How do you get from a culture that depends on aid to a culture that promotes innovation? The story of Kelvin Doe, a 16-year-old from the West African nation of Sierra Leone, offers hope.

@thetakeaway "How do you get from a culture that depends on aid to a culture that promotes innovation?"- u enable youth w/ Creative Freedom

— David Moinina Sengeh (@dsengeh) December 12, 2012

Kelvin Doe and his family do not have access to many of the things that we take for granted, including a regular supply of electricity, but that did not stop him from discovering a way to create his own batteries, his own generator, and eventually his own community FM radio station made from equipment he created himself out of old electronic parts that he found in the trash.

In September, Doe traveled to the United States to participate in MIT’s Visiting Practitioners Program. The Takeaway talks with David Sengeh, a PhD student at MIT who arranged Doe's trip. Doe was a finalist in a contest Sengeh created to encourage young people in his native Sierra Leone to become innovators.

David Sengeh is currently raising money to encourage technological innovation in his home country of Sierra Leone.