The Solve Effect Podcast - Episode 2 - Wired for Change: Katrin McMillan on Connectivity in the Age of USAID Cuts

This is a transcript of Episode One of The Solve Effect, edited and condensed for clarity. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or iHeart Radio.

Hala Hanna

Welcome to The Solve Effect, where we spotlight extraordinary people tackling the world’s toughest challenges with bold, innovative solutions. I’m your host, Hala Hanna.

Over 260 million children are still out of school—but what if the answer isn’t more classrooms but more connections?

Today, we’re joined by Katrin McMillan, the founder and CEO of Hello World. We got to know Katrin after selecting Hello World as a Solver Team for our 2021 Economic Prosperity challenge.

Hello World is an organization bringing solar-powered, community-built internet hubs to underserved communities around the globe. From her early work in Nigeria to over 100 Hello Hubs across Africa and Asia, Katrin shares how connectivity changes everything from education to economic opportunity to human connection.

In a world where major tech giants have failed to bridge the digital divide, Katrin’s grassroots, community-led model is thriving. Stick around for a conversation about technology, equity, and what it truly means to build with, not for, communities.

Katrin McMillan:

Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited for our conversation.

HH

Well, let's get started. I do want our audience to hear from you about the work you do—and why you do it.

KM:

As you said, I’m the founder of Hello World, and I started Hello World in 2013 after spending some years in Nigeria.

At the time, I was really preoccupied with the education deficit—and the number of out-of-school children globally is still shocking. One in six children doesn't go to school. At the time, I had a hunch that technology had a role to play in closing the education deficit. I went on to learn about the effects of the digital divide and how much it is accelerating the gulf between those of us who have and those who don't, and the wider benefits of closing the digital divide.

I was also introduced to a TED Talk by Sugata Mitra when I moved to Ethiopia. I saw the same problems in Ethiopia that I'd seen across the continent. I was increasingly frustrated, and I got this TED Talk at just the right moment.

Sugata Mitra had done 21 years of research at that time about how children can become functionally autodidactic if they don't have access to schools and teachers, but do have access to the internet. And he had proved that children could learn beyond our wildest expectations on their own, with access to a good-quality internet connection. So I called him and asked him to teach me everything that he'd learned so that I could combine it with my background in community-led international development.

That's how Hello World was born. And what Hello World is: community-built, outdoor, solar-powered, internet-connected computer kiosks that have a minimum of eight rugged public touchscreens, which are pre-loaded with language-appropriate, world-class educational software. So essentially, it's six things:

• It's a solar power station.

• It's high-speed, unlimited, free Wi-Fi.

• It's hardware on which to use the Wi-Fi.

• It's educational software to learn and play for children.

• It's engineering training—so the community builds the Hello Hub themselves.

• It's this unbelievably valuable asset and window to the world's body of knowledge that has landed in your community.

It's an amazing opportunity for us at Hello World to add in other exciting programs to further accelerate your learning, your vocational training, your human rights advocacy, your health, the impact on your health of connectivity, and so much more after that.

HH:

That's incredible. You know, anything that says "three in one" on it … I'm skeptical. This is six in one! And I believe you because I have seen them! It's magic.

I want to double-click on the community piece because that's such a center of your philosophy and what you do. What does it mean?

KM:

It does sound a bit jargony, doesn't it? "Community-led." And yet, it's absolutely the heart of Hello World’s success and what sets us apart from much larger, much better-funded corporations and organizations that have attempted similar, frankly.

What we do is treat our partners in the community with respect. We only work with them if they've invited us to work with them in an equal and fair partnership. That means we make a joint investment in this community-built and community-owned asset.

It would be much cheaper and much quicker if we prefabricated a Hello Hub somewhere else and then parked it in a community, got some photos, and left. But it wouldn't last the night. People wouldn't be invested in it. They wouldn't necessarily understand the value of it. They wouldn't be invested in protecting it, and they also wouldn't know how to manage or maintain it.

We spend weeks preparing a community for a Hello World build—working out what their investment in the build is going to be. We also only work with communities that are living in extreme poverty. So the idea of a community making an investment in a high-tech learning center like this is unfathomable to them.

But there are so many ways that they can invest—land, time, skills. We don't necessarily show up with anywhere to stay, or a wheelbarrow, or a generator, or fuel. We don't necessarily bring food for community meals. So they can invest that.

But most of all, it's their skills, their energy, and their management and engineering work to build the Hello Hub. And I've been on many Hello World builds, and I've never gotten anywhere near the action—because the community shows up en masse to learn how to put in a grounding rod, lay a network cable, build a server, take apart a screen, and replace it. It's a hive of engineering activity.

HH:

Was there a use that you were surprised by?

KM:

So many! I mean, there have been so many—and there have been so many naive assumptions on my part as well.

At first, I really was focused on children and education. I wanted the Hello Hub to be predominantly for children so they could become autodidactic. But I recognized before we began our first Hello World build that unless it was for the whole community, some members of the community would resent it, wouldn’t protect it, and it would be at risk of vandalism or theft.

So we wanted to find a way for the internet to be of use across the entire community—so that it wasn’t monopolized by one group or another. That was a pretty important founding principle, and it seems to have worked.

I also made a lot of naive assumptions that have been proven wrong. I had no idea how much vocational training would happen immediately—or how businesses would be started. I didn’t know that it wasn’t just going to be online businesses, but it would be offline businesses as well.

The hub is not only your portal to the world’s body of knowledge—it’s also the center of commerce in the community. Because hundreds of people use Hello Hubs every day, it’s a busy location. It’s a very good place to set up your store.

The Hello Hub we built in Uganda in 2013—I didn’t recognize it 10 years later. The area around it has completely transformed. The local government decided to build a hospital on the same site, just adjacent to the hub. Plus, local government offices and a farmers market have popped up around it. It’s very neat and very clean. The government is also using this particular village as its “model village” to show visiting dignitaries how wonderful Uganda is. And it’s because this busy, vibrant place has led to a lot of offline activity.

HH:

There is this kind of tension inherent, though, when it comes to scalability and sustainability. How do you think about that? Of course, now you have more than 100 hubs, but how do you reconcile this idea?

KM:

Well, it has to be built with the community. That’s a non-starter.

I mean, that’s the question—and the dilemma—we’ve been grappling with for the last 18 months. It means we’ve changed our operating model. It’s not a Hello Hub unless it’s built, managed, and maintained by the community. I’m absolutely clear about that. I also believe it wouldn’t last the night. I don’t think people would value it. I don’t think they would protect it. We’ve seen so many projects like that become e-waste across the continent of Africa.

However, scale is the crucial question. And now, with 40% of the world’s population without meaningful access to the internet, we should be sprinting to solve that question. The question I must answer is: how do we get there?

From day one, we made our methodology open source. We didn’t just make the backend available—we also produced a “How to Build a Hello Hub” guide. If you go to our website, you’ll find it and be able to sign up for the guide, videos, engineering diagrams, shopping lists, and photographs. It walks you through every problem you’ll face when trying to build a Hello Hub—and offers the solutions we’ve developed over the years.

The goal was to enable other people anywhere to copy what we’ve done, iterate on it, and share with us what they’ve learned. That’s what we built very early on.

But the problem is, people haven’t picked it up. They either can’t afford the kit, or it’s not within their charitable mandate to build Hello Hubs—and therefore, they’re not legally allowed to. People still come back to us and say, “We really need you to build one.”

So we still build Hello Hubs with communities, but we’re more focused on building alongside much larger international aid agencies and training them in all of our methodology.

We go in-house with an agency like CARE, we train their team in everything they need to know to build a Hello Hub. They localize the process with the right language, cultural understanding (of terrain, weather, where to buy things), and we hand over the methodology.

We are not proprietorial at all. We would love someone to put us out of business—to take this all away and get it done everywhere it’s needed. We think the fastest route to scale is training others to build Hello Hubs in-house.

I made a false assumption. You mentioned the number of hubs we’ve worked on so far, and that relates to a failure of mine early on—and the twin pressures of innovation, which you at Solve have supported us on so much, giving us the space to be creative.

But the pressure of wanting to innovate and stay ahead of the curve, while also having to fundraise, means you have to make assumptions. There are three main assumptions where I was wrong:

I assumed the Hello Hubs would need to be replaced after five years.

I assumed they would be financially self-sufficient because the economic environment would shift and people would be able to contribute to the data costs or the upkeep—or the grid and fiber would have extended at a much greater rate.

I assumed they’d become obsolete because Google Loon or Starlink would solve the problem.

HH:

Yes, I want to get to that!

KM:

Yes—and I was wrong. I was wrong on all three counts.

The Hello Hubs are lasting far longer than five years—but they do get more expensive to maintain after that point. Tech deteriorates. So they’re really, really rugged and really, really long-lasting.

Secondly, we build in such economically deprived areas that people are not able to afford even the tiniest sums for data.

And no one’s put us out of business yet. The grid hasn’t moved as quickly as it should have. Fiber hasn’t grown as quickly as it should have. International governments and agencies haven’t addressed this problem as quickly as they should have.

HH:

I wanted to ask you—how does it feel to succeed at something that Facebook, Microsoft, and all of these gigantic companies have tried and failed at? They’ve all had their connectivity moonshots—and you’re doing it.

KM:

Well, I mean, they have all failed, haven’t they? And shame on them.

Do you remember that massive fraud Facebook perpetrated on the world—which they called Internet.org? Which was, in fact, not the internet—it was Facebook. Which isn’t the internet.

There have been so many moonshot, brazen claims about closing the digital divide “just like that.” And there have been such catastrophic—and expensive—failures.

I suppose my theory is that there’s a very arrogant Silicon Valley tech-bro mentality—which we are now seeing play out in American politics—that says they are cleverer, more capable, and more entitled to policymaking than even the countries they wish to work in. That they can solve problems in isolation from Silicon Valley and then impose their so-called solutions on other nations.

And I think it’s bound to fail. I think unless you listen to people, work with people, and put them at the center of decision-making, your plans won’t succeed.

That is what sets Hello World apart.

It’s a little slower because we work hand-in-hand with communities. We can only work on one build at a time—unless others are replicating our work—but we’ve succeeded where these massive tech firms have failed.

We’ve opened unlimited access to the internet for a community. We’ve defended a community’s right not to have a walled garden or a watered-down version of the internet.

And the number of funders who have said to me, “Well, you know, you can’t let them have YouTube,” or “You mustn’t let them go on social media”—of course, they’d be quite annoyed if I determined what they could or couldn’t do online.

HH:

That’s right. Yeah.

KM:

So we’ve been very protective of that right, and not taken a paternalistic or patriarchal approach to the internet service we provide and support.

Ultimately, what’s going on is that these massive tech organizations—and Starlink is among them—are in the next gold rush for signing up new customers to spend money on data. There’s a huge untapped market, and they’re trying to get market share, very often under the guise of being philanthropic or egalitarian.

And of course—they are not.

I feel quite worried about people’s data. I feel quite worried about how rates will change over time.

But I also think, fundamentally, there’s no sensible economic case for taking Starlink to places where people can’t afford it at all.

And what Hello World does is work in places where communities really couldn’t afford even the most basic data packages.

Let’s be clear: if there are members of a community who do have mobile phones and can afford some data, those phones are typically in the hands of an adult male. They’re not in the hands of children. They’re not in the hands of women.

And those women and children don’t have the financial freedom to scroll and explore and go on Google Earth and have a look at Antarctica and learn about the giant squid—or whatever it is that children and adults might want to know.

So I think another thing that sets Hello World apart is that we haven’t held ourselves accountable to return on investment in some communities.

And yes—it means we have to sustain our work with philanthropy. And that is frustrating.

HH:

Right. Well—frustrating, and it probably also puts you in a very vulnerable position. Especially now, with all of, you know—speaking of current USAID cuts, the federal funding cuts, and how that has accelerated some defunding of international aid in other governmental agencies. I want to know how that impacts your work in a more granular way, and how you’re thinking about it.

KM:

My main feeling at the moment is one of deep sadness and shame. I think the mark of a civilized country, ultimately, is its international aid budget—and I think the United Kingdom and America in particular—both of those countries—should be deeply ashamed of themselves right now.

It has led, overnight, to deaths.

I was in Uganda a couple of weeks ago. One of our Hello Hubs is at a hospital that was USAID-funded, with patients backed up, waiting for days for crucial treatment. In fact, when USAID had built this hospital, they hadn’t powered it. So when, at Hello World, we built—with the community—a Hello Hub on the site of the hospital, we rigged up the hospital to power as well, meaning that mothers weren’t giving birth in the pitch black, and doctors could look things up online and use the CDC.

And I had a conversation with the medic in charge of the hospital, and he was sort of incredulous. He just said, “I mean, you try doing your job as a doctor without the internet, without power—it’s impossible, really. I can only give the most rudimentary of services.”

And this hospital probably won’t exist in three years when the USAID funding comes to an end.

That means people will be traveling for days. So there have been immediate deaths, and there are deaths coming down the line.

It’s going to be cumulative.

And an escalation of extreme poverty—which is what we’re facing globally—is going to lead to civic unrest. It’s going to lead to famine. It’s going to be more expensive over time. And it’s going to lead to conflict—more conflict. Yet more conflict.

HH:

I mean, one way to look at this is that with aid receding, really the only thing that is going to have any chance of surviving is social enterprises that have some business model, some revenue streams.

This is totally beside the point, maybe, but I wanted to understand how you’re thinking about it.

Would you consider—because you’re serving the bottom of the pyramid—how do you cross-subsidize if you’re not grants-funded? Is it something that you would consider—putting in higher-income areas that are also not connected—and kind of a buy-one-give-one-free model?

KM:

You’re totally right. And yes, is the answer. We are absolutely looking for alternative models—and we always have been.

One of the missed assumptions that I had was that I felt the communities in which we are working would see such a massive uptick in data sales—because we very often point-to-point the connection and get it to somewhere where it’s never been before.

We then add in the infrastructure so that, if you did have a personal device, you could charge it. And if it’s charged, you could then get data and use it on your own device.

I thought that the internet service providers we work with would see a significant increase in their customer base in Hello Hub communities, and that they would therefore pay for Hello Hubs.

And I think some of the internet service providers we’ve done deals with over the years also thought that was what was going to happen. That’s why we got the kind of deals from them that we got.

We’ve had some very frank conversations since then. The chief executives of various ISPs and I have said, “Hey, we all made a wrong assumption. That hasn’t happened.”

So you’re exactly right. I think the answer is: some middle-class areas or emerging middle-class areas, some peri-urban areas, plus the fully remote areas.

We recognize that, on our liability sheet, some of the Hello Hubs will never be economically independent. And there are some that, week by week, we are gradually shifting to full independence.

It will take a year to 18 months. In some cases, it means saving together. It means reducing certain costs together. So we’re working in a very hands-on way with the communities to work out what they can do.

And it’s annoyingly and frustratingly not a one-size-fits-all. That’s the nature of our work anyway.

So there are places where we’re working with local leadership, local government, to ask them to invest in, say, the data or some costs to do with maintenance.

So it’s actually quite a labor-intensive process for us—but the net result will be that there are fewer liabilities on our balance sheet when it comes to Hello Hubs, and that they’re fully integrated into the community’s ownership.

HH:

You’ve been at it for 13 years now, and just hearing you talk about how—I mean, it’s hard not to think that you are hyper-involved with these hubs, being all so specific and intricate and relationship-based. How are you??

KM:

It has been exhausting, and it is something I’m fascinated by—for other founders.

There is actually only one team member for Hello World in the UK. So again, long before it was on trend—great power to the Global South—we were building teams in Africa and Asia and empowering them, ensuring that local decision-making was at the heart of our organization and our operation.

Actually, that was more time-consuming, but I think the long-term payoff is really there. And it does mean that I’ve built in obsolescence, to a great degree. And I think that’s something I’m quite proud of, ultimately—because it should be locally determined and locally run, and culturally tied to its location.

There’s no need, certainly, for me to be on a Hello Hub build anymore. I’m only a distraction and a pain if I do visit one. So it’s for me, not for them, you know.

So in that sense, I think it’s been good.

HH:

The organization—and, as you know, I feel that the impetus for access is no longer just about education and access to the Internet. It’s also this world-changing, life-altering artificial intelligence. And I want to—I’d love to hear from you how you're thinking about it for your work, for the communities you work with. Is there ever a chance that this is going to be our leapfrog moment that we thought it was going to be with cell phones and then with the Internet? How do we make sure this is not another accelerant of inequality, basically?

KM:

Oh, I think that AI is already another accelerant of inequality—for now—and I think that will be the case until we close the digital divide. The tragic fact of the matter is that the human repository of knowledge is online. Problem-solving can happen in a nanosecond now. There are translation tools, economic tools, banking services—it’s all digital. If you can’t access it, you are so much further behind than you were in the pre-digital age.

And I think what’s tricky about this is that it’s one of the main crises of our generation, with regards to international development and equitable access to global resources and a fair start in life. And yet, it’s just not a very sexy sell. I'm still having to have the most remedial conversations with funders and foundations who say, “Oh, well, you know, what are they really going to do on the Internet?” And the question is more, “When are you not on the Internet?”

I'm on the Internet 24 hours a day, and I don’t even use social media. I'm solving problems, finding out where I want to go, banking, sending money to people—all sorts of different things.

I think we all learned during COVID lockdowns how lonely we would have been had we not been able to get online and see our families. We ought to take that very seriously, because that is the reality for 40% of the world’s population. Too often, the communities who have been torn apart by war—through no fault of their own—and have sent their children to safety, cannot communicate with them for years until they’re able to get online.

It’s just a heartbreaking reality. In Nepal, where we work, communities are hollowed out by labor migration because there is no economic opportunity in the hills. Parents and their babies are separated. Children are left at home with their grandparents, and they don’t see their parents again until they come home and can physically see them.

Now, when I leave my four children to go to work, I like being able to say goodnight to them on video chat. And I think that should be something all parents are able to do. So I think there’s a broader human rights issue here—it’s not just about vocational training, education, economic activity, access to financial services, and health information. It’s also about families, staying in touch with your loved ones, and looking after your heart.

I was with a friend and colleague named Patrick in Nakivale Refugee Settlement a couple of weeks ago, and two extraordinary things happened. I haven’t really told anyone these stories yet. Patrick’s a force—he’s just a dynamo. One of the Hello Hubs is on the site of a social enterprise that he founded.

We went to the hub and I hung out with some kids, did some educational software games, and just spent time there. Then he said, “Let me take you to a park I’ve built.” We walked to this park, and he told me he’d built a number of structures out of recycled plastic bottles.

I started to ask him about how he had ended up in Nakivale. He explained that at 19, he had fled Congo when rebels entered his village. He and his brother were together, so they left together—leaving behind their parents, siblings, and extended family. They walked for days and days and realized they were in a new country when they heard a language they couldn’t identify. It was Uganda.

They didn’t know where they were, but it was a city. To this day, he doesn’t know which city or which region. Eventually, a kind police officer directed them to a charity. These two children—well, a young adult and a child—slept outside this charity until someone finally opened it the next day. After some time and being bounced around, they were relocated to Nakivale Refugee Settlement.

It was another four years before he could get online, log into Facebook, and find out if his family was still alive. And I can tell you—they are still alive, and they are still in Congo. But for that whole period, he didn’t know where they were, and they didn’t know where he was.

So when funders say to me, “Oh, you mustn’t let them get onto social media,” I really think they’re misunderstanding the context that the vast majority of people without Internet access live in.

He told me this story as we walked to the beautiful park he’d built, with nine exquisite structures made from recycled plastic bottles and truly heart-stopping artwork. I asked him, “What inspired you to build houses out of plastic bottles?” And he said, “Oh, you know, whatever year it was, I saw a clip on Facebook—a one-minute, 37-second video from Al Jazeera—about a house made of plastic bottles in Nigeria.”

And as he said it, I suddenly realized he was talking about a clip from a project I led in Nigeria a decade and a half ago. Someone had invited the press when we cut the ribbon on the house, and I had gone through this mad period where I was determined to collect 300,000 plastic bottles from Abuja. I was constantly driving around to hotels with rubbish in the back of my car—totally insane.

He said, “So I saw this clip, and then I started picking up plastic bottles. Everyone thought I’d gone totally insane. I was swimming in plastic bottles. I went online and I learned how to do it.”

And we’ve been working together for eight years, and I never knew that something I’d worked on in Nigeria had led to a clip I never saw, which he then saw, and which inspired this beautiful work. He’s taken it so much further than I ever did.

We were both really emotional and overwhelmed.

I suppose it speaks to your first question, actually—have there been some surprises about what people do online? And I think the ultimate answer is: yes, there really have been. And there’s so much I’ll never know about.

HH:

Yeah, wow—what a full circle moment that is. It’s so beautiful, how you're inspiring people even without knowing it. Whether or not you're in the room, your message has gone so, so far. Thank you for sharing Patrick’s story.

And as you talk about families that are separated and the role of connectivity—it’s everything. And when you talk about your four children—I can’t imagine that. I mean, first of all, four! I have two, by the way. My two boys are three and six, and I’m going mad. I’m going to build a shrine to you.

KM:

No, no, no. I actually think I’m probably just clinically insane.

My daughter was born the same year I founded Hello World. I’ve had three more since then, so they’re very much Hello World babies. But again, I think it speaks to what you support founders to do—build organizations with their values first.

I knew that if I was going to be an involved mother but still work in social justice and human rights and the humanitarian space, I was probably going to have to build my own organization. Because I wanted to be able to take my kids to work and work around their needs—as well as my commitment to the issues I care about.

I knew I could do both, but not in a traditional work environment. So I had to start my own organization.

I think the world of work is catching up—but not fast enough. One of the projects Hello World has done alongside closing the digital divide in remote communities is building a truly progressive environment for parents and all our colleagues.

HH:

Tell me more about that—how? Because I was also thinking, as you’re talking about gender issues and how phones are typically with the dad or the brother, how does Hello World help close the gender divide where it exists?

KM:

There are lots of different ways. First, I’m a woman. It was my idea, and I’m the founder. Our team leaders in both Africa and Asia are women. Our senior team has always been majority women—by a long way.

That’s not because we tried to make it that way. We just had the best people for the job. But I think we were also able to do that because we had such a progressive parental policy. That handbook is a thing of beauty—and lots of people have copied it, which is great.

We offer equal paternity and maternity leave, long leave, unlimited vacation, totally flexible working hours—long before COVID and remote work. You can work from any country, on any schedule, and bring your babies to work. We’ve often facilitated that. No one bats an eye when there’s a baby or a kid in a Zoom call—everyone’s just thrilled.

We’ve also made sure that has a knock-on effect in the communities we work in. We always form a women’s group in every community where we partner to build a Hello Hub, and we ask: How are we going to ensure equal and fair access? We’ve got some ideas and experience, but the answer ultimately has to come from the community.

And the answers are often inventive. In northern Nigeria, many years ago, at the first Hello Hub build, the women decided they needed a women-only hour at the hub—because men and women couldn’t be there at the same time in a devout Muslim community. They timed it for when the men would be at mosque. They were having such a good time watching Bollywood movies and hanging out that they made it a women’s 3.5 hours, which I thought was great.

A couple of years ago, our CTO, Dave, called from Uganda and said he was hiring more engineers, but the best candidates were all men. I said, “Hire the best people, but for every man, hire a woman and give her a paid fellowship to train her up so she can apply for the job next time.”

Now we run a female engineering fellowship, which we don’t even talk about much—it could be its own organization. At some point, a big tech firm in Kampala asked if we could help staff and train for them too.

So having women in hard hats and boiler suits doing engineering sets a great example for little girls in the community. It's policy, it's leading by example, it's training—and it’s patience.

HH:

I'm so glad I asked! Seriously—thank you. Thank you for sharing that. You're an innovator, a trailblazer, truly a force to be reckoned with. And I know these are such hard times, but I truly feel like if there's anyone who can figure it out, it's you—and it’s Hello World—and the force for good you’ve created in every single one of those hubs.

I want to leave our audience with a call to action. How can people help? How do you want to end this?

KM:

Thank you. Those are such generous words.

I suppose I think it's been a combination of a tolerance for making it up as I go along, some comfort with failure, and an unbelievably supportive network of friends and family who've cheered us on the whole way—that’s what’s made it possible, most of all.

But also, I think it might be naivete. I didn’t know how hard it was going to be, so I just got stuck in. Had I known then what I know now, there's no way I would have done it.

HH:

I’m so glad you didn’t know! One thing I’ve learned from you is actually this idea of emergent planning. So now when someone asks me, “What’s your five-year plan?” I just say, “Well… it’s emergent.”

KM:

It’s a nice way—it’s a more powerful way—of saying, “I have no idea. I’m going to make it up.” It’s like “pivot.” It’s a more sophisticated way of saying, “I’m going to change my mind.”

As for a call to action in terms of Hello World:

Join us. Check out what we’re doing. Reach out to us on LinkedIn and Instagram. And most importantly, if you know a community or organization that wants to learn how to build Hello Hubs and adopt this methodology, we have a How to Build a Hello Hub guide. It’s free. It’s yours. And we’ll get on Zoom and walk you through it when you get stuck—whether it’s engineering stuff, choosing the best tablet, or figuring out the angle of the sun for your solar panels.

We’ll help you fix those problems—because we’ve been there—and we would love to see people replicate our work, localize it, make it their own, and then teach us what they’ve learned. That’s how emergent planning comes back around again.

And then I guess the main thing, which is a bit broader and more philosophical:

I would urge people not to despair and not to look away. Look at the problems head-on right now, because it’s only when good people get organized and stand up for what’s fair and just that anything is going to change. This is a moment of crisis like we’ve never seen before.

Get organized. Bear witness. That’s what all of us need to be prepared to do right now.

HH:

I want to thank you so much for coming on, for sharing, for making this your life’s work—and for putting all of this out into the world. Connecting people—that’s real connection right there. Thank you.

KM:

Well, I’d like to thank you and the whole team at MIT Solve, because you connected us to funders who backed us with unrestricted funding, cheered us on, and became our friends and allies along the way.

For us, connecting communities couldn’t have happened without the connections that you made. The way you’ve supported us, held our hands, and been there for us has been game-changing for Hello World. And it came at absolutely the right moment for us.

So—thank you.

HH:

That means the world. Really. It’s such an honor to be even a tiny part of your amazing journey. Thank you so much, Katrin!

HH

Thank you again Katrin for such an energized, inspiring conversation. Here’s what I am taking away from this episode.

First, Community Partnership Beats Corporate Solutions. in unreliable markets. Hello World succeeds where tech giants fail in bridging the digital divide -- because it centers the community at every step, from building, to managing the Hubs - creates trust & ensures longevity. This co-ownership model is - yes, slower than dropping prefab solutions, but its the difference between lasting impact and fancy failure.

Second, access to the Internet is a human right and a lifeline. Katrin's most powerful insight cuts to the heart of digital equity. With 40% of the world's population lacking meaningful internet access, we're creating a new form of haves and have nots. Her story of Patrick, who couldn't know if his family was alive for four years until he could access social media, illustrates the profound human cost of disconnection. Internet access isn't about entertainment—it's about staying connected to family, accessing healthcare information, economic opportunities, and,,, the world's knowledge.

Finally, scale through teaching, not controlling. Rather than guarding their methodology, Hello World made everything open source from day one—complete with how-to guides, engineering diagrams, and shopping lists. When direct replication wasn't working, they shifted to training larger aid agencies to build hubs themselves, without sacrificing their deep commitment to dignity, agency, and local leadership. Sometimes it takes letting go to scale.

Katrin’s passion and commitment to Hello World are undeniable. Although innovation in the age of international development funding cuts is difficult, Katrin proves that all we can do is push forward.

I'm Hala Hanna, thanks for tuning in to the Solve Effect!

This episode was produced by Bridget Weiler and Elisabeth Graham, with audio engineering and editing by Chris McDonnell. Theme music by Max Natanagara. Subscribe or leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. Visit solve.mit.edu or find us on social media.