At the age
of 13, a boy living in Sierra Leone created batteries and generators using
materials he picked up around the house or from trash bins. Now, he's wowing
experts in the U.S.
Kelvin Doe,
now 16, became the youngest person in history to be invited to the
"Visiting Practitioner's Program" at MIT, according to CNN.
Doe, a
completely self-taught engineer, manages his own fully-staffed community radio
station in Sierra Leone where he broadcasts news and plays music under the
moniker 'DJ Focus.' The radion station is powered by a generator created from a
deteriorating voltage stabilizer, which he found in the trash, while a simple
antenna lets his neighborhood listen in.
"They
call me DJ Focus because I believe if you focus, you can do an invention
perfectly," Doe said in a video produced by @radical.media for their THNKR
YouTube channel.
Among those
inventions is a battery that he created to light up homes in his neighborhood.
"The
lights will come on once in a week, and the rest of the month, dark," Doe
told interviewers.
It took
several attempts before Doe finally had a working prototype for the battery --
a combination of soda, acid and metal, wrapped together by tape.
MIT discovered Doe during Innovate Salone, a national high school innovation challenge held in Sierra Leone by an international organization called Global
Minimum. Doctoral student David Sengeh recognized his skills right away.
"It's
very inspirational," Sengeh said in the video. "He created a
generator because he needed it."
Before
attending Innovate Salone this year, Doe had never been more than 10 miles from
home. With Sengeh's help, in September he journeyed to New York for the 2012
World Maker Faire, where he sat on a “Meet the Young Makers” panel with four
American inventors.
Doe's fame
only promises to grow from here. Soon he will be a resident practitioner with
the International Development Initiative at MIT and a guest presenter at
Harvard School of Engineering, where he'll gain even more practical knowledge
to help his community.
"Whatever
things I've learned here, I will share it with my friends, colleagues and loved
ones," Doe said.
Watch the
video above from THNKR, which, as part of a biweekly series on young prodigies,
details Doe's incredible story.
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