Cody Valdes

Born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, Cody is a sophomore at Tufts University studying political science and history. He is the founder of the Mango Tree Project, a joint effort of engineers and architects from Tufts University, the U.S. Air Force, and Washington University in St. Louis, which traveled to Rwanda in 2010 to design and propose a renewable energy system for a village of 500 orphans and vulnerable youth. As a freshman, he spent a year conducting research internationally on the role of modern-day oligarchies in perpetuating poverty in the Philippines and the impact of the Olympic Games on impoverished urban communities in Vancouver. At Tufts, Cody is the co-editor in chief of Discourse, a multi-medium student publication, and the co-leader of the Poverty and Power Research Initiative, a student research group that focuses explicitly on the nexus of elites, poverty, and corruption. He was also one of the founding members of the Climate for Peace initiative advocating for renewable energy-based development as an integral part of conflict resolution and an abrogation of violence in the Gaza Strip, aptly called Solar for Gaza/Sderot. He was invited to present the vision for this project at the Sustainable Engineering in the Eastern Mediterranean conference organized by Engineers Without Borders International in Larnaca, Cyprus in April of 2009, and as a member of the conference’s executive committee will participate in the second annual conference in March 2010. At home, he maintains close ties with the drug and alcohol rehabilitation organization he volunteered at during his freshman summer in Vancouver, where he made what he hopes will be life-long friendships with formerly homeless and addicted men struggling to rebuild their lives.