Developing technologies to improve the quality of lives of the poor is a very challenging fi eld. it requires expertise from many disciplines as well as having a deep understanding of the local communities that are being served. university-based service learning, humanitarian engineering, and social entrepreneurship programs have been appearing in many universities. chapters of organisations supporting projects in developing countries, such as engineers without borders and engineers for a sustainable world, have also opened up on many university campuses in the us and other developed countries. students and professors enthusiastically travel around the world to install water distribution networks, water fi lters, solar panels, etc. yet many of these students have very limited preparation as they undertake projects that are often technically straight forward but are rife with complexities related to engaging the communities that are served by these projects. many books based on field research have been written on the subject of international development. a sampling of these books includes the bottom billion (collier, 2007), poor economics (banerjee & dufl o, 2012), portfolios of the poor (collins et al, 2009), the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid (prahalad, 2010), out of poverty (polak, 2008), the business solution to poverty (polak & warwick, 2013), common wealth (sachs, 2009), and dead aid (moyo, 2009). while these books do provide insights and guidance on conducting projects in the developing world, they tend to be written as research monographs focused on the business, economic and/or technical aspects of development solutions. they generally provide little anthropological and cultural insight into the complexities of development projects