Inspired by the local Kabadiwalla, who are small scrap aggregators found in Indian cities & cities in the developing world, our ICT platform helps lower barriers that prevent residents from participating in recycling and composting, leveraging the informal waste ecosystem and helping divert waste from the landfill.

Archive 2007-2017

Kheyti's mission is to help smallholder farmers battle income variability through affordable technologies integrated with services. We currently offer farmers our "Greenhouse-in-a-Box", an low-cost, modular greenhouse bundled with end-to-end support. Our vision is to help 1 million small farmers break the cycle of poverty by 2025.

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.

KTK-BELT’s Vertical University Project approaches conservation and education in Nepal, the most vertical country in the world, through the design of a “Vertical University” comprising cooperatively owned “Learning Grounds” at various altitudes in distinct ecological areas.

Kulisha works with food and beverage companies to convert organic waste byproducts into protein input made from insects for use in animal feeds. We've developed a biological system that uses microbial communities and black soldier fly larvae to metabolize waste, cutting disposal costs and offering a sustainable alternative to fishmeal.

SUMMARY: LA Green Grounds’ “Dig-ins” help south Los Angeles residents to create front-yard food gardens, positively impacting a community deprived of healthy food options.

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 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.

The Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) is advancing the pace of sustainable city planning by integrating social practice art and interdisciplinary design into utility-scale renewable energy installations that are culturally relevant and visually inspiring -- providing power to thousands of homes, while pointing the way to a beautiful clean energy future.

SUMMARY: We understand resources for what they are, not limited to money. We understand architecture as a tool, not existing for its own sake / not as an end in itself. Our solutions are collective; decisions are not made by one but by everyone.

LOCATION: San Francisco, California
SUMMARY: BFI staff found Lava Mae to be a creative, highly replicable approach to solving a discreet and serious issue—potentially a trim tab solution for the homeless population.

LifeArk is a pre-fabricated, modular building system that can create self-sustaining communities on water and land. It is a rapidly deployable response that will mobilize economic development and regeneration for millions of slum dwellers and displaced peoples. The flexibility of the system allows it to fit to each community's needs.

SUMMARY: LIFT provides a sustainable solution for housing of low-incomes families in low-lying flood prone urban areas around the world. The amphibious project, with an emphasis on renewable resources, allows dwellings to move up vertically as flood water rises and return to ground level as the water recedes.

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.

Can architecture integrate living functions? The Living Architecture Systems Group (LASG) is integrating living and near-living technologies into our built environment, transforming the future of buildings and cities. LASG is developing environments that can move, respond and learn; that grow themselves and that are adaptive and empathic toward their inhabitants.

“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

SUMMARY: Lotus is an environmental sensor network that empowers citizens by giving them direct access to information about the state of their local, and global, marine environment.

ORGANIZATION NAME:
LOCATION: Bangladesh