News

The Blum Center for Developing Economies is excited to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Big Ideas Contest!

The Rudd Family Foundation Big Ideas Contest offers students an opportunity to turn their ideas into action. This year saw the largest number of applications in the contest’s history with over 750 graduate and undergraduate students from across 16 schools submitted 266 proposals. On April 27, top teams will pitch their innovative projects to a panel of esteemed judges representing the US Agency for International Development, the Autodesk Foundation, and several Big Ideas winners from the past decade, for an opportunity to receive additional seed funding for their ideas.

Participating in the Big Ideas contest provides students with support and mentorship for developing their ideas. Since its launch in 2006, Big Ideas has received over 1,400 proposals, supported more than 5,000 students from 18 universities, and provided seed funding for participants that have gone on to secure over $80 million in additional funding. The Big Ideas contest is made possible through the generous support of the Rudd Family Foundation, as well as prize sponsors including UCOP’s Carbon Neutrality Initiative, the U.S. Global Development Lab, the All Children Reading Grand Challenge, the Global Center for Food System Innovations, the Center for Information Technology in the Interests of Society, the Berkeley Food Institute, and the Associated Students of the University of California.

Among the students competing this year’s Grand Prize Pitch Day is Skylar Economy, a senior at UC Berkeley’s Department of Film & Media. Economy is the team lead of From Incarceration to Education Film and Resource Connection, which aims to produce a documentary film as well as provide resources to combat recidivism among formerly incarcerated people.

Economy says,”When we were in the very beginning stages of talking about producing a larger-scale documentary project about formerly incarcerated students, this goal seemed far-fetched and frankly unattainable as a student. Applying to Big Ideas was quite possibly the best choice we could have made in order to make this project a reality. We have grown so much through goal-setting, proposal writing, mentorship, and guidance. I’m so thankful to have been selected as a finalist and first place project in the Art & Social Change category, because I now know that we really can have a positive impact on people’s lives—and on the world around us.”

Economy’s project represents just one of the diverse topics that will be covered in the fifth annual Big Ideas Grand Prize Pitch Day. Teams are tackling issues as wide-ranging as addressing mental health issues on the Berkeley campus, developing a carbon-negative soil conditioner for East African farmers, and creating an open-source, affordable genetic test for HIV in Mexico.

The Grand Prize Pitch Day, which is open to the campus community and the public, will be held on April 27, 5:00 pm-8:00 pm, in B100 Blum Hall. (RSVP requested). At this exciting event, contestants will deliver three-minute pitches followed by a question and answer session with the judges and the audience. While the judges deliberate, attendees will be able to network with students and prominent leaders from various Bay Area industries. Audience members will also have the opportunity to learn about all the ideas in this year’s contest and vote for their favorites through the “Big Vote” feature of the event. Food and drinks will be served during the evening, and the Grand Prize winners will be announced at 8:00 pm. Please join us at this inspiring event to cheer on your favorite Big Idea and celebrate the accomplishments of all the finalists!

On May 4, Big Ideas will be holding its annual Awards Celebration, open to the public, from 5-8pm in B100 Blum Hall. This event brings together the entire Big Ideas community to mark the conclusion of the 2015-2016 contest. This year represents the 10th Anniversary of the Big Ideas Contest and will include a demo session with past winners, a poster session featuring the this year’s award winning projects and plenty of opportunities for attendees to network and learn. RSVP requested

2016 Pitch Day Contestants:
Campus and Community Impact Pitch Round
FITE Film (From Incarceration to Education) and Resource Connection (UC Berkeley) – This project is focused on the production of a documentary film that will combat recidivism in the prison system by motivating currently incarcerated individuals to seek higher education and mentorship opportunities. The creation of a structured resource connection will provide assistance to  incarcerated individuals seeking to attain higher education.
LiftEd (UC Berkeley) – LiftEd is an iPad application that enables special education professionals to measure students’ academic & behavioral performance on individualized learning goals, analyze learning trends to modify instruction and intervention methods real-time, and ultimately share student progress with districts & parents on-demand.
SafeSpace (UC Berkeley) – Poor mental health is a widespread issue plaguing college students across the country. SafeSpace is a website and mobile application for UC Berkeley undergraduates to comfortably share their similar mental health issues; it is an anonymous, peer-led chat.
Global Impact Pitch Round
Dost: A Mobile Platform to Promote Parent Engagement (UC Berkeley) – Dost, or “Friend” in multiple languages, is a mobile platform that helps low-income parents in developing countries engage in their child’s education from day one. Dost is unique because it delivers action-oriented content to functionally illiterate moms through the technology already in their hands.
Open Viral Load (UC San Diego) – The Open Viral Load project aims to develop an open-source, affordable genetic assay test for HIV that can be easily modified to test other pathogenic diseases, such as tuberculosis and the Zika virus.  This project will allow low resource communities to receive the regular testing they need in order to know the status of their viral disease or to quickly diagnose patients with other pathogenic illnesses.

Safi Organics (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) – Safi Organics provides a carbon-negative soil conditioner for rural farmers who suffer from long-term crop loss due to soil degradation. Their product, Safi Sarvi, provides the essential nutrients and a biochar-based stabilizer that leads to a 30% increase in crop yield and 50% increase in income.

For additional information:
(510) 666-9120
bigideas@berkeley.edu

By Nicholas Bobadilla

2015 Global Health Big Ideas winner Hombres Verdaderos aims to improve health outcomes by stopping domestic violence before it starts. Set to launch in March, the program will engage young, at-risk adolescent boys, ages 11 to 14 years old, from districts in Barranquilla, Colombia.

Co-led by UC Berkeley Master of Public Health candidate Nerissa Nance and her friends and colleagues Jairo Martinez and Vanessa Sanchez Conquett, Hombres Verdaderos is a product of passion and diligence that developed over several years. The idea for the organization grew out of Nance’s conversations with Martinez and Conquett, two psychologists who work with the Ministry for Women and Gender Equity in Barranquilla. Together, they discussed ideas to collaborate on a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing domestic violence by focusing on youth populations. Nance also mulled over ideas with Aarthi Rao, a student in Berkeley’s MBA program, about a domestic violence prevention program that combined their interests in health and behavioral economics. With the support of Big Ideas, and project mentor Bridget Brennan, the group came together to create a concrete design for Hombres Verdaderos.

“We wanted to address the upstream risk factors of violence,” Nance said. “We wanted to engage young boys and expand on existing programs.” She is adamant about domestic violence’s relevance as a public health issue. “Domestic violence isn’t what people think of when they think of public health, but I see domestic violence as an issue that affects the health outcomes of all genders. That’s what we had in mind when writing the proposal.”

Through workshops and youth-driven media campaigns, the boys in the program learn about domestic violence prevention and become advocates for change. Participants undertake a month-long series of play-based workshops on relevant themes, including power, oppression, and the effects of gender expectations. The project will enlist older adolescent volunteers to help lead the workshops and create positive role models for the boys.

Hombres Verdaderos will partner with a local organization called Promotora de Excelencia Personal (PEP) that provides youth the skillset to become responsible leaders in the community. “We identified PEP as a great program, because they have youth that are motivated and want to be successful,” said Nance. The current cohort will then train the next cohort, and eventually Hombres Verdaderos will recruit from other youth development programs within the Ministry for Women and Gender Equity.
Nance recently returned from Colombia where she, Martinez and Conquett were building rapport with PEP and the Ministry for Women and Gender Equity. Their ultimate hope is to scale up Hombres Verdaderos regionally through the ministry, but recent structural changes have fenced this goal and forced the team to seek out new ways of scaling. This isn’t the first set of hurdles the project has had to overcome. In December, the team put the program on hold due to complications in developing the curriculum. Nance considered handing it off to a third party, but found it difficult given how much the team had already invested.

Now set to begin in April, the program will consist of two month-long phases. The first is educational and will engage participants in a series of workshops that explore gender roles, violence and the potential for change. The primary focus will be improving bystander intervention among young men, which has proven an effective and productive method of preventing domestic violence. Nance says, “The psychological literature says bystander intervention moves past blame and shifts toward a more positive role we can play in preventing domestic violence.”

Pre and post-program surveys, along with interviews and focus groups, will be conducted among participants to measure impact. The team will also issue follow-up surveys six months after implementation to test for attenuation of program effects.

Following the first phase, the youth participants will recruit a second cohort through social media and arts-based campaigns. This approach will allow them to engage with the community, integrate the freshly learned ideas into their own value system, and take on leadership roles among their peers. The long-term benefits of Hombres Verdaderos will be based largely on the strength of peer influence.
“When youth are teaching youth, they get to have this feeling of ownership over the program,” Nance says. “Once you pass a certain age, the people you look up to start to be your peers, especially during this period of early adolescence. Youth seek to belong to something and feel good about their positions relative to their peers.”  Nance stresses the importance of targeting male youth through the program, saying that peer influence in a single-sex environment will have a large impact. “Boys bonding and going through the program with other boys will begin to shift the paradigm of what it means to be cool,” she says. “That happens in a very different way in a single-gendered environment than in a co-ed situation.”

(Hombres Verdaderos recently received a spot in the Clinton Global Initiative University. Donate to their crowdfunding campaign and help them advance to the next round!)

By Nicholas Bobadilla

When it comes to public health, changing behavior sometimes requires coming up with creative incentives. That’s what 2014 Big Ideas Winners Jacqueline Nguyen and Mark Webb had in mind when designing their clean-burning stove, KleanCook, for populations in the developing world. The stove reduces smoke and uses less wood—meaning healthier lungs for its users, less deforestation, and lower greenhouse gas emissions. But the market for health comes with a unique set of challenges.

“It’s difficult to make an argument for latent health exposure, especially for a disease that may arise 20-30 years down the road,” said Webb. The solution was in the stove’s ability to power a phone and, if needed, the user’s home. It’s often expensive in the developing world to do either. “You can’t sell health, but you can sell electricity,” said Webb. “The utility of charging the phone is the most sought after utility for the consumer. That’s why people buy the stove. For us, it’s a means to an end. It’s a way to create demand for a stove that improves health.”

The KleanCook stove is powered by a thermo-electric generator that works by moving heat between two regions. Heating one region and cooling the other generates a heat flow, which creates a charge separation in the thermoelectric material. This produces the electricity that powers the stove. Under optimal conditions, a typical thermo-electric generator produces about 8 watts of power. KleanCook generates up to 15, a number that far surpassed the team’s expectations.

The idea began when Webb wanted to create a stove that could provide a hot shower for campers who could only bathe with cold water in the wilderness. Fascinated by the idea, Nguyen teamed up with Webb, and the pair began collaborating on the first model of the “Power Shower.” It wasn’t until Nguyen’s mother suggested the device’s potential in the Philippines that the pair considered its benefits to the developing world. Around the same time, Nguyen discovered Big Ideas, which provided the incentive and support to transform the Power Shower into the first generation of KleanCook.

The team has come a long way since then. After winning the Energy and Resources category of Big Ideas in 2014, Webb and Nguyen distributed ten models of KleanCook in the Philippines. The pilot was successful, but it came with many logistical and technical hurdles. “KleanCook 1.0 worked very well but we learned a lot from it. It produced too much power and was over-engineered because we were in a rush for the pilot study. We learned in the Philippines that as much as you plan for something, there are certain cases you can’t account for,” said Webb.

Webb and Nguyen are working closely with Dr. Amod Pokhrel, a project scientist in the School of Public Health, as well as Professor David Levine of the Haas School of Business to deploy 250 units of their KleanCook stove in Nepal this Spring. They made this decision after Lakpa Sherpa, a Nepali undergraduate researcher, inquired about including the stove in his research on improving health outcomes in his home country.
After collaborating with Lakpa and his mentors, Drs. Pokhrel and Levine, the team aimed to deploy the stoves in Spring 2015. However, they were forced to rethink their strategy after an earthquake devastated Nepal last April. “It [the earthquake] redirected our focus from doing a study to providing relief for victims. People really needed the stoves because they didn’t have power,” Webb said. “The goal wasn’t to sell anymore. It was to find families that really needed it.”

Logistical hurdles, which included delivering the stove to affected areas and circumventing the Indian embargo placed on Nepal in August created more complications and stalled the project, but Webb and Nguyen used the extra time to improve KleanCook’s design.

KleanCook is now back on track and will be shipped in the coming weeks. Once the components arrive, Webb will travel to Nepal to train three engineers on how to use and assemble the stove. These experts will become the managers of the operation. From there, Professor Levine will use survey data to determine the balance between the health benefit and the amount people can pay for the stove. Professor Amod and Lakpa will market and distribute the stove at prices that vary based on income brackets, but guarantee they will break even on aggregate.

Looking beyond Nepal, Webb and Nguyen are optimistic but pragmatic about the market for KleanCook, which they believe exists primarily in the developing world. “This kind of product is only desired in a meaningful way in developing countries. That’s the only viable market where there’s need and demand for it,” said Webb.

Webb hopes the stove will catch the eye of institutional investors who can make large scale purchases and turn to the stove as a first choice for distribution among vulnerable populations: “I see the stove long term as being a staple investment of institutional buyers. Once we build its credibility through these initial rollouts, we can approach institutional investors. The goal is to get it to a place where they see it as a go-to thing.”

By Sybil Lewis

In 2011, Nick Pearson was working for Acumen Fund seeking to invest in businesses serving low-income populations in Kenya, when he felt compelled to start a social enterprise for improving maternal and infant health care.

Pearson’s decision was influenced by his wife, Megan Huchko, an obstetrician on the UCSF faculty who had worked extensively in Western Kenya. Together, they saw that even though the number of women delivering babies in health facilities had grown in Kenya, maternal mortality in peri-urban or slum communities remained high: 700 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared to the national average of 360.16, and a hundred times higher than some countries in Western Europe.

The aim of Jacaranda Health was to recognize that the main problem facing poor women was not a lack of access to health facilities, but a lack of quality facilities and skilled care.

“In the last 20 years there has been a strong focus on facility-based care across all income levels,” said Pearson, who holds a MBA from UC Berkeley. “The problem for the next generation is not that women aren’t going to the hospital, but that when they do go the quality is poor and they are often disrespected.”

Indeed, a 2006 study from the African Population and Health Research Center found 70 percent of births in Nairobi’s peri-urban areas take place in health facilities, but only 48 percent of women deliver in facilities meeting minimum standards. Women reported being physically and verbally abused by healthcare practitioners during their maternal visits, discouraging them from returning for postpartum check-ups.  Other reports found inadequate resources in public health facilities, resulting in understaffed facilities and overworked practitioners. Kenya falls below the international minimum threshold of 23 doctors, nurses, and midwives per 10,000 people to deliver essential maternal and child health services.

“Jacaranda Health emerged from a confluence of understanding health care through the eyes of women and identifying the gaps in the business landscape,” said Pearson. “This was a good opportunity to use business models to address clinical service gaps.”

In 2011, Jacaranda Health started operations as a mobile clinic providing antenatal care. By 2012, it had opened its first maternity clinic in Ruiru, a community east of Nairobi, after receiving feedback from women that they preferred a fixed clinic because it better met their expectations.

In September 2014, Jacaranda Health opened its second maternity hospital in Kahawa West, a community on the outskirts of Nairobi, with new facilities to perform cesarean sections and other emergency care. Since Jacaranda’s founding in 2011, the two clinics have served over 7,000 women and delivered over 900 babies with over a 99 percent survival rate. The nonprofit employs 80 people in Kenya.

Jacaranda Health’s model is built on the principal of patient-centered design and currently provide antenatal, obstetric, postnatal, and family planning services to its patients. In addition to providing medical services, the Kenya-based organization strives to be a “global innovation laboratory,” adapting and integrating the best clinical protocols, technologies, health information systems, and business approaches. Clinic staff focus on adapting internationally recognized medical protocols to the Kenyan context, to ensure that women receive quality care as well as care that is respectful and dignified.

“In the American health system, quality care is defined in seven pillars and one of them is respectful care, which is especially important when dealing with maternity care,” Pearson said. “From focus groups, I heard stories of women delivering their babies in public and private hospitals in Kenya, but being treated terribly by medical personnel who lacked empathy. This has an impact on women’s dignity, self-respect, and empowerment, preventing them from seeking further care.”

By adapting recommendations from international organizations, such as the World Health Organization and the Population Council, providers at Jacaranda Health ensure that women build a rapport with their providers while also receiving high quality of care. Some of the evidence-based protocols include checklists, evidence-based algorithms for clinic operations, and regular clinic case and chart reviews with staff. Jacaranda Health also incorporates a Japanese philosophy called Kaizen, commonly known as “Lean Methodologies,” which relies on small, continuous improvements to boost productivity and reduce waste.

Jacaranda has been able to succeed with its patient-centered approach by adapting human resources. Nurse aides conduct non-clinical care, and community health workers manage home visits and client education, granting Jacaranda’s nurses more time to tend to individual patients.
With the goal of being a health care think tank, as Pearson describes it, Jacaranda has incorporated various technological innovations to further improve its client experience. Because over 80 percent of clients have mobile phones, the clinics send SMS text messages to schedule appointments and send postpartum family planning information. Other simple uses of technology include a Whatsapp messaging group for groups of prenatal clients to ask questions and share their experiences.

Jacaranda supports itself through grants and client fees, with a goal of having its maternity facilities become self-sustaining from earned revenue. According to Pearson, normal delivery costs are about US$90, significantly less than other private clinics in Nairobi. Furthermore, in 2014 Jacaranda Health was certified to accept Kenya’s National Health Insurance Fund, reducing out of pocket costs for many clients.

While the majority of services provided are pregnancy-related, Jacaranda Health is expanding its family planning offerings. In 2012, Sirina Keesara, a UCSF medical student now doing her ob-gyn residency at the University of Chicago, won a $9,000 award from the Big Ideas@Berkeley competition in the Global Poverty Alleviation category to build Jacaranda Health’s family planning portfolio.

Keesara arrived in Kenya in August 2012, and implemented a human rights-based counseling process for nurses to better inform patients about contraceptive decisions. The process is based on the Population Council’s Balanced Counseling Strategy (BCS+), which allows mothers to lead the discussion as they consider their option. Keesara extended her stay in Kenya until August 2014 and increasingly focused on postpartum family planning, which is crucial to initiate six weeks after delivery. According to a study published in the International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, the ideal interval between pregnancies is 18 months and women with shorter birth spacing times were twice as likely to have a premature birth.

“In Kenya, almost all family planning resources are easily available, but what was missing was excellent counseling on the different options and the potential side effects to help women make the best decision for themselves,” Keesara said.

Jacaranda Health is also trying to involve male partners in family planning decisions by providing educational materials tailored to fathers’ needs and by encouraging open discussion.

To scale up its health impact, Jacaranda is working in partnership with public hospitals to adapt its tools for delivering high-quality care. In 2015, the organization launched its first partnership with two hospitals outside Nairobi and will expand its partnerships in 2016.

“To achieve scale and impact, we plan to have a few of our own maternity centers of excellence to act as drivers of innovation, and then to work with the government to adapt and replicate quality care in public hospitals,” Pearson said.

Blum Center News

In the summer of 2012, UC Berkeley undergraduate Amelia Hopkins Phillips traveled to the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya to teach at a grade school. Over the next three years, the Development Studies student found herself yearning to return to the informal settlement, where 250,000 residents live in less than one square mile and lack basic services and infrastructure such as education, healthcare, and clean water.

Like many Kibera visitors, Phillips was disturbed by the high level of poverty she saw. But she found herself attracted to the place, because she encountered several people who were remarkably inspiring and entrepreneurial. On her second visit in 2013, Phillips met Joshwa Tambo, a Kibera native who grew up in a family of seven and, like most of his neighbors, struggled to make ends meet. Tambo attended the University of Nairobi and majored in development. After graduating, he started an organization called the Kibera Community Empowerment Organization, or KCEO, which sells products made from recycled materials and uses the proceeds for educational sponsorships.

To Phillips, Tambo epitomized the self-help spirit that she feels is Kibera’s best bet for social and economic mobility and is often overlooked by development programs and foreign NGOS. And the more she got to know Kibera, the more against-all-odds entrepreneurs she met—people like Rita Omukhango, who improves childhood nutrition by growing and selling indigenous vegetables to Kibera schools, and Joseph Odero and Stanley Kagunza, who teach computer skills to local residents. Phillips saw that what these entrepreneurs lacked was not ideas or energy, but investment capital.

So in 2014, she, Tambo, and George Rzepecki, a young San Francisco venture capitalist, applied for and won a Big Ideas@Berkeley award of $10,000. The funding allowed them to start The Somo Project, whose mission is to identify, train, fund, and mentor people looking to drive social change by building enterprises in their own low-income urban communities. In its first year, The Somo Project—”somo” means “to learn lessons” in Swahili—has provided $8,177 to support Tambo, Omukhango, Odero, and Kagunza and three other Kibera businesses as well as spent $5,210 to set up a co-working facility.

“The funding provided by Big Ideas allowed us to invest in a co-working facility for our entrepreneurs and the capital goods needed for them to start up their businesses,” said Phillips. “For example, we purchased a wagon and a pull cart for Rita to deliver her produce to schools as well as the computers needed for Stanley to start teaching programming skills to youth in Kibera.”

In July 2016, the Somo Project intends to launch a new class of entrepreneurs. One of its focus areas is to identify high potential women and youth, populations that, Phillips said, are often overlooked and for whom business opportunities are scarce.

“We call our organization The Somo Project because we believe that talent is widely distributed, and visionary entrepreneurs exist in informal settlements around the world,” said Phillips. “Right now, their lessons and learnings are often overlooked in development initiatives, but we hope that soon will not be the case.”

By Sybil Lewis

Sanitation and the removal of human waste are among the biggest environmental health issues of our time. According to UNICEF and the World Health Organization, 70 percent of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa lacks access to adequate sanitation—and in Kenya, sanitation coverage is available to only 41 percent of the country, largely because the government cannot afford or is not incentivized to cover the high costs of building pipes and sewage treatment plants in low-income areas. This leads to open defecation, fecal contaminated water, and disease.

To deal with this crisis, many non-governmental organizations are trying to come up with affordable and sustainable toilet solutions. One UC Berkeley student team and Big Ideas@Berkeley winner has been working in Kenya not just to increase sanitation services but to turn human waste into an energy solution—what they call “turning poo to power.”

Appropriately named Feces to Fuel, the four-member Cal team has been collaborating with Sanivation, a UC Berkeley- and Kenya-based organization that provides in-home toilets and waste collection services. Feces to Fuel’s plan is to collect fecal waste from Sanivation’s facility in Naivasha, Kenya and turn it into charcoal briquettes that can be sold at an affordable price and used as cooking oil.

According to Catherine Berner, a UC Berkeley graduate and member of the Feces to Fuel team, the creation of charcoal briquettes addresses another major issue affecting low-income populations in Kenya and throughout East Africa—the financial, environmental, and health costs associated with using traditional forms of cooking oil.

Berner, who majored in Environmental Engineering Science, explains that in many semi-urban and urban communities in Kenya the only available and affordable fuel sources are wood and charcoal, which have become increasingly unaffordable. Over the past decade, energy prices in Kenya have increased five-fold, and in Naivasha families are spending over 30 percent of their income on cooking fuel, hindering their ability to move out of poverty. Furthermore, burning crude forms of energy produces hazardous gasses, which are harmful not only to the environment but lead to serious health problems—more than half the deaths of children worldwide under age five are due to inhaling household air pollution.

Sanivation and Feces to Fuel have combined these seemingly unrelated problems to create a solution that both improves sanitation services and provides affordable fuel for low-income families.

But the enterprise is still very young. Sanivation launched its sanitation services in only September 2014. From its facilities in Naivasha, the social enterprise has been installing free in-home toilets, called Blue Boxes, for a $7 monthly subscription that includes twice weekly waste collection. In its first four months of operation, Sanivation signed up 57 customers for its in-home toilet and has maintained a 98 percent re-subscription rate. It aims to reach a million users by 2020.

Also over the past year, Sanivation has expanded its business model to turn the collected waste into energy, which is where Feces to Fuel comes in. Feces to Fuel is helping Sanivation identify and implement the best technology and method to transform human waste into a reliable fuel source. The project—which includes Cal students Emily Woods, Ken Lim, and Fiona Gutierrez-Dewar—is funded largely by an $8,000 prize from the 2015 Big Ideas@Berkeley competition in the Clean & Sustainable Energy Alternatives category.

“Before collaborating with Feces to Fuel, Sanivation was using solar concentrators to heat up the feces because their original plan was to turn waste into fertilizer, yet people were asking if they could use it to cook food,” said Berner. “Sanivation replied no because it was not safe yet, but what they realized is that there is a huge need for fuel created from treated feces.”

Andrew Foote and Emily Woods, the founders of Sanivation who developed their model while undergraduate students at Georgia Institute of Technology, said they have spent the past four years trying to figure out a reliable method of sanitizing feces using solar energy. Woods is now a PhD student in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley and Foote works fulltime on Sanivation.

In 2014, Sanivation started to develop a process that combines two waste forms—agricultural and human—to produce biomass-based briquettes for use in household stoves. The team now collects rose waste from surrounding flower farms, which otherwise would be burnt or discarded, and carbonizes the waste to create an energy dense charcoal dust. The rose waste biomass is then combined with human feces, collected from Sanivation’s in-home toilets, and heated up with solar concentrators to inactivate all pathogens, rendering the feces safe for use. The mixture of rose waste and feces is then placed in a machine, which turns the mixture into small briquettes.

According to Berner, the briquettes sold in Kenya are usually made with local organic waste or charcoal dust from traditional charcoal with trash-slurry as the binder. This combination produces little energy and lots of smoke, making it difficult to compete with charcoal. Whereas the energy-dense rose waste and high calorific value of feces used by Sanivation and Feces to Fuel produces briquettes that emit less smoke and burn longer than traditional biomass briquettes.

“Around the world and specifically in Sub-Saharan Africa, a lot of people are working on carbonizing agricultural waste into fuel and reusing feces for fuel,” said Woods. “We are carbonizing rose waste and using feces as the binder, which has never been done before.”

Other feces-to-fuel efforts have turned human waste into biogas, biodiesel, and fertilizer. Notable examples include the feces-biogas powered bus in the U.K and bio centers in Kenyan slums, which turn feces into biogas to power public showers. No other method, however, has used human feces to make briquettes for cooking.

While the number of feces-to-fuel innovations is growing, there is still a lack of research on the composition of feces and its potential for fuel. To develop its model, Sanivation relied on the work of few research organizations, such as the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag).

“I think that there is little research on the composition of feces, largely because of social stigma,” Berner said. “Human waste is just seen as that, waste, and not as a resource. For our model to work, we must find and show the value of waste.”

Sanivation conducted a beta test in mid 2014, in which 2,000 kg of briquettes were tested by families in Naivasha and the Kakuma refugee camp, along with small businesses and some industrial settings, to determine the best markets. Feedback from the beta test showed high customer satisfaction with the quality of the fuel; it also revealed that people are not uncomfortable with the idea of cooking with materials made with human feces. This is attributable to the fact that the briquettes do not look or smell like feces, said Berner.

Further analysis from the beta test showed that small businesses, such as hospitals and schools, are the key group for Sanivation to target, because they can provide consistent, mid-size orders, said Berner. However, Sanivation plans to continue working on sanitation in refugee camps in East Africa. The social enterprise received funding from the CDC’s Innovation Fund to design a system in the Kakuma Refugee Camp on the Kenya-South Sudan border. As part of the pilot for the toilet implementation, 30 families in the refugee camp tested their briquettes over a period of eight weeks.
During the summer of 2015, Feces to Fuel focused on improving the quality and manufacturing capability of the briquettes. In Naivasha, Woods, Berner, and Gutierrez-Dewar, implemented the Adam Retort, a carbonizer with high-energy efficiency and low pollution, which has been producing over 300 kgs of charcoal dust per week, according to Berner. The Berkeley team also helped Sanivation build out their waste treatment site and a greenhouse to study the potential of making fuel from dry waste.

Meanwhile in the U.S., Ken Lim, a UC Berkeley junior and member of the Feces to Fuel team, conducted research at MIT with experts in the briquette and charcoal field. Sanivation’s feces treatment method had already been proven to be safe for human use by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention; Lim’s role at MIT was to conduct more research to understand the composition of feces and its potential for fuel. The team is currently conducting further research on its briquettes at the Chemisense lab.

One of Sanivation’s main aspirations is to improve environmental health. If its briquettes can be sold at 60 percent the cost of charcoal, Woods said they will reduce the demand for traditional charcoal, offsetting the industry’s environmental impact that has left Kenya with 5 percent of its historic forest cover and contributed to climate change.

“We estimate that each ton of our briquettes saves 88 trees from deforestation,” said Berner. “Briquetting is taking off in Kenya. If we are able to prove our model, it will bring more attention to the briquetting industry and help replace the large demand for unsustainable charcoal.”

By Nicholas Bobadilla

In May 2015, Cristobal Madero, a Chilean native and PhD student in UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education, invited 14 of Chile’s most elite high schools to participate in a novel educational experiment.

The motivation for the experiment was simple: to mitigate tensions between Chilean citizens and the Mapuche, a group indigenous to the country for 12,000 years. But the method was less straightforward: send high schools teachers to meet with Mapuche communities, so that the educators could bring back accurate information to their students—who are destined to become Chile’s leaders and will likely control the fate of this long maligned, and increasingly impoverished, group.

“The conflict between the Chilean state and Mapuche people has been in place for 500 years,” said Madero. “My question was: How is it possible that this problem is still there?”

In April 2015, Madero founded an educational organization called Kuy Kuitin, which means “building bridges” in the Mapuche dialect. To expand his idea, Madero entered Kuy Kuitin in the Big Ideas@Berkeley contest with Daniel Cano, a PhD candidate in history at Georgetown University whose research focuses on indigenous education in Chile and who also has a personal connection with the Mapuche people. A second place win in the 2015 Conflict & Development category enabled them to set their educational plan in motion.

“During the proposal process, Big Ideas contacted a sociologist specializing in Mapuche culture,” said Madero. “That was the key to going deeper and making the idea more realistic and rooted in the evidence and theory of multicultural education.”

Kuy Kuitin recently recruited five history teachers from the wealthiest schools in Santiago to shadow teachers in Mapuche schools for 10 days in April 2016. In addition to participating in activities within the Mapuche schools, the Santiago teachers will spend time with Mapuche families. Following the immersion, the teachers will incorporate information about Mapuche culture and history into their lessons and formally disseminate the information among their colleagues. Their students will later be surveyed to gauge the impact of the new curriculum.

Madero became familiar with the Mapuche and their history while in college, when he joined the Jesuits, a religious order within the Catholic Church known for dedication to service and social justice. In 2003, he took a two-week assignment with the Jesuits to acquaint himself with the culture and history of the indigenous group. He felt so activated by the experience that he has returned to learn from the Mapuche over the past 12 years, while working as a high school teacher throughout Chile, a master’s student in theology at Boston College, and most recently as a doctoral student in education at UC Berkeley.

“I developed relationships with two families that made me realize how the Mapuche people are treated and received,” said Madero in response to why he started develop his educational program. “That’s one side of the answer. It was personal.”

The other reason was grounded in Madero’s resolve to mitigate the ongoing conflict between the Mapuche and broader Chilean society. “I thought education would be a key to understanding and overcoming the problem.”
Madero said that Kuy Kuitin is targeting the wealthiest schools because in Chile the top earners control the country. “We don’t need to conduct research to know if wealthy people in Chile own all the mass media, own the forestry industry, have written the history of the country, have led the country… That’s a reality,” said Madero.

More specifically, the wealthiest students are most likely to assume the top political and corporate positions in the country, and as a result will have a hand in the Mapuche’s fate. In providing an alternate history, Kuy Kuitin aims to influence those who will be responsible for the social and economic future of the Mapuche and broader Chilean society.

The Mapuche have been the subject of violent and legislative displacement since the arrival of Spanish settlers in the 16^th century. In 1881, the Chilean government seized 90 percent of Mapuche territory and moved the natives onto reservations. In recent decades, forestry companies have destroyed their land and jeopardized their agricultural livelihood through commercial tree farming. As a result, many Mapuche have migrated to urban areas, where they take low-paying jobs and are forced to the margins of society. They suffer from unemployment and illiteracy, which create stigmas of laziness and incompetence and result in various forms of discrimination.
Radical as well as peaceful Mapuche groups have protested maltreatment, only to be met by excessive police brutality and discriminatory anti-terrorism laws. Complicit in their plight is the mass media, which has extrapolated the behavior of a radical minority to the entire Mapuche population.

“Because of the power a teacher has in a classroom, we might be able to convey that the Mapuche are not lazy, drunk, dark people who don’t like to work and that’s why they’re all poor. All those categories students in wealthy schools receive, they’re reproduced and they don’t do anything to overcome this,” argued Madero. “Maybe a teacher can be a good mediator of change.”
Although the project has proven controversial for students whose families have been responsible for the oppression of the Mapuche, Madero admits the reception by many of the schools exceeded his and Cano’s expectations.

“In Santiago, we invited 14 schools and received answers from six of the them. It was risky because we are telling them, ‘You are our target for this reason [wealth].’ But those six schools got the message and they really understand and want to make a change.”

The project was also well received by the other side. “The Mapuche have been very welcoming and allowed us to go beyond what we were expecting,” said Madero. They have invited the teachers on trips to museums and other Mapuche landmarks.

Nevertheless, Madero is aware that such a small project cannot transform centuries of discrimination. He sees education as a “starting point,” and a means to convince the Chilean elite that most Mapuche are not violent. “There is violence and an extremist group using force,” he said, “but 99 percent live peacefully.”

During the second half of the project, the high school teachers will design and submit a training manual to the Teacher Training and Experimentation Center of the Ministry of Education. They will also publish academic papers, write articles for local and national newspapers, and communicate their experiences via social media. A documentary filmmaker has expressed interest in capturing the project. The final stage of Kuy Kuitin will entail submitting a proposal to the Intercultural Education Department of the Chilean Ministry of Education to amend school curriculums. In the end, Madero hopes the government will implement affirmative action policies to ensure fairer access to housing, education, and employment for the Mapuche.

Education is not a panacea for the conflict in Chile, but Madero is confident about the impact Kuy Kuitin can have, and hopes the organization will serve as a starting point for lasting change.

“I’m convinced education can be a good tool, not the only one, 0to overcome a lot of social problems and conflicts. That’s a belief.”

Big Ideas winner and UC Santa Cruz graduate student Dustin Adams, who works in UC Santa Cruz’s Interactive Systems for Individuals with Special Needs lab, designed tool to recognize and describe photos.