The team’s winning entry was a solar-powered robot that would help small farmers carry out tasks including seeding and cutting crops like wheat "
I read something about designing flyers, etc. for this product, which sounds more plausible - as designing an actual robot, even only with lego, who does remotely, what the quote says, is huge work and not doable with access to good education. Which they don't have. So yes, I think they deserve praise for doing something while coming from where they are, but if news imply to me they did more, than they did(and possibly could do), for political reasons, even with good intentions, you could call it propaganda. And I think this is not helping.
As then also people like me, who have lot's of sympathy for disadvantaged people at tech - and beeing a girl from Afghanistan is probably as disadvantaged as you can get, get the impression, that they mainly won their price because of being who they are and not what they did. And this is a shame, because maybe they are even technically very gifted and did outstanding. But now I mistrust the whole thing ... and possibly also the next thing I hear from high tech girls from Afghanistan ...
(edits: updadet a bit)
Have you asked yourself why? Fundamentally this is about a group of children traveling to participate in an entrepreneurial competition. There is nothing inherently political about that.
Who made it political? Who benefits from creating divisions that have made these children’s entry in a competition such a loaded question?
I think basically 2 things come into play:
One is good intentioned propaganda, to support underprivileged poor girls, by exaggerating what they can do - to try to persuade immigration-unfriendly people into more openness, like hey they are good for our economy, if we only let them in.
Secondly, but connected: opposition to Trump and co. and the whole power struggle in the US.
So in this context, I would see the message as, poor, lovely and technology outstanding girls beeing denied entry to the US for a competition, because of evil Trump and his politics. (which is why he did intervene personally to show that he is not so bad, and only wants to keep the bad people out blabla)
But I doubt, that any side really cared for the girls as humans.
... so high politics as usual, I think.
That speaks of a mindset where any decision made by law enforcement authorities is apolitical, and any questioning of said decisions is political. It's the same mindset where American police are always just doing their job the best they can, while Black Lives Matters is a dangerous anarchist movement.
Oddly this mindset only extends to the sectors of government that are authorized to use power. Anybody else working in the public sector is part of "the swamp".
Erm, where did I said that?
I think I made my point clear, that I don't like travel restrictions based on origin, but that I also don't like propaganda. But you seem to not really have read my post.
It is a political hit piece no better than awarding obama a nobel prize before he did anything as president. I'll make you a bet. There will be a syrian or a refugee who will "win" a prize in the next few years.
> Get a life and grow up, I'd like to see you have the guts to try anything like this, even with your inherent advantage of living in a first world country.
What's strange is you attack people and the moderators aren't censuring you.
All you are doing is appealing to the "feels". Should we make a mockery of science just for your "feels" and to push a political agenda?
Anyone remember the clock in a suitcase boy a few years ago? The exploiting and ruining the good name of science in order to push a political agenda?
I assume you meant "consolation prize".
Also people fail to understand that this is not "reporting" in any sense, nor is this unusual - it's a press release that has been sent out verbatim as wire copy through Reuters. It's entirely routine for startups etc to send these things out and they just get printed as-is.
Hence the lack of detail.
We first saw Roya, the entrepreneur helping those girls ar World Summit AI in Amsterdam earlier this October.
There they decided to participate in the Entrepreneurial Challenge, which is a new competition determined to find the most awesome new robotics teams and/or solutions across all continents. It's somewhat like a prototype competition, as we're still building the whole Entrepreneurial concept and raising a pre-seed global robotics fund to help such companies in the future.
At this competition, they showcased a prototype for the solar-powered agricultural machine and managed to get almost 35% of all votes, not because of their popularity, any politics or just the product but for their ability to market their product throughout the whole event + the idea itself.
Overall we're happy that they came. Even happier that they got the first place. And now looking into starting a franchise of our event also in Afghanistan.
If anyone wants to help out with the latter, then please contact me.
If done well, I feel this is quite an achievement. Farming machines are usually very heavy and making hem work via solar power only is not so easy.
Someone was going to get the courageousness prize at FIRST. Why not the kids who built their robot in two weeks and traveled 2000 miles to get their visas before even leaving the country? If they didn't get it it would the inner city team whose adult mentor got cancer and couldn't come due to chemo, or the rural team from Mexico that crowdfunded their trip and blah blah blah. Complaining that kids with a feel-good story won a feel-good award is like complaining the nicest girl at a pageant gets Miss Congeniality.
There's 0 insight into what they achieved and the reporter even got the name of the European country wrong. Looks like propaganda to me.
Edit: yes, it's propaganda: "Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights, resilience and climate change."
School girls from Afghanistan built a solar powered robot. That's news because this is something which is very hard to do in the absence of the many privileges that would make such an achievement easy.
> That they were denied entry in the US?
Yes. That too is news worthy and was covered extensively.
> Should we feel bad about it or what?
Maybe. But rather than feeling bad wouldn't it be better to celebrate this, promote this and encourage things like this until a time that such things are common place enough to not be news worthy?
Edit: turns out a five minutes search on mobile isn't enough for me to get a picture or a description of the actual robot.
This gives more detail.
The angle appears to be "overcame adversity" but we don't learn where they worked on the project, what facilities they had, nor seemingly anything about the engineering other than the rules of the two competitions ...
Meh.
[Seems like a good personal achievement, I wouldn't belittle that, like get them up in school assembly, show them in the local paper, write about them in your family Christmas missive. But aside from the pretty unexceptional visa refusal it's a non-story IMO.]
> The team’s winning entry was a solar-powered robot that would help small farmers carry out tasks including seeding and cutting crops like wheat
Apart from the general idea, what was created?
Here's a more detailed article from the NY Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/world/afghanistan-girls-r...
> The team, which had only two weeks to build its robot for the event because a shipment of parts was delayed, won a silver medal for courageous achievement.
Courageous achievement is good politics, but not necessarily good engineering.
Here's an article from NPR:
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/07/22/538088825/what-re...
> The winner was chosen by the thousands of spectators who attended the event.
They mention what the robot actually does:
> Every team arrived with a robot in tow, each built with the exact same components, but designed, engineered and programmed differently. The goal: to gobble up and sort blue and orange plastic balls representing clean water and contaminated water.
> The Afghan team's consolation prize: a medal for "courageous achievement" and knowing that they placed much higher than countries like Canada, the United Kingdom and the U.S.
- - -
So my takeaway is that apart from facing all of the challenges that come with delayed shipments and denied VISAs, the girls managed to build a robot out of the standard parts list.
Their robot was voted on by thousands of attendees, and they placed higher than teams from developed countries like Canada, the UK, and the US.
What's the actual news? Not much, this is a fluff story. But it means something that a team of Afghan girls even made it to competition, much less built something that could legitimately outcompete more developed teams.
In response to the guy down here (I can't post anymore): the fact that they "won a prize", as shown in the title of this post, is highly misleading, when it was just a consolation prize. THe takeaway of these news is "look at everything the US is missing for not opening their borders", and this being a consolation prize, the US is simply missing nothing. So the entire thing is a fabrication.
The girls won a prize for overcoming adversity, and they arguably built a better robot than teams that didn't have much adversity to overcome. That's not nothing.
But at the same time articles like this one leave me with a feeling of pandering and head-patting.
We all like to see groups of underdogs do impressive things.
If the article were about what an outlier their robot is because it's so good, or what an outlier the team is because they pulled off a feat of engineering against all odds, then I'd be cheering along with everyone else.
But mainly the article is: "these girls faced far more adversity than most anyone else, but still managed to perform adequately."
That's something for them to be proud of personally, and for Afghanistan to be proud of nationally.
At the same time, if the competition were adjudicated in a double-blind way, would they have still beat out other teams?
There's nothing wrong in discussing whether that's a relevant question.
On another note, I'm surprised I got downvoted when adding background information to the discussion.
Absolutely agree. I have lived in Afghanistan for two years.
The fact that a team of girls from Afghanistan built a robot. That seems amazing, but what were the circumstances around that? An all-girl tech team from Afghanistan seems like a political statement in itself; was there a boy's team, or a mixed team, for example? Were they poor kids? Was an NGO involved and in what capacity? Did they just get together and build the robot after reading wikipedia?
The fact that they won a prize in an EU competition. Was that based purely on merit, or were there political considerations? Eg "poor girls from war-torn country should be supported", or "The NGO behind this should have their work promoted", or "Public snub/rebuke to trump's disgusting visa policies", etc. Or should we be hearing more about an imminent improvement in agricultural productivity?
The fact that it's quite a saccharine narrative, and has raised questions and suspicion. That says something both about the news system, and society, I think. It seems sad that we can't just celebrate achievement without considering (with justification) the hidden forces shaping the landscape.
Etc. Cui Bono?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2017/11/29/afghanist...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2017/11/29/afghanist...
There are multiple angles on this story and your border is the least relevant part of it. Move on.
The insinuation that Forbes is not part of the propaganda conspiracy is absurd. This is exactly what it looks like when an NGO is peddling a narrative.
Second: you don't know what the criteria for giving the price out is. What if the idea of the prize is to encourage kids to get into tech? Who would benefit more, some kid who went to a Palo Alto school and whose parents work at Google and Apple, or some kid from a developing nation with not nearly as many resources?
It's very cavalier - and very disturbing - to assume all you are assuming just because they are Afghan. Have you ever wondered if you'd had the same concerns if they came from -say - Brazil?
Do we know that?
I have some experience in this area, I don't live in a "privileged" country, and I find there is at least some truth to the adage "Aid, is poor people in rich countries, giving to rich people in poor countries".
Good for them they've achieved this, whether they were privileged, assisted (because they were underprivileged?), untouchables from broken families, or whatever, or not, but let's not jump to conclusions about the actual backstory.
Yes, lets ruin the good name of science to push a political agenda. Then we won't have anything to trust anymore.