The SFF Fellows
Jul 27 by Flo SchalliolMeet the Semi-Finalist Fellows for the Dell Social Innovation Competition of 2011. At Brown, we've been working with them for the past 5 months to develop their business plans and their capacities as an entrepreneur. On August 19th, they'll take the stage to present their progress at #Connect@Brown!
Here are their bios:
FERNANDO BARBOSA
Educating the Streets – Building Society
My name is Fernando Barbosa. I was born and raised in Cochabamba, Bolivia. I moved to Montreal when I was 18 years old to pursue my University studies and am currently in my third year of University majoring in Economics at the John Molson School of Business.
My project is called Educating the Streets – Building Society. It aims to reinstate the genuine exercise of a human right—education—for "working children," an important and special subgroup of the greater “vulnerable children” circle. They are children who, despite living in precarious conditions and extreme levels of poverty, have the motivation, initiative and willingness to improve their conditions and those of their close ones, by working long hours and trying to get an education; and yet, the system/society fails them.
In the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia, there are more than 200,000 working children. (Terre des homes, 2011 INTW) These children work up to 16 hours a day, some to take care of their parents or younger siblings; others to be more independent, to buy materials for school or just for food. Many of them attend night school, but their education is compromised because:
i. Night school is for adults as well and thus their education is not tailored to their capacities and needs.
ii. Because of their long working hours, they attend school under sub-optimal physical conditions
Despite their motivation and hard work – of which they are very proud – they cannot beat the system. Very few get out of it, and many struggle to, at minimum, work with dignity. Educating the Streets – Building Society is an innovative multistage solution for working children, mainly in the streets, that combines: support of basic education + training in the performing arts + multi-sector collaborative program.
Throughout, children will receive tutoring and support for their education activities complementing it with the performing arts. The latter has been shown to be effective for building and strengthening emotional character, as well as fostering creativity. Plays can be sold to the public and generate income for the children. Advanced stages of the program will be complemented with vocational, leadership and entrepreneurial training, and through workshops to address development issues. Most education and vocational work will be conducted by local and international university students who will in return receive Spanish lessons with the support of the children; for which children will be paid. At all stages, children will mentor new incoming generations.
TREVOR BURBANK
Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, I have since danced on over to music city in Nashville, Tennessee. I have always been passionate about serving, helping, and learning about others. I enjoy going out and meeting people from all walks of life. My greatest joy is being able to help improve someone’s quality of life, whether that is by putting a smile on someone’s face or by doing something life-altering. Each person I have been fortunate enough to meet has provided me with a unique perspective and a greater insight.
This passion for individuals has pushed me to live on the streets in Washington D.C., with members of the National Coalition for the Homeless, to further my understanding for how society treats the homeless, starting a walk to raise awareness and funds to end the war in northern Uganda, and traveling to Ecuador with a community development program to implement microfinance and organic farming programs. I have wrestled with issues such as charity vs. empowerment, domestic vs. abroad, and mission work vs. secular organizations. Through both my educational experience in International Development and my service experiences, I have improved my knowledge and skills, along with my passion and interest in moving forward even farther. I believe firmly that Teach Twice incorporates my community development values and utilizes my skills.
Teach Twice is a social venture that educates children and their communities through stories and the exchange of culture. In the Teach Twice model a single book—written by authors from a developing country—provides parents in the global marketplace stories to read to their children, and gives financial support to schools and students in the country from which the book came. Each book will contain between three and five unique illustrated children’s stories, featuring a specific country. Authors and their communities will be empowered through expression and the profits from their work, while readers will learn about different cultures. In light of recent events—both the January 2010 earthquake and the cholera outbreak—the first published book will feature Haiti, offering educational support during the nation’s reconstruction, and fostering a sense of solidarity between students in Haiti and in the United States. One Teach Twice book enhances the education of two children and two communities that are worlds apart, yet connected through a shared commitment to education, and a desire to learn from books and from each other.
MAURICIO GOMEZ DIAZ
I am originally from Colombia but have been living and traveling abroad for the last nine years. I am currently pursuing a master’s degree at MIT and my future aspirations lie in the application of technology to achieve socioeconomic development.
Project Yele started 4 years ago when several of our members traveled to Sierra Leone to help with the restoration of a hydroelectric power plant destroyed during the civil war. This plant will become functional later this year and the new focus of Project Yele is to ensure that when electricity is available, it will be used in the best possible way to spark economic and social growth in this village. Billions of dollars have been spent on rural electrification projects worldwide but the benefits have not been as widespread and significant as initially expected. Organizations devoted to this type of project have concluded that providing electricity is a necessary but insufficient condition for achieving development. It is the aim of Project Yele to provide a platform by which electricity can be converted into socioeconomic growth by tapping into the creative and entrepreneurial potential of rural dwellers throughout the developing world. Project Yele aims to promote social and economic development through the planning and construction of a Community Bazaar that will act as the medium through which electricity will be converted into economic activity. By combining various strategic facilities in an innovative way, independent and sustainable growth can be achieved.
The Community Bazaar will be a marketplace where local entrepreneurs can start businesses using key facilities such as clean drinking water, electricity, Internet and refrigeration. Initially, sixteen shop owners will be housed in the bazaar, each of which will bring new products and services to the market that were not possible before due to the lack of electricity. If proven successful, Project Yele can then become a model to follow in the thousands of villages that are set to receive electricity in the coming years.
AARON HOROWITZ
Design for America Northwestern
My name is Aaron Horowitz and I'm currently a Junior studying Mechatronics and User Interaction Design Engineering at Northwestern University. As the spawn of a painter dancer duo, I was born into a world where creativity and a deep understanding for human emotion were both encouraged and instilled. Ever since I was a child I have had the same goal, to build things that help people. When I was young I called it being an inventor, now I see it as being an entrepreneur.
I have always had a strong desire to merge my upbringing with my studies, creating robots that elicit and mimic human emotions. Being diagnosed with a chronic illness as a child has a huge impact both physically and emotionally. I want to do anything that I can to make their lives, and the transition to living with a chronic illness, easier.
Imagine you are 5 years old, and have just been diagnosed with Type I Diabetes. You are now bound to your parents and cannot be away from them for more than 4 hours at a time. Your mother cuts your finger to check your blood sugar level and gives you insulin shots every day. She does this constantly, because she loves you so much. It is painful, almost unbearable, and it gets harder every day. This story is lived over again and again by the more than 15,000 children diagnosed with type-I diabetes each year.
Currently, there are stuffed animals accompanied by instructional booklets or CDs, on the market to address this issue, but they lack any interactivity to allow a child to experientially learn to adapt to their new lifestyle. Research shows that most families affected by diabetes find existing resources severely lacking to help their child understand the issue and practice new habits accompanied by living with Type 1 diabetes.
We created Jerry to solve this challenge. Jerry is an interactive teddy bear diagnosed with diabetes and it is a child’s responsibility to make sure Jerry is taken care of and stays healthy. Rather than reading about injections, glucose checks and calorie counting, children can learn about all of these things by practicing them in a risk-free environment on Jerry. The ultimate goal of Jerry is to help children regain their confidence and independence at a younger age. For the past year and a half, our team has been working diligently to create a working prototype of Jerry. Currently, we are testing our first generation of teddy bears with children living with diabetes. Our dream scenario is to create an online platform where children can connect and support each other through their illness. Simply put, we want to create Webkinz for Chronic Illnesses.
While this innovation deals specifically with diabetes, we believe that similar solutions could be designed for any chronic disease facing children such as leukemia, asthma or allergies, which would expand the number of individuals potentially affected by our innovation from 80,000 to over 10 million. Our ultimate goal is to create an online community and a series of surrogate toys that will empower every single child diagnosed with a chronic illness to regain control of their own lives.
NICHOLAS JAVA
Glovico is a social enterprise launched in May 2010 with two primary goals: to create new income opportunities for entrepreneurs in developing countries on the basis of interactive telecommunication technologies such as video conferencing and to promote intercultural dialogue. The sustainability of our business model is to offer private language courses with native speakers from developing countries as an answer to the increasing demand for affordable and flexible language courses.
As a former U.S. Army Officer who served nearly three years in Iraq, I understand the importance of economic opportunity and intercultural dialogue. I witnessed firsthand the consequences of economic stagnation and the failure to exchange ideas. From these experiences arose my desire to be a part of Glovico. I have a network of former Iraqi interpreters that I am forever indebted to and that I believe are ideal candidates for Glovico. They are well-educated, well-spoken and willing to commit themselves to establishing themselves as entrepreneurs and becoming economically independent. Glovico’s business model, in turn, provides the means from them to achieve these goals through our services that connect them with customers in Europe and the United States in search of affordable and flexible Arabic language courses. This is important to me because I am able to return the favor to those interpreters who served as my eyes and ears on the battlefield and were absolutely crucial to my welfare.
Glovico’s business model is founded on market-based principles, and it has a social impact because we provide economic opportunity and foster deeper cultural understanding. It is central to our belief that market-based strategies are the best means to achieve a social purpose in developing countries. We have successfully applied these market-based principles and strategies on only a small scale with customers in Europe thus far. But we aim to capture a much larger share of the markets in Europe and the United States with an additional three languages within the next year and have an even greater impact.
MARIAMA KABIA
My name is Mariama Kabia and I am the co-founder/co-editor in chief of Memunatu Magazine. Last spring, my twin sister Fatmata and I came up with the idea of a magazine made for teenage girls in Sierra Leone that promotes literacy, female leadership, and economic development. As daughters of immigrants from Sierra Leone, we hold a special place in our hearts for the country. Given the political, social, and economic climate in Sierra Leone since the decade-long civil war, girls now have the opportunity to improve their circumstances. As of 2008, while 64% of boys between the ages of 15-24 in the country are literate, only 44% of girls have a basic reading level, defined as the ability to “identify, understand, create, and communicate printed text and written materials.” What we realized last year is that we could do something about that.
I am a senior at the University of Pennsylvania studying international relations and French. With a focus on diplomacy, a love for writing, and internship experience at the Embassy of Sierra Leone in Washington D.C, I have the practical experience to take on such an endeavor. Together, Fatmata and I have created Memunatu: a unique, community-driven magazine (named after our mom) specifically for underserved girls, that provides a range of fun and educational editorial content.
Memunatu is a completely original approach to literacy that utilizes an innovative distribution plan through schools, magazine content written by college students in Sierra Leone, and uses student input. A real asset to the magazine is Memunatu’s ability to encourage reading without being intimidating. Through the suggested books section, writing contests, featured articles, and more, Memunatu strives to boost girls’ academic performance and self-confidence.
TASMIHA KHAN
I'm currently a Neuroscience & Behavior and Psychology Major. The name of my organization is Brighter Dawns, and my team and I are working towards improving the health and lives of people in a slum in Bangladesh. Seeing the dire conditions in a Bangladesh slum firsthand spurred me to further action. I began a venture to combat health disparities in the area and train impoverished women to be self-sufficient. After doing a competitive analysis and consulting with local leaders, I was surprised to learn that no international aid was reaching local people. Millions of Bangladeshis lack access to clean drinking water, leading to deaths of over 100,000 children each year. Our target is a Khulnan slum, where water education, latrines and wells will alleviate the water crisis. After all, water is a necessity, not a luxury.
Brighter Dawns seeks to improve the lives of impoverished people, particularly of those living in slums. In order to accomplish this goal, we will be focusing primarily on health-related issues. For this project, we will be addressing the current water crisis in Bangladesh by building wells and sanitary latrines in Ward 12, an effort conceptualized in collaboration with the local government. In addition, we will be hosting health awareness seminars throughout the region, in an effort to spread knowledge regarding sanitary health and habits. Our involvement with the local leaders will allow a wide range of professionals to impact the water crisis in Bangladesh, while circumventing the corrupt government officials in the upper echelon. Many of the organization’s executive members have close ties with family members in the area, meaning they can be the primary network to navigate matters of funds and logistics.
The incorporation of local leaders will undoubtedly be an integral part of this project’s future, and it will help the organization ease doubts and concerns of the donors and professionals involved. In addition to local ties, the multinational and multicultural representation within the Brighter Dawns team will ensure that we are bringing new and innovative perspectives to the table. Furthermore, by integrating local opinion into our vision, hiring local residents to manage the wells, and hosting awareness seminars for the community, we will ensure that our efforts will have an immediate and direct impact on the community. The recruitment of professionals from all walks of life will add fresh and innovative perspectives to the problem and provide the students involved with real world advice and tactics to go about the construction of these wells and latrines. We’re confident that it is through this local action that we can enact global change, and this is what Brighter Dawns strives to achieve.
MAZVITA MARGARET MACHINGA
My name is Mazvita Machinga and I am a Ph.D student at the Claremont Lincoln University in Claremont, CA. I am from Zimbabwe and I have been working with marginalized, distressed and troubled people for 18 years. My post-graduate studies in psychotherapy will widen my knowledge and skills in working with the disadvantaged.
My project is a community-based and multi-approach initiative to assist the wounded and traumatized, end violence, and rebuild communities that have been ravaged by political conflict and violence in Manicaland Province of Zimbabwe. After a call for national healing in 2008, I felt something needed to be done. I saw people physically and psychologically suffering, losing their homes, and being sexually assaulted, with nothing being done at a grassroots level to help them heal. The intervention focused on how to facilitate healing and to stop continuous violence during the transitional government. I shared the idea with community members. Through interacting with those affected by violence, I learned that survivors need to mend their emotional, mental and psychological injuries if they are to live to their full potential. My experience interviewing victims and perpetrators made me see that the pain of violence, if unattended, continues to fester. In order to heal, individuals and communities need help.
This project is important to me because we aim to reduce suffering and help rebuild shattered lives. I help communities identify solutions to violence and ways to promote peace and safety. To the world, my project provides alternatives to violence. Politically-motivated violence is one of the greatest challenges facing many nations worldwide and my strategies are scalable and replicable in other countries, with modifications. The world needs interventions that challenge individuals’ and communities’ tolerance for and sensitivity to the presence of violence. We need interventions that increase empathy and understanding of others, and that help rebuild shattered communities. Interventions that help communities stop hurting and start healing. All efforts to prevent violence make the world a better and safer place.
ANJALI SARKER
I am Anjali Sarker from Bangladesh. I am doing BBA in Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka. I am a very passionate entrepreneur and want to contribute to the development of my country.
The problem I am working on is arsenic contamination in groundwater, which is threatening millions of people in the rural areas of Bangladesh. My native village itself falls within a severely arsenic affected region. We are trying to provide lost-cost, effective arsenic removal filters to the extreme poor rural households, right now who have no access to safe water. Our challenge is to make a sustainable, community based business model to provide safe water to the base of the pyramid who are not only poor but also ignorant about the adverse effects of arsenic.
Bangladesh has become the most vulnerable place concerning arsenic pollution. What is happening in Bangladesh is a unique horror. The WHO calls the situation “the largest poisoning of a population in history.” Richard Wilson, president of the nonprofit Arsenic Foundation and a physics professor emeritus at Harvard University said, “The magnitude of the arsenic problem is 50 times worse than Chernobyl.”
The circle of arsenic destroys a normal lifestyle and once a community falls prey to it, getting out of this circle becomes impossible by their own efforts. Every problem caused by arsenic works as a catalyst for attracting others: arsenic-polluted groundwater does not only cause arsenicosis, but is also responsible for magnifying the intensity of many other problems. As opposed to other diseases that harm only individuals, arsenic in groundwater harms a whole community; every person living in the region becomes victim to it concurrently.
Arsenic exposure in Bangladesh is widespread. In rural areas, the only source of water is groundwater, pumped through tube wells. Until the discovery of arsenic in groundwater, safe water coverage in was 97%, but it is only 52% now. Out of 160 million people, 77 million are exposed to arsenic through drinking water. Many efforts have been made but none has been successful because of high costs and lack of sustainability. The poor need a real, affordable solution right now as each day of continued exposure increases the risk of morbidity and death.
PAANI (meaning 'water' in Bengali) is going to offer them an affordable, sustainable and indigenous solution. It will provide arsenic-free, pure drinking water to poor villagers that is filtered through P-tank, PAANI’s arsenic-removal water tank. The simple device possesses the power to change lives of a whole community. It removes arsenic through chemical reactions and does not use any fossil fuel, electricity, or firewood. The whole device is made from low-cost, locally-available materials. Besides, it is a green technology, no hazardous waste is produced through the process, and the filter is recyclable. PAANI will charge a monthly bill ($1/family) rather than charging the big amount at a time required for buying a filter or deep tube well (usually $40-150). This unique pricing system has been introduced so that the targeted rural people who live hand to mouth can easily afford it. In addition, PAANI will create job opportunities for more than 50,000 poor women serving as our representatives, who have no other source of employment right now.
From a broader social viewpoint, PAANI renders the following services to society: protecting people from arsenicosis and related health problems (i.e. cancer, gangrene), increasing productivity, reducing medical expenses, creating employment, preventing divorces and conjugal problems, decreasing dropout rate from school. It is not merely a business. It has the power to save, change and protect millions of lives.
LUKE SCHOENFELDER
Arxterra: Scalable Earthbag Solutions
I became involved with earthbag technology in 2007, my interest piqued after my Aunt built a “rammed-earth” structure in New Mexico. The idea of using simple, sustainable materials to solve housing and other construction problems deeply resonated with me. Earthbag technology holds the potential to completely redefine scalable, sustainable construction, with the developing world holding immense opportunities. With 100 million people without homes, and millions more without schools, medical centers and sanitation facilities, the needs for new structures to address these issues is nearly limitless. The ability to tackle these projects with a solution that is simple, cost-effective and environmentally conscious represents a huge opportunity and I am proud to be working towards a solution to these pressing needs.
We seek to empower communities to chart a path out of the ruins of disaster, conflict and poverty, starting with one of the most basic needs for all of humanity – safe, healthy, and affordable housing. By using a proven but little-utilized construction method called Earthbag construction, related to ancient adobe building, we see an enormous potential to impact the millions without adequate housing worldwide, initially demonstrating the concept in Haiti. Earthbag construction holds the potential to revolutionize both disaster response and basic housing industries in a way that aligns with sustainable ideals for communities, local economies, and the environment.
The materials used to build these types of structures are inexpensive, plentiful and sustainable. To build a structure using this style requires basic tools, on-site soil, and polypropylene bags. These types of storage bags are accessible in nearly every corner of the world, often as a result of international aid programs, yet are consistently discarded after use. As the durable polypropylene bags are filled, they are layered on top of one another and bonded together by coils of barbed wire, forming walls. Once erected, the walls are finished with an earthen plaster coat, ensuring their longevity. Earthbag walls are waterproof, fireproof, bulletproof, and earthquake-proof.
Earthbag structures are at the core of our project; however, we see collaboration with both communities and other aid organizations as a crucial component to maximizing social benefit. We have formed working partnerships with many of the organizations we need to make our vision reality, and are continuing to reach out to others as our plans develop. Because of these collaborations, we will be able to incorporate composting toilets, water capture and filtration systems, and off-the-grid solar energy into our ultimate product: a community of homes grounded in healthy and sustainable ideals.
Additionally, we firmly believe that community involvement is as important an element in this type of project as the earth used to build the walls. Listening to community leaders, involving future residents in the actual labor of building their future homes, and working with community members to understand and maintain the technology for each aspect of the project is essential to the longevity and success of the project.
DUANE KEVIN SIMMONS
My name is Kevin Simmons. I am an MBA student at Rice University in Houston, Texas. I love to laugh, am passionate and energetic to make a difference, and never quit.
Libraries Across Africa (LAA) is a non-profit social venture whose mission is to empower individuals through access to information. LAA became a formal idea through a global multi-player gaming exercise supported by the World Bank Institute. Recognizing the lack of access to shared information, and collaboration, combining the innovative sustainable buildings of a Rice architecture student, and my passion for African develop form the brief history of LAA. My interest was immediately sparked when approached with the concept of a library network project similar to Andrew Carnegie’s. The significant events in my life had built towards this particular project. My mother was the Senior Librarian at the Barbados Community College Library and taught me the true value of information. She taught me to begin solving any problem or need by gathering information.
The World Bank believes that one of the greatest problems facing Africa is the severe lack of adequate access to educational, health, and social empowerment information for the majority of Africans. This situation severely restricts and hampers community self-development and is further exacerbated by the yearly decline in global book production as more content and information moves online. Unless efforts are made to provide the necessary information in education, entrepreneurship, and social development, there will not be sustainable development in Africa.
Our vision is one of empowerment through access. We aim to empower individuals and communities across Africa by delivering digitally-enhanced multi-use library facilities throughout Africa. Our vision is a modern application of the proven and phenomenally successful ‘Carnegie Formula’ for community development. Like Carnegie, LAA envisions that libraries are not merely a repository for books, but they are also a catalyst for community development and empowerment. By providing cost effective infrastructure and information solutions, communities will be empowered to address their own unique economic, educational, social, technological, and business challenges.
We believe that the ability to resolve your own challenges is the foundation of empowerment, and that empowerment is a combination of education and entrepreneurship. Fundamentally, we support the concept that education contributes to poverty reduction and community transformation; and it is entrepreneurship which is the optimum expression of this change. We plan to significantly advance the developmental capabilities of African communities by providing innovative, easily deployable enhanced Library solutions in African communities. Each library is a streamlined facility for people to participate in both education and entrepreneurship in Africa. LAA’s libraries are designed to serve both producers and consumers of education and entrepreneurship content. Rather than simply deliver computers or Internet access, LAA provides a three component solution to the access and information divide.
AHDREAM SMITH
My name is AhDream Smith and I am a rising senior at Wesleyan University, majoring in American Studies with a concentration in Ethnic Studies. My project is Enlightenment Uganda and the aim is to decrease the number of lives affected by malaria by providing adequate health care and preventative health education. In partnership with Bitone Troupe, we will work with health workers and community leaders to mobilize, and educate people on healthy matters. 90% of our work will be accomplished by reaching out to the people in their communities. Our long-term goal is not only to improve people’s healthy lives, but also their environmental, social, cultural, and economic welfare. Why incorporate music? Music draws crowds, provides entertainment, demonstrations, and most importantly aid in conveying messages.
Having traveled extensively to African tropical countries where malaria is prevalent, I am aware of the devastating impact of the disease on social and economic structures and how often it claims the lives of many, especially the uneducated, mothers, and children. What was more disturbing than the poor health-service-delivery systems was the lack of interest in treatment stemming from ignorance about the disease. While I had the opportunity to learn basic malaria preventative care, I was struck when I encountered people who still believed malaria was a manifestation of a curse or those that thought that by drinking local bitter green herbs they could effectively protect themselves. Their sentiments revealed a flaw within health campaigns that fail to address cultural attitudes that are inhibitors of disease. It is imperative that these cultural attitudes are addressed and people are informed about malaria and provided with means to protect themselves especially for pregnant women and children. It is essential to set up a culture of accountability where the community is actively engaged in spearheading prevention efforts through the malaria prevention committees they will form.
Our project is important because it will promote healthy attitudes and practices to combat malaria, which is currently a threat to maternal and child health. Adequate health information is a necessity not a luxury and we will carry out on malaria prevention sensitization and training, using community-based preventative measures so as to cultivate an ethos of socially-responsible citizens that will work to prevent the inter-generational loss of social and economic structures due to malaria. Malaria continues to have a devastating impact on Uganda and currently causes a loss of up to 6% of the Gross National Product (GDP) from lost productivity and health service costs. An estimated 320 children under 5 years of age die each day from malaria in Uganda. Our project will help reduce these infections and death rates thereby provide increasing numbers of school graduates who will eventually assume economic ventures to benefit both Uganda and elsewhere in the world.
EFRAIN TREJO
I'm 20 years old and I'm studying Chemical Engineering at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. My hobby is photography. I describe myself as a persistent and creative person who wants to do something for my country.
Ts’umbal Xitalha’ is a project aimed at producing artisan soap in several Tzeltal communities in northern Chiapas, mainly within the Chilon area. For these communities, the most important sources of income are the production of coffee beans and honey. The project intends to begin the commercialization of soap of artisan production (made from honey and oats), to generate new income opportunities for the families in the communities through the diversification of the goods sold and produced, using a fair trade model. In this way, honey would no longer be sold solely as a raw material but would be used to produce a product of higher aggregate value. One of the most important values for the Tzeltal people is community labor. Honey soap will be produced mostly by women, who will work together as a team and benefit equally from the goods produced. In other words, the business project does not belong to a single person; it belongs to the whole community. We will remain only as intermediaries through the whole project, working as a link between the urban market and the rural communities and as an advising team for the establishment and growth of the project.
My personal interest in the project is because I have the hope that if each of us contributes a little, we can make a big change. This change starts at home and continues through the University which fosters a sense of solidarity and service. We call this social responsibility, and it raises awareness and sensitizes society to the importance of solidarity with and concern for others. In addition, throughout my career I have found a vocation to serve others and know that I can teach them a little of what I know, while learning a lot more from them.
ANSHU VAISH
My name is Anshu Vaish and I am a current senior at Brown University studying economics. I am concurrently enrolled in the combined medical program and will matriculate to medical school here.
My project, called WaterWalla, is a socially-responsible not-for-profit venture aiming to improve the health of residents of slums by using clean water technologies. Through a model that uses entrepreneurship, education, and community health, we hope to substantially increase access to clean water for slum-dwellers. Conceived in April 2010, WaterWalla aims to respond to the growing global water crisis that currently affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide and causes 4,000 daily deaths of children below five (UNICEF). By 2030, 2.1 billion people will be living in slums around the world, representing 25% of the global population (UNFPA). To date, NGOs providing water purification tools have catered solely to the rural populations of world because the vast majority of grant money is available for those regions. That said, an undeniable demand exists in catering to the quickly expanding urban population that often has very limited access to clean water. WaterWalla proposes a turnkey solution to provide residents of urban slums with water purification technologies that meet their needs. By working with innovators and designers of water purification technologies, WaterWalla bridges the gap with local manufacturers to source and produce such products locally and offer them with a comprehensive education and community health plan through residents living in the slums, hired as WaterWalla employees.
WaterWalla is focusing in its initial phase on a slum in the outskirts of Mumbai (for confidentiality purposes, Slum Site 1). This community of 1.5 million people severely lacks access to safe drinking water. In June 2011 we are planning to provide the residents of Slum Site 1 with an affordable portfolio of clean water technologies allowing families to choose the cleaning product which best suits their needs. WaterWalla hopes this will maximize uptake of such products. To effectively distribute these products, WaterWalla is training and empowering entrepreneurs in the area by giving them the tools to form a business around its clean water portfolio. This market-based solution is the result of partnering with local NGOs, multinational corporations, and multiple academic institutions. Complimenting the entrepreneurs are hired WaterWalla employees focusing on community education concerning safe drinking water. Depending on the results of our initial phase and the money we are able to raise, we seek to expand to other urban slums of India.
Though WaterWalla’s services are initially targeted at Mumbai’s urban slums, the knowledge generated by working in such areas is highly applicable to other slums. Over the long-term we intend to use our knowledge and experience acquired over time to provide our services to other urban slums in India and around the world.
ADAM WALKER
My academic research concerns the policies that governments in developing countries can implement to support the transfer/development and uptake of income-generating technologies. Prior to my current research, I worked with the social enterprise KickStart, which sells irrigation pumps in East Africa. In working with KickStart, I learned the value of using the marketplace as a means to alleviate poverty.
After conducting fieldwork outside of Nairobi, Kenya, this past December, I traveled to Kosovo to attend the first week of a winter quarter class; the school that I attend, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), runs the American University of Kosovo (AUK). The goal of the class was to have engineering and design students from RIT collaborate with economics and policy students from AUK to design a business that would create social development in Kosovo.
I was paired with two students to develop a wind energy company. The students with whom I worked had a big wind farm approach in mind, but I believed that such a business would be infeasible for us to attempt. First off, we were three students with no startup capital, and in order to get into the big wind business one needs big money. Secondly, I subscribe to a philosophy that values a decentralized incremental approach to the application of technology in society, so, centralized, big wind facilities were out of the question. Lastly, I am skeptical of the quickness with which traditional big wind facilities can be constructed – I am aware of the financial risks inherent in such projects, as well as the bureaucratic red-tape that comes with large energy plans. That being said, my perspective on wind energy in Kosovo is a blending of this decentralized incremental philosophy with what I learned from KickStart: namely, using the marketplace as the fastest and most sustainable way to bring about social change in the developing world. Social enterprises must create markets in places where they currently do not exist in order to deliver high-value, appropriate technologies to the world’s poor. Thus, my rendition in Kosovo is a market-based distribution of household wind turbines.
Kosovo is the youngest and poorest country in Europe. Our multinational, multi-institutional student project has the potential to employ hundreds Kosovo’s people and power the country with carbon-free energy. The project is to sell household wind-turbines; the wind-turbines will provide not only energy during blackouts, but also provide Kosovars a method of self-employment. After purchasing the wind-turbines, people will have the option to either consume the electricity or sell whatever they do not use to the public utility company at a premium rate. In the spring of 2011 we will begin a pilot project at the American University of Kosovo. We have established a formal business relationship with a US manufacturer, Balanced Wind, and a relationship with the Kosovo’s Energy Regulator’s Office and Ministry of Energy. And we are also in contact with potential funders including the Rockefeller Brothers, US Agency for International Development, the World Bank and lastly the European Commission Liaison Office to Kosovo. We are taking an innovative approach to the distribution of an income generating and capacity building technology. Our hope is that our method of decentralized electrification in Kosovo will serve as a model to other countries in the region and potentially to the rest of the world.
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