Today, the increasing popularity of social media campaigns has heightened the importance of multimedia. Videos are an essential aspect of an influential online presence, but professional videography services are usually too expensive and inaccessible for nonprofits. AMASS Media aims to democratize access to multimedia services to empower social impact organizations.
Haath Mein Sehat (HMS), Hindi for “Health in Hands,” is a student organization at UC Berkeley that has worked to address water, sanitation, and hygiene issues in urban slums in Mumbain and Hubli, India since 2004. Moving forward, HMS will concentrate its efforts on hand hygiene among children as a way to tackle diarrheal disease and respiratory infection—two leading causes of childhood malnutrition and mortality in India. In doing so, HMS will positively impact household livelihoods by easing the economic burden (i.e. expense of money, time, and effort) often associated with taking care of chronically ill children. (Note: This project originally won in the Big Ideas “Safe Water Enterprise” category.)
This project addresses the unmet needs of clinics serving the most at-risk populations in developing countries, where anemia is prevalent and has a great effect on treatment of other diseases. The ability to rapidly detect hemoglobin levels throughout pregnancy and during childbirth mitigates the risks associated with anemia. Working with Dr. Megan Huchko of UCSF and Nick Pearson of the non-profit Jacaranda Health, the team seeks to develop an improved method to assessing hemoglobin levels that is affordable and accessible to mobile clinics working in resource-poor areas. One current method commonly used in clinics, the WHO Hemoglobin Color Scale (HCS), uses a comparative color scale to determine hemoglobin levels. While affordable and yielding quick results, the test is based on subjective assessment from the clinician and can give inaccurate results due to variation in color interpretation and lighting. The project’s goal is to program a phone application that can measure hemoglobin concentration based on the RGB values of a digital phone image of a blood sample, allowing for the quantification of color and eliminating the ambiguities and human error.
Campus InSight is an online forum for discussing ideas meant to engage students in solving campus problems and encourage communication between students and administration. Each week, discussion will focus on one question or problem that affects the campus community. Students can log in with their school IDs and start discussions, in which other students can reply to. Up-voted comments earn points and are moved to the top of the discussion. At the end of each week, the discussion is closed and the student who submitted the best idea or solution, as determined by number of up-votes, is declared the ambassador of that week. Each month, the ambassadors of each week sit down to a meal with
administrators to discuss the solutions they came up with and how they can be implemented. In as little as two weeks, students can identify, discuss, and solve key issues, in a truly democratic fashion.
In a survey of 132 students about 84% of them agree that a better campus-wide lighting system will increase their sense of safety at nighttime. Footstep Energy provides an interactive renewable-resource solution utilizing the human footstep to generate electricity. When a person walks, there are vibrations between the footsteps and the road surface. This project is aimed to capture and convert that kinetic energy into electricity. This would involve paving piezoelectric tiles into the ground of the busiest areas of campus, which also need an improved lighting system, such as VLSB and Faculty Glade. When a person steps on the surface of the tile, the compression on the piezoelectric material creates voltage to generate electricity. Higher foot traffic will generate more electricity through the Direct Piezoelectric Effect, which can be stored and used at night. UC Berkeley’s 35,838 students give the campus the ability to utilize footstep energy.
Commercially available motors have certain limitations for solar-car-racing applications and focus on delivering higher than necessary top speeds at the cost of sacrificing torque output. The goal of the Rotors in Motion project is to develop a general method for optimizing motor designs and to then use this method to manufacture a motor for the UC Berkeley Solar Vehicle Team CalSol.
The goal of Smart Building is to validate an adaptive, real-time, automated energy management solution, Energy Management System (EMS), through pilots at commercial building sites, starting with restaurants and office buildings. Restaurants have the highest energy intensity of all commercial buildings, and office buildings are the largest energy consumers of all commercial buildings. Estimated annual energy cost savings are over $3,200 for the median restaurant, and $22,000 for a medium-large office, representing ten and twenty percent savings, respectively, on the utility bills for these buildings. Once validation is completed, and feasibility is established, the team plans to commercialize the product, and will seek to scale rapidly through strategic partnerships and licensing.
Haath Mein Sehat (HMS) seeks to address the need for health interventions that concern a broad range of health issues. In order to meet this need, HMS proposes to pilot a Community Health Worker (CHW) program in Hubli, India during the summer of 2012. CHWs will provide front-line medical advice and care that is not easily accessible to slum community residents and will involve the community in order to create an effective and sustainable program.
Earth energy is a technology that produces electrical energy from the change in the rate of chemical reactions produced by microorganisms that can be found in soil, mud, and decomposed organic material. Light from Below takes this existing technology to the undeveloped areas in Panama in order to create Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) Lamps. The goal is to prepare a design that will facilitate the low-cost manufacture and cheap maintenance of MFC lamps in the community. The project will generate electricity for the community for about one year at an estimated initial cost of $10.00 per lamp and will have a positive impact on tourism, safety in the community and the environment.
Blum Center for Developing Economies
The University of California, Berkeley
bigideas@berkeley.edu
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