LaborVoices revolutionizes transparency in global labor markets. We crowdsource intelligence about workplace conditions from worker's mobile phones in real-time to help brands and suppliers identify and prevent labor abuses and supply chain disruptions. We also educate workers on ethical labor practices and help them find the best places to work.
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.
“The Living Breakwaters project combines coastal resiliency infrastructure with habitat enhancement techniques and community engagement, deploying a layered strategy that links in-water protective forms to on-shore interventions.
ORGANIZATION NAME: Massachusetts Institute of Technology D-Lab /
LOCATION: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
The Makoko/Iwaya Waterfront Restoration Plan, submitted by Lookman Oshodi of Urban Spaces Innovation in Lagos, Nigeria on behalf of the Makoko/Iwaya Working Group, is a comprehensive master plan for the Makoko/Iwaya community that seeks to preserve local culture, revitalize the built environment with elegant, low-cost housing, increase economic opportunities, and ensure disaster resilience for over 40,000 residents.
Fideicomiso de la Tierra del Caño Martín Peña (in English, Martín Peña Channel Community Land Trust) has designed the ENLACE project to address a variety of pressing needs in this poor, underserved, historically disenfranchised “informal” community near the center of San Juan.
We will organize a Maasai Beef Enterprise in our village. Community health and education, water, feed storage, transportation, and herd management are limiting factors. We will address these limitations by boring a well that will be used for culinary water as well as livestock and irrigation water for gardens.
Maya Universe Academy is the first and only range of free private schools in Nepal that provides quality education to marginalized and cash poor communities, works to transform the local landscape into a classroom and alleviates poverty in the area by working at the intersection of education, entrepreneurship and environment.
SUMMARY: MicroEnergy Credits leverages the unprecedented growth of the $120 billion carbon markets as a catalytic source of funding to mobilize the 12,000 microfinance banks now reaching over a billion people, to help their microentrepreneurs affordably switch to healthy and clean energy sources as part of their journey out of poverty.
SUMMARY: moWoza is an supply chain and money management solution for grassroots SMEs and low income communities in emerging markets that can be accessed via the mobile phone.
Nest's Artisan Advancement Project is an industry-wide initiative bringing unprecedented transparency, social responsibility and sustainability to supply chains employing millions of homeworkers. Through training, assessment, and remediation designed for the informal economy and building scalable solutions to barriers facing the sector as a whole, Nest is creating inclusive supply chains.
Net-Works is a highly innovative program that interweaves community development, environmental protection, and closed-loop economic production.
SUMMARY: New York City (Steady) State is an alternative plan for New York City based on a single predicate: it is possible for the city to become almost entirely self-sufficient within its political boundaries. At its conclusion, our project will have proven this and outlined the necessary steps to achieve it.
Nexii builds the bridges to connect impact investors to high impact investment opportunities in world changing initiatives. We aim to make impact investing a reality at scale by improving the infrastructure, expanding effective intermediation networks and establishing the meeting places for investors and impact investments.
SUMMARY: Nuru aims to replace kerosene lamps in rural households without electricity by offering the world’s most affordable off-grid light ($6) charged by a pedal-powered generator, the POWERCycle. We establish a network of POWERCycle-equipped entrepreneurs who sell lights and recharge them for a small fee, saving customers 85% over kerosene.
SUMMARY: Olazul, a non-profit organization working to improve coastal community livelihoods in developing countries, is developing a more sustainable model of shrimp farming, and contributing to the restoration of ocean ecosystems as well as increasing support for marine conservation.
One-People-One-Reef is a collaboration between a multidisciplinary science team and Pacific-island communities in the outer islands of Micronesia, working together to integrate traditional knowledge and conservation practices with modern science in order to find comprehensive solutions to declining fisheries and degraded reefs.
Procesos Proambientales Xaxquixe (PPX) has created a methodology for micro-industrial sustainability by implementing alternative energy technologies adapted to materials from local waste streams. This system fosters a trans-disciplinary network of small enterprises, or Ecoclusters, composed of trained local specialists who share knowledge and resources to enrich communities and economies.
Self-organized social collaboration commoning-- is unleashing enormous participatory creativity in eco-friendly resource management around the world, but these solutions are often stymied by conventional law. This initiative will build upon diverse hacks on the law and catalyze a new field of legal inquiry and activism, Law for the Commons.