From her years of volunteer work with Friends and Family Community Connection to her membership in the Wilderness Medicine Club here at UC Davis, Katie Maher is one remarkably talented and hardworking individual. This summer alone she helped bring clean water to underprivileged communities in Tanzania, worked at a design and engineering summit there, and climbed the incomparable Mount Kilimanjaro. And of course, she hasn’t forgotten to make friends along the way.
Name: Katie Maher
Major: Exercise Biology with a Chicano Studies minor, Class of 2015
Hometown: Poway, California
What’s the name of the volunteer organization you’re involved with and what do they do, exactly?
So this summer I kind of did two different trips. The first one was me volunteering with the same nonprofit that I’ve been with since 2008, Friends and Family Community Connection—people call it FFCC—that’s based in my hometown [of Poway]. I went to Tanzania with them in 2009, in 2011, and again this past summer, and they do short trips involving a lot of different community development initiatives. During my first two trips we were doing things like constructing a girls’ dormitory, working on teachers’ housing, etc. This past summer, we were working on some educational incentive programs involving bikes and transportation as a reward system for different school districts. But I was mostly focused on a water filtration project that is in its third village now, a place called Mwando.
And why did you choose to do that specifically?
My first time going to Tanzania was when I was sixteen, and it was a very formative and impacting experience. It was one of the few times in my life that I felt like I was supposed to be doing exactly what I was doing. I was just completely immersed in whatever I was working on…I loved the country, I loved the people, I loved the work that we were doing. And to that end I also care a lot about health in general and I feel passionate about helping people access safe, clean water.
How would you say that relates to your other interests?
It all kind of ties into social justice. For example, I volunteer at the medical clinic here, and our patient population is largely from an underserved area—that’s why our clinic exists, to meet those people’s needs. We have an entirely volunteer-driven clinic that provides access to healthcare for mostly Spanish-speaking, migrant agricultural workers and their families. And in Tanzania, I’m working with access to clean water. So it’s all about access to things that I feel very fortunate to have myself, and helping other people have greater access to things that I think are fundamental rights.
Sounds very rewarding. If you had to pick one single endeavor that you’re most proud of, what would it be and why?
So FFCC was the first organization [of the summer], and the rest of my summer I was with an initiative out of MIT in partnership with USAID’s global development lab. I was at an international design conference called IDDS, which stands for International Development Design Summit, and I was helping do a lot of different things. I was part of the organizing team, doing a lot of monitoring and evaluation, a little bit of translation, that sort of stuff. So I was kind of proud of that because I was really leaping into something out of my comfort zone—I know nothing about engineering, and going into this really didn’t have any experience in engineering and/or design as an academic discipline. It was really an awesome experience.
You also climbed Kilimanjaro over the summer, right? How was that?
It’s the tallest mountain in Africa, and it’s a freestanding peak, so it’s said to be the largest unobstructed view that you can have in the world. And it was beautiful. It was absolutely stunning. It was difficult—though not as difficult as I expected it to be. I was expecting it to be much more physically demanding. I just got lucky that my body adjusted well to the altitude. And I hiked it with a friend that I met at the conference! She was a high-powered engineer at a lot of really big-name companies, but she didn’t find her career as fulfilling as she hoped it would be, so she decided to quit her job and travel the world. I think she’s in Germany right now. I actually met a lot of really cool people along the way. And the whole hike was gorgeous, and I definitely felt accomplished when I got to the top.
Do you still keep in contact with all the people you’ve met through your various worldly experiences?
Yeah, I do! Facebook is a really great resource for keeping in contact with people. I don’t really use it to contact anyone in the U.S. [laughs] but I use it a lot to keep in contact with other people—my host family from when I studied abroad in Mexico, for instance. In 2013 I got to go back [to Mexico] and lead the orientation for the next year, so I stayed with the same host family, and the people at the empanada stand outside my house remembered me! That was crazy. I hadn’t seen them in a year and they were like “Oh, Katie, you’re back!” And since the first time I went to Tanzania I keep in contact with people. I go back to the same village every time, so it’s been really cool to watch some of the kids grow up and see people my age move on from the secondary school. And now I work at the UC Davis D Lab and I get to continue a lot of the work that I started this summer at the summit! So I get to meet and work with new people all the time.
What would you say is the most important thing you’ve learned over the course of all the work you’ve done?
The quote that comes to mind is, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” For me that’s just about recognizing what everyone brings to the table. I don’t have all the answers and I’m not supposed to have all the answers, and it’s important to value teamwork and listening to others and really utilizing local resources and knowledge. Basically, when you work together, you’re much more powerful than anything you could be by yourself.