Supporting Mission-Driven Entrepreneurs
Stories about Alumni and Partners that appeared in the Press
Hampton Roads’ first solar powered bench is being brought to you by the Downtown Norfolk Council, partnering with Aesop Technologies.
https://wtkr.com/2016/06/24/new-solar-powered-bench-in-norfolk-charges-phone-while-you-sit/
Back to the Roots, an Oakland, California startup pioneering how families reconnect with food, announced today that it has expanded its January crowdfunding campaign on CircleUp into a $10M Series A. The new investment was led by Acre Venture Partners, Campbell Soup’s venture capital fund for food startups, and also includes funding from S2G Ventures and Red Sea Ventures.
http://www.sustainablebrands.com/news_and_views/startups/sustainable_brands/help_10m_series_back_roots_poised_undo_food
Brave UP, led by CEO Alvaro Carrasco and COO Robinson Salinas, is an education technology start up with a program and platform for revolutionizing the way school stakeholders (students, parents, teachers, administrators) communicate.
https://brianjacobbell.com/2016/06/16/agora-entrepreneurs/
Sesolo Mello is a social enterprise aiming to substitute paraffin in South African households with a safer, healthier and cheaper alternative: a biofuel blend that can be used in the same cookstoves as paraffin. Made from waste vegetable oils and produced in small scale production facilities, it also provides a sustainable solution that can stimulate local entrepreneurship and employment.
http://borrelofthepyramid.org/2016/06/08/update-sesolo-mello/
Launched in 2012, Yellow Leaf trains and employs The Mlabri, a group of people who have previously battled exploitation, slavery, and malnourishment, with safe, dignified work. Most of the weavers are mothers who are given the flexibility to weave at home and make their own schedules. In the past four years, the number of trained weavers has grown from 25 to 200 (with a planned 160 additional jobs to be created this year) and weavers recently send two Mlabri children to university with money saved from their work.
https://www.cb2.com/blog/yellow-leaf-hammocks-backstory/?platform=hootsuite
Nairobi, Kenya, produces more than 2,000 metric tons of waste a day. Find out how one company in the city uses plastic waste to manufacture poles and planks.
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2016/06/01/african-start-up-kenya-eco-post-spc.cnn
Jess is an amazing social entrepreneur; as an undergrad at Tufts, she worked with The Archimedes Project to develop the idea for her social venture, Kouzin Dlo. Thanks to seed funding from The Resolution Project, Jess was then able to implement the business on the ground, moving to Haiti just 20 days after graduating. Kouzin Dlo trains women as micro-entrepreneurs to sell clean water products in their own communities. This model not only brings Kouzin Dlo’s effective products to communities at a price that’s 90 times cheaper than other clean drinking water options, but it also creates economic opportunities in marginalized communities.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-resolution-project/social-entrepreneur-in-haiti_b_10116824.html
The SHETAB (meaning ‘accelerate’ in Persian/Dari) Lab is a center for business and social innovation in Afghanistan. Their mission is to facilitate the process of creating successful and impact driven social ventures across Afghanistan and enable the next generation of Afghan entrepreneurs and civic leaders.
https://causeartist.com/social-enterprise-afghanistan/
The women of East and Northeast India no longer need to fear the dark. ONergy, an award-winning social enterprise, has developed a number of innovative energy solutions that not only address the dearth of electricity in the region – improving safety in their communities – but also light a path toward economic empowerment for women.
https://3blmedia.com/News/Lighting-Way-Womens-Economic-Empowerment
DiCaprio participated in an investment round, which includes Marlon Wayans, Adam Rodriguez (“CSI Miami”) and professional tennis players John Isner and Steve Johnson. Channing Tatum was an early investor. Runa products are made from guayusa caffeinated tea leaf from the Ecuadorian Amazon, which is sustainably produced in the rainforest by 3,000 indigenous farming families.
http://variety.com/2016/film/news/leonardo-dicaprio-ecuadorian-beverage-company-runa-1201764711/
The Hollywood actor, investor, and activist has invested in Runa, an organic tea business, and says he will donate his shares back to Ecuadorian farmers.
http://www.inc.com/zoe-henry/leonardo-dicaprio-invests-in-runa-tea.html?edited
Trust: How do you earn it? Banks use credit scores to determine if you’re trustworthy, but there are about 2.5 billion people around the world who don’t have one to begin with — and who can’t get a loan to start a business, buy a home or otherwise improve their lives. Hear how TED Fellow Shivani Siroya is unlocking untapped purchasing power in the developing world with InVenture, a start-up that uses mobile data to create a financial identity. “With something as simple as a credit score,” says Siroya, “we’re giving people the power to build their own futures.”
http://www.ted.stfi.re/talks/shivani_siroya_a_smart_loan_for_people_with_no_credit_history_yet?sf=earaad#t-27750
Disasters happen, whether we are expecting them or not. While they can be chaotic and terrifying, there are companies out there who strive to pick up the pieces afterward and try to help those affected regain some sense of normalcy. DayOne Response is one of those companies who are there to help out when disaster strikes. DayOne Response is unique in that it focuses on ensuring everyone has clean water despite the chaos of the situation.
http://www.bayareaforsale.com/articles/dayone-response-changing-the-way-the-world-looks-at-water
Wash Cycle Laundry is proving that bikes are commercially-scalable alternatives to trucks for intra-metropolitan freight. Over 3 million pounds of cargo are hauled across Philadelphia and Washington DC since the company began in 2010.
http://untoursfoundation.org/2016/03/wash-cycle-laundry-up-close-and-personal/
This year, American social venture company Wello Water reported that over 2000 WaterWheels have been delivered to different villages in rural India. The WaterWheel is a solution put forward to alleviate the strain water collection has on rural families.
http://www.designindaba.com/articles/creative-work/waterwheel-rolling-solution-rural-india
Exo, a protein bar company founded by two 20something entrepreneurs, today announced it has raised a $4 million Series A for a packaged food concept whose key ingredient would give most Americans pause: crickets. Or more specifically, cricket powder.
http://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2016/03/07/exo-protein-bar-made-from-crickets-raises-4m.html
“Play is the universal language,” Tarver says. “You go somewhere and you may not be able to talk to the people, but if you pull out this ball, you’ll be connected, because it’s intuitive. The ball is the connector between the visitors and the community.”
https://www.rotary.org/en/news-media/goodwill-games
Our products provide second chances in two ways. One would be employing and training women who need a second chance because they are homeless, formerly incarcerated, or otherwise disadvantaged. The second would be the fruit we pick was originally not the right size/shape to be sold commercially. The model address is the paradox that in this country we waste 40% of food while 1/6 americans are currently living in hunger.
http://eco18.com/fruit-and-second-chances-never-tasted-so-good/
Maxwell Chinnah, CEO & Cofounder of Terraoak, receiving a grant from the Iowa Renewable Energy Association, in November 2015, for his work in Clean Energy with Terraoak, Inc. He is the pioneer recipient of the Eric Foresman and Christine Nelson-Foresman Scholarship Award for Iowans spearheading renewable energy endeavors.
http://smallbusinesstrendsetters.com/maxwell-chinnah-ceo-cofounder-of-terraoak-receives-grant-from-the-iowa-renewable-energy-association/
Our first product, Aesop Solis, is our solar powered mobile device case, which is still under development. Aesop Tholos is our latest product that we will soon be introducing to the City of Norfolk. It is our solar powered bench.
https://www.1millioncups.com/virginiabeach/presentations/aesop-technologies-llc-7937
I felt like I had to work twice as hard to be seen as credible as my male counterparts competing against me. After talking to fellow women competitors and entrepreneurs, I was surprised to learn that they all had similar experiences.
https://dobsonchronicles.com/2016/01/31/the-hidden-truth-about-women-in-entrepreneurship/
Zenful Bites partners with local nonprofits to run food education programs for children in underserved areas of DC.
https://startdc.co/2016/01/24/josephine-chu-zenful-bites/
“We were shocked to learn that feminine hygiene products are not covered by government assistance programs like food stamps, and furthermore, that 40 states tax these products, making them even more cost-prohibitive to women living in homelessness,” the company’s founders, Annie Lasco and Margo Lang, told HuffPost in an email.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/conscious-period-donations_us_5693e091e4b0a2b6fb70e176
Addressing the vital need for clean water in disaster relief situations, DayOne Response has developed one solution called the DayOne Waterbag. This is a 10-litre personal water purification unit that can be transported like a backpack. A closed system, which prevents contamination, it is designed specifically to be distributed after a disaster. It purifies 10 litres of water in 30 minutes, and is reusable so a family of four can have clean drinking water for up to 2 months.
https://www.currencyfair.com/blog/20-startups-changing-the-world/
LuminAID clinched a deal with Mark on Season 6 of Shark Tank for their solar-powered inflatable lights. Heavy spoke with founders Anna Stork and Andrea Sreshta, who gave us a glimpse into the company’s tremendous growth since the show.
http://heavy.com/news/2016/01/luminaid-shark-tank-solar-power-lights-products-episodes-deals-mark/
Graham Benton is founder and managing director of LishaBora Hydroponics, a Kenya-based start-up that produces a barley nutrient supplement targeted at smallholder dairy farmers. LishaBora operates a greenhouse system where it grows barley seeds using nutrient-rich water. The end product, a fodder mat that looks like grass, is fed to cows as a replacement to nutrient concentrates. The product is said to improve milk yields by up to 30%.
https://www.howwemadeitinafrica.com/boosting-milk-yields-of-small-scale-dairy-farmers/
But Annie Lascoe and Margo Lang are thinking a lot about those products, and they want to change almost everything about them. They created their newly launched company, Conscious Period, to manufacture organic sanitary products so that women know exactly what ingredients are being used, given that in the U.S. companies aren’t required to disclose all the components in their raw materials. “We were both really concerned about the ingredients that aren’t being disclosed in conventional tampons,” Lascoe said.
https://thinkprogress.org/these-entrepreneurs-want-to-completely-shake-up-the-economics-of-tampons-and-pads-d987ddf38e00/
Evaptainers creates “zero energy” refrigeration systems using modular and mobile units to systemically reduce food spoilage in the developing world. “We are very proud to be on the ground in Morocco working with our country partners to bring this technology to market,” says CEO and co-founder Spencer Taylor. “Unlike other alternative refrigeration companies our product requires no electricity and is so lightweight and inexpensive that it allows us to bring a refrigeration solution to populations living on the other side of the electricity divide that have never before had access.”
http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/evaptainers-electricity-free-refrigeration.html
It’s not unusual for small businesses and houses of worship located in old New York buildings to spend 30 percent of their budgets on energy. But banks aren’t willing to lend them the money to make their sites energy efficient.
https://www.philanthropy.com/article/40-under-40-donnel-baird-/234728
When Andrew Youn started One Acre Fund to help farmers in East Africa improve their productivity, he set rapid expansion as a top priority. The result: After just a decade, the nonprofit serves 300,000 farmers directly and another 500,000 through its government partnerships.
https://www.philanthropy.com/article/40-under-40-andrew-youn-farm/234749
RUR Greenlife was awarded 1st place for the 2016 Richard Heinberg Sustainability Prizes sponsored by the Foundation for a Sustainable Future. RUR Greenlife designs, builds, and implements sustainable,decentralized waste management …
The Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO) in collaboration with Eco Post Ltd destroyed unauthorized copies of DVDs and CDs. The Kenya Copyright Board Executive Director, Dr. Marisella Ouma said that, the destruction has been in an eco-friendly way through a joint initiative with eco post to safely dispose over one tone of illegal CDs and DVDs worth over 5,000,000 million….
http://www.copyright.go.ke/dsdsd/summary/6-copyright-registration/5-application-for-verification-of-assignment-of-copyright-works.html
While blessed with one of the highest biodiversity indices, Ecuador also has one of the world’s highest rates of deforestation estimated at over 300,000 hectares (3%) per year. Today only about 1-2% of Ecuador’s original forest lands remain. It is estimated that there are up to 300 different species of trees in the Canande watershed with only approximately 200+ species currently identified. Current economic models present a higher land yields through clear cutting forests and planting oil palm
https://www.chrispalm.com/choco
After a long struggle, our partner community Arimae finally received its land title from the government of Panama. We’ve been working with Arimae since 2007 and currently have 15 hectares of timber plantations on their land.
http://www.plantingempowerment.com/blog/arimae-panama-land-title
DayOne Response offers a lightweight, backpack-sized emergency water purifier system that has provided 7 million liters of clean water to global disaster victims. It was recognized in San Jose, Calif., on Nov. 12, 2015, at The Tech Awards with the Intel Environment Award.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhJQB8NwCmE
Tinia Pina didn’t set out to create a supercharged organic fertilizer for hydroponic agriculture. It just worked out that way.
http://www.innovateli.com/re-nuble-not-your-average-high-growth-company/
NBC’s Melissa Lee speaks to Devon Grimme, Prometheon Pharma director of business, about a new patch that could end needle injections for people with diabetes.
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2015/05/05/needle-free-insulin-patch.html
The startup does this by leasing solar phone charging kiosks on a month-by-month basis, which the entrepreneurs can then use to launch their own businesses by having community members pay to charge their phone at the kiosk.
http://disrupt-africa.com/2015/12/meet-the-seedstars-world-tanzania-winner-juabar/
Designs like Toilets for People’s “the crapper” (Compact, Rotating, Aerobic, Pollution-Prevention Excreta, Reducer) create an eco-friendly toilet for developing countries.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/4-innovative-toilet-designs-to-talk-about-on-world-toilet-day/
Upslope Brewing Company and two local startups, Boom Algae and Living Ink Technologies, begin a collaborative project to turn brewery waste into a 100% biodegradable, non-petroleum-based, algae-ink. The system is a unique bioreactor designed to function as a zero-waste system.
https://www.brewbound.com/news/upslope-brewing-announces-sustainability-project-boom-algae-living-ink-technologies