The affordable Passive House Prototype (PHP) is a groundbreaking concept of affordable housing using renewable energy sources such as solar PV power, bio-gas from bio-digesters, harvested rainwater and bio-climatic design to achieve thermal cooling and natural ventilation. The buildings are constructed from locally available compressed earth blocks and bamboo components.
This project supplies alternatives to the open fire 3-stone cooking method common in Africa. Their community-driven efforts address multiple environmental threats on local scale and provide new modes for income generation.
Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform is a transnational STEAM*-powered, intercultural/interclass stellate design initiative to transform the materials processing and recycling zone of Agbogbloshie scrapyard typified in global media as the world's biggest e-waste dump meme into a human-spatial network for distributed manufacturing and digital fabrication to drive a global circular economy.
Half the planet cooks on smoky open fires causing nearly 2 million premature deaths annually. BioLite has created a biomass cookstove that, by converting waste heat into electricity, reduces smoke emissions by 95% for improved health while providing a mobile phone and LED light charging capability to drive widespread adoption.
Chalo is a design initiative that encourages systematic change in textile waste recycling by building an innovative business model with economic, social, and environmental implications in both large and small-scale garment production. The approach is holistic with a three-pronged strategy; business collaboration, design mentorship, and storytelling.
Cycle for Health is a “pedal powered catalyst that, when placed into a failing rural East African transport system, mobilizes medical resources, personnel and patients.”
ORGANIZATION NAME: Thinkplace
LOCATION: based in Australia; implementation in Kenya and sub-Saharan Africa
Imagine a world where Africans no longer have to cut down trees for fuel, where farmers have access to free organic fertilizers and where young girls no longer have to drop out of school! We’re making that world possible by making clean cooking energy and organic fertilizers from agricultural waste.
SUMMARY: EARTH Univ. to develop an Educating Entrepreneurs Tool-Kit for African faculties of agriculture committed to transforming undergraduate curricula.
Using solar cooling & freezing technologies, Emergi developed a solution to address the challenges in Liberia's energy sector, which is polluting, unreliable and expensive. Our strategy is to provide clean, reliable and affordable energy to increase agricultural production, people's livelihood, Liberia's socioeconomic development & food security and reduce environmental deterioration.
Gardens for Health International, an NGO pioneering the integration of nutrition-based agriculture into the clinical care of malnutrition, partners with rural Rwandan health clinics to implement healthcare strategies that include nutritional education and the nurturing of home gardens of nutrient rich foods for each family. They are seeking to expand this program throughout Rwanda and into Uganda, Burundi, and beyond. This elegant model could be replicated globally to address malnutrition.
Over 1.3 billion people have no access to electricity and millions more have unreliable supply. Instead they rely on dangerous, polluting and expensive kerosene lamps for light. GravityLight transforms the pull of gravity into electricity. It's a unique solution designed as an affordable, safe and reliable alternative.
Ignitia is the first highly accurate, highly scalable tropical weather forecasting company. We developed a weather model tailored for the tropics that creates GPS-specific forecasts that are twice as accurate as existing models. We send these to farmers via simple SMS so they can make better farming decisions.
International Bridges to Justice (IBJ), founded by attorney Karen Tse 17 years ago, is a unique organization working to bolster fair, professional criminal justice systems around the world. IBJ seeks to end the torture and abuse of detainees by training attorneys and legal officials in legal best practices, and by creating a global legal community.
With a unique social franchise model, Jibu has developed a holistic solution to health, employment and infrastructural challenges of the developing world. Jibu equips and finances aspiring entrepreneurs to make drinking water and other health-improving products accessible and affordable to entire communities.
SUMMARY:KickStart’s mission is to get millions of people out of poverty quickly, permanently and cost-effectively, and in the process, to change how the world fights poverty. Over 1 billion people live in grinding poverty. The majority of these are poor rural farmers trying to eke out an existence. These are the people we serve.
The Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic is a visionary, geopolitically savvy health-services initiative that seeks to address the logistical problems of providing healthcare to communities in a massive rural region where large populations are clustered on the lakeshore, but isolated from land-based networks of supplies and expertise.
SUMMARY: Reduce global CO2 emissions and light up rural households in developing countries by distributing an innovative and affordable lighting system to replace fuel-based lighting.
The Liter of Light redesigns solar lighting for the developing world. Our simple technologies create local jobs, teach green skills, and empower energy-poor communities. We believe that community-built, south-south solutions using easily accessible and repairable materials are as powerful as imported, patented and expensive systems centralized by a few stakeholders.
SUMMARY: Microbial power systems: Generating clean energy from dirt