The Berkeley City College Service Community (BCCSC) connects UC Berkeley students with community college students in a leadership development program that promotes civic engagement. Community College is the fastest growing path in pursuing a degree in higher education. A major challenge for community colleges is in providing an active “college experience,” due to low levels of student engagement opportunities. With low funding of core operations in registration, enrollment, and orientation, many community college students have limited opportunities to become involved in internships, volunteer opportunities, and other career paths. BCCSC will connect Berkeley City College students to their campus and assist in easing their transition into four-year universities.
The lack of a central county database of patient hepatitis B statuses in the Bay Area results in an inefficient allocation of resources in the fight against hepatitis B. This project will address that issue by utilizing existing databases of non-sensitive patient data to create dynamic maps of hepatitis B prevalence and at-risk populations in the Bay Area. The mapping project will combine Geographic Information System (GIS) technology with an easy-to-navigate interface, allowing users to visualize the areas of greatest need for preventative and disease management services. The project aims to ultimately consolidate all sources of hepatitis B patient data to help public health officials and community organizations target at-risk and affected populations in a more efficient and cost-effective manner.
Local, community-based service agencies in developing countries are increasingly attempting to collect data in order to measure the social impact of their work in areas such as education, healthcare and infrastructure development. Several institutional, technological and cultural barriers remain to achieving success in such data-collection attempts, however. Shreddr is a low-cost, on-demand data digitization program that will bridge these barriers. The program helps individuals and organizations quickly transform stacks of paper into usable data, with minimal additional investment in technology, training, or staffing. By increasing the availability of high-quality data, Shreddr aims to improve service provision in developing countries.
This project seeks to develop low-cost, web and mobile-based software that will increase transparency, traceability, and quality assurance along the global commodity chain for coffee. By digitally aggregating information during the coffee production cycle, the project will increase farmers’ access to capital, mitigate risk for loan providers, and provide transparency for producers and consumers. By increasing the transparency, traceability, and quality assurance throughout the coffee industry, From Crop to Cup hopes to provide increased economic opportunity for low-income communities, and increased effectiveness of all organizations involved.
Diarrheal disease from drinking unsafe water is one of the leading causes for death in Mexico. Today, millions of Mexicans in low-income communities are still at high risk of waterborne diseases because of inadequate water infrastructure and insufficient water quality control. In particular, safe water remains unavailable to those who cannot afford commercially sold bottled water. Point of use water technology like the UV Tube, developed through a collaboration between UC Berkeley and Fundacion Cantaro Azul, is an effective means to secure water quality at home. Nuestra Agua, a new social franchise designed by UC Berkeley students, will expand on the UV Tube project and offer a local, affordable, and reliable option for people who need to purchase safe water and an economic opportunity for local entrepreneurs. (Note: This project originally won in the Big Ideas “Safe Water Enterprise” category.)
The Berkeley Student Food Collective BSFC (formerly known as the Berkeley Student Food Cooperative) was the 1st place winner of Big Ideas Improving Student Life competition in 2009. The mission was to provide fresh, healthy, environmentally sustainable, and ethically produced food at an affordable price to Berkeley students and community. Since winning the 2009 grant, BSFC has been successful in the opening of the Bancroft Way storefront, actively expanding its educational presence on campus, facilitating a “Berkeley in the Global Food System” DeCal, and holding their 2nd Annual Harvest Gala in 2010. With the new grant award, BSFC plans to scale up their program to increase outreach to the student and greater Berkeley community through several educational and outreaching venues, such as creating a curriculum to increase food awareness and the REAL food guidelines, scaling up catering and food prep programs, and expanding the preparation of food made and sold at the storefront. A long term plan for the BSFC is to open their own cafe in the renovated Lower Sproul area.
BTTR stands for “Back to the Roots”, a phrase that encompasses their business model of transforming one of the largest urban waste streams in America – the tons of coffee ground waste generated daily – into a highly-demanded, nutritious, and valuable food product: gourmet mushrooms. Not only has this initiative created a healthy food source, but it has also provided urban jobs, prevented thousands of tons of valuable substrate from being dumped into landfills, and donated a substantial amount of its mushrooms, soil amendment and kits back into the communities from which the coffee ground waste originated. Scaling up efforts for BTTR will go towards their sustainable business for a Whole Foods national rollout of mushroom kits, efforts to diversify their raw material (soy and barley), invest in an industrial autoclave, hire more employees, and to overall push the urban gardening and growing your own food movement.
There are many problems in various areas of the world: poverty, inadequate healthcare, and a lack of natural resources, to name a few. Yet with sufficient help, the affected communities themselves can stand up to inequality, poverty, and disease by having the ability to solve their own problems. Future Scientist was founded with the belief that science education can provide people with the ability to solve many of the problems that affect the communities they live in. Future Scientist provides immediate technical resources to those in need through community-based projects. Scaling up, Future Scientist will be focusing on two projects: developing an international medical rotation in partnership with UCSF and starting partnerships between K-12 schools in the U.S. and Peru.
Current water-heating technologies in developing countries are either expensive or have poor quality that increase health and environmental risks. CalSolAgua (CSA) designed a simple, yet patentable, low cost solar water heating system capable of reducing energy costs and carbon emissions for households in developing countries. CSA’s solar water heater can sell for onethird of the price of competing water tank heaters and less than one-eighth the cost of existing solar water heaters. Additionally, it will reduce carbon emissions by over 90 million tons, which is equivalent to taking 17 million cars off the roads. As a 2008 Big Ideas award recipient, CSA has made considerable progress in developing its technology, partnerships and business model. The team will build off this foundation by launching sales in Guatemala and preparing to launch in Mexico City through market research and test installations, to be followed by expansion to Brazil, China and India.
