The One Health Nicaragua team will address food insecurity concerns in Sabana Grande, Nicaragua, by working with children and focusing on improving poultry production. Integrative workshops for students in Sabana Grande will focus on egg production, chick care, coop management, and disease prevention. Local students will manage a demonstration flock providing them the opportunity to gain first-hand experience with effective methods for raising, handling, and vaccinating poultry. Children can then share this information with their family thereby increasing knowledge dissemination throughout the community. Introducing poultry husbandry skills in the classroom will affect changes at the family level and sustainably improve overall community poultry production in Sabana Grande. Ultimately, this will lead to greater food security within the community.
Year: 2016
Safi Organics
Safi Organics produces a carbon-negative soil conditioner derived from biomass (farm) waste. Designed for rural smallholder farmers, the soil conditioner leads to a 30% increase in crop yield and 50% increase in income by reversing soil degradation. Biomass waste is present in most rural farms every year after harvest, and yet most of this waste is burned in open air rather than economically utilized because existing capital-intensive and centralized processing technologies often require the long-distance transport of this waste, which is very expensive. Safi Organics has developed patent- pending environmentally-friendly reactors and unique recipes that enable the low-cost and decentralized conversion of waste into carbon-negative soil conditioner in under 2 hours. The company’s EcoCert-certified product is currently used in more than 80 acres of land in Safi Organics’ preliminary pilot project and has generated highly positive customer reviews. In addition, this product actively sequesters 1.5 tons of CO2 per acre into the soil each planting season thereby directly mitigating climate change.
PictoKit: Retirement Toolkit
The Retirement Toolkit is a reproducible workshop kit that through the innovative use of co-design seeks to address the gap in retirement financial literacy for low income, young working adults. The Toolkit’s application of co-design for education allows the participants to actively shape their learning experience as opposed to conventional, one-sided forms of teaching. Through creative discussion, design activities, and active visual learning, the program not only teaches, but also empowers participants to secure their own financial futures. Furthermore, the project is highly scalable because the workshop guide and toolkit can be easily reproduced to allow third parties to hold their own retirement workshops beyond the Bay Area. Additionally, the individualized curriculum will allow participants to tailor the material to their needs. The project thus addresses the lack of effective financial literacy programs for low income, young working adults in an innovative application of co-design.
SocialForce
SocialForce is an impact management platform that leverages the core business competencies available locally to meet the needs of a community in a strategic and sustainable way. SocialForce is based on the premise that community-grounded organizations and their active members understand the needs of their communities best, but lack the ability to harvest the resources necessary to execute projects to address those needs. The team’s goal is to connect mission-driven small and 7 medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with relevant nonprofit organizations in their communities. The strategic match of local resources to local needs facilitates long-term relationships for greater impact and unlocks the potential of communities to solve what matters most to them. Through SocialForce, SMEs can identify, execute, manage, and measure impact activities in their local communities in a strategic and meaningful way by building long-term relationships that are in line with their mission and vision.
MÄk
MÄk is a social enterprise devoted to empowering urban low-income high school juniors and seniors to become 3D designers. The mission of MÄk is to provide these young people with exposure to various STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) fields while also providing them with training in marketable skills and an income source so they may pursue higher education and STEAM careers in the future. Initially, the MÄk program will run on the UC Berkeley campus in order to utilize its free facilities and 3D design software. First, trained Berkeley student volunteers from MÄk’s partner campus organizations will teach high schoolers from Oakland and Richmond in 3D design through a training program. Then, MÄk will hire these students as paid interns to work on 3D design projects for Bay Area technology startups and design firms. MÄk plans to simultaneously partner with other organizations to host financial literacy workshops that help students manage income wisely.
Empowering Women through Entrepreneurship
Women living in the squatter settlements of Ulaanbaatar are among the most financially and educationally disadvantaged in Mongolia. The squatter areas—commonly known as “ger districts”—are mainly comprised of recently-migrated nomadic herders. Ger districts make up over 60% of the capital city’s population and have tens of thousands of new arrivals each year. The newly-settled nomads face difficulties in the urban job market due to stark cultural differences between rural and urban lifestyles and a mismatch of employable skills. The challenges of finding employment can result in alcoholism, domestic violence, and cyclical poverty. Women in the squatter settlements need confidence, practical knowledge, and access to capital in order to break from patriarchal gender roles that often prevent them from reaching their full potential as business and community leaders. Through structured small-group support, this project provides impoverished female migrants with information, skills, and low-interest microloans in order to develop their small businesses and foster more economically-resilient communities.
Project Numa: Low Cost Disposable Battery for the Developing World
Current lighting and phone charging solutions in off-grid regions are hazardous, expensive, and inconvenient. The Low Cost Disposable Battery project addresses these major drawbacks using cheap and safe materials, representing a major shift in the way traditional batteries are made. Users will purchase and assemble the batteries themselves, replacing components as necessary. This solution puts the power in the hands of families, allowing them to personally control their power usage in the safety of their home, at all times of the day, and at a low cost.
ViaeX: Biowaste to Nanofilters for a Sustainable and Clean Future
Rapid modernization and industrialization in developing nations has significantly improved global standards of living at the expense of human health and the global environment. Air pollutants are now regarded as the most widespread carcinogen and lead to 7 million deaths worldwide annually. Project ViaeX aims to restrict human exposure to both indoor and outdoor air pollution while also providing clean air for people of all sectors of the society. ViaeX is developing a novel low-cost high efficiency nano filtration technology, which can remove 99.999% of all pollutants from the air with no end-of- life environmental impacts since the product is 100% biodegradable. This technology has the potential to transform air filtration into an affordable solution for everyone because it can be used to curtail air pollution at the source or at any point where humans may be exposed to it.
Husk-to-Home
In 2013, a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck Bohol, Philippines, destroying thousands of structures and displacing nearly 350,000 Boholanos. In response, the International Deaf Education Association (IDEA) employed several teams to build temporary homes using coconut wood boards. However, the homes only lasted two years before they were deemed uninhabitable due to extensive termite damage. IDEA identified the community’s need for economic and sustainable building materials, so they contacted Husk-to- Home to find a reliable solution. As the world’s seventh largest rice-producing country, the Philippines generates an abundance of termite-resistant rice husk waste. Husk-to- Home intends to capitalize on this termite resistance and design a particleboard that is lightweight, water-resistant, and of comparable strength to a commercially available medium-density particleboard. The project’s mission is to create a proof of concept building material composed of rice husk and an innovative binder. This will enable construction of durable homes for the Bohol Island community.