The UC Berkeley student chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) will partner with the Appropriate Technology Design Team (ATDT) of the San Francisco Professional chapter of EWB to develop a simple and scalable solution to the recycling and reusing of plastic bottles as building material. With the mission of empowering communities by providing tools that facilitate local economic development and provide basic needs, ATDT will work with the community in San Juayua/Juan de Dios, El Salvador to utilize discarded waste products, primarily plastic bottles, for non-structural construction materials. The project aims to design, create, test and deploy a manual recycling system to the community with instructions for local manufacture, operation, and maintenance. The community will benefit from both the reduction in the solid waste pollution and by introducing a new source of construction materials to insulate dwellings from rain, wind and heat.
Nearly 25% of the world’s population still burns the midnight oil after sunset. Another 20% gets fortunate only for a few hours a day or several times a week when the grid to their houses finally carries power. The lack of electricity is not only a strong impeding force against development that prevents people from getting access to modern communication and other resources, it deprives them of very basic amenities like education, lighting and healthcare. This project will work towards creating ultra affordable electricity access for the 2.6 billion underserved people in the world by implementing a novel technology combined with innovative distribution channels and financial schemes.
MobileWorks provides a platform that gives underemployed and impoverished individuals in the developing world the ability to earn supplemental income by doing work through their mobile phones. The organization accepts data entry and transcription contracts from a variety of sources–government programs in India, Western crowdsourcing companies, and traditional outsourcing companies–and sends this work to workers’ phones over a locally-accessible interface, handling payment to workers and guaranteeing quality to companies. Over time, MobileWorks users have the opportunity to earn data entry certifications and lift themselves out of poverty.
Every year, groups of Mexican migrants in the US pool their resources to sponsor thousands of development projects in their Mexican hometowns. Unfortunately, the positive impact that these projects have on towns in Mexico has been limited. Due to the complexities involved in designing, fundraising and overseeing implementation, many locally based projects often fail. This Fund will help to change that by empowering migrants in multiple ways. By allowing migrants to leverage their collective remittances, they will be able to transform their migrant expelling communities in Mexico into ones that offer their citizens access to education, health, economic opportunities, gender equality and a sustainable environment.
Many students who died during the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech tried to text 9-1-1 for help, but their messages were never received because police departments did not have the technology to receive text reports. Crime Fighter is a technology that revolutionizes the way we report crime. Crime Fighter is the first mobile technology that allows users to be completely anonymous and report crimes in less than two minutes for any situation using a text-based application for all smartphones. The technology includes the mobile application for general users and a software system for the police department and university safety services. Currently, no comparable product exists in the market, enabling Crime Fighter to lead the path to a safer community by using the modern and popular technology of texting.
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.
