Alumni in the News

Homework goes mobile for secondary school pupils in Lesotho

Sterio.me sends homework lessons and quizzes to basic phones that have limited access to data. Phones of this type have more than 86% penetration in Lesotho. The programme is undergoing trials in local schools, supported by the Vodacom Foundation, the ministry of education and the local teachers’ union, before being rolled out across the country.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jan/02/homework-goes-mobile-for-secondary-school-pupils-in-lesotho

Alumni in the News

Planete d’Entrepreneurs team assesses EGG-energy’s social impact

Our team from the French NGO Planète d’Entrepreneurs recently spent six weeks with EGG-energy to assess its social impact on its beneficiaries. This study was commissioned by GDF SUEZ Rassembleurs d’Energies, one of EGG-energy’s investors, who we warmly thank for making this mission possible. Since 2009, Plane?te d’Entrepreneurs has been helping social entrepreneurs assessing their social impact and promoting their innovative model in France and developing countries by training and involving French students in the field.
http://egg-energy.com/2014/12/planete-dentrepreneurs-team-assesses-egg-energys-social-impact/

Alumni in the News

Ghonsla, was set up in the aftermath of Pakistan’s devastating earthquake in 2005.

Similarly a low-cost engineering and construction enterprise, Ghonsla, was set up in the aftermath of Pakistan’s devastating earthquake in 2005. With 73,000 people killed and large parts of its cities and villages destroyed in the north by the disaster, the plight of 2.5 million people left homeless hung in the balance.
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/oct/10/social-enterprise-is-an-emerging-force-in-pakistan

Alumni in the News

Ellie Fun Day’s Organic Baby Blankets Change the Lives of Marginalized Women in India

We’ve seen our fair share of organic baby blankets in our day, but these swaddles from Ellie Fun Day are the latest to steal our hearts. Made with layers of organic muslin cotton, Ellie Fun Day blankets are hand-embroidered by marginalized women in India. The care and love that goes into these simple and elegant blankets is evident: the blankets feature tasteful designs such as dots and dashes, a fox among funky tree designs, or little stars.
https://inhabitat.com/inhabitots/ellie-fun-days-organic-baby-blankets-change-the-lives-of-marginalized-women-in-india/

Alumni in the News

Using Mobile Phone Payments To Get People With No Credit History Some Credit

If you’re on the outside the financial system, you don’t have a credit history that a loan officer can refer to; you may not have much documentation at all. In effect, you face a Catch 22. You’re excluded from the financial system because you’re excluded from the financial system.
It’s this problem that Nicole Stubbs has been trying to address with First Access, a New York startup that mines alternative financial data, including mobile phone payment histories.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3035336/using-mobile-phone-payments-to-get-people-with-no-credit-history-some-credit

Alumni in the News

The $1 Trillion Market Opportunity: Taking Innovations to the Next Level

By providing a limited amount of public capital through initiatives like the Development Innovation Ventures fund, the LAUNCH open innovation platform and the “Priming the Pump” Global Development Alliance (GDA) with Echoing Green, we can develop a pipeline of investment-ready social enterprises that can then attract private capital and scale.
https://blog.usaid.gov/2014/08/the-1-trillion-market-opportunity-taking-innovations-to-the-next-level/

Alumni in the News

Sanergy: Converting Waste to Profit

“Going to the bathroom isn’t a popular topic that comes up at the dinner table in the West,” said Auerbach to Forbes. “It’s flush and forget for us. That’s not the case in much of the developing world.” Finding a place to relieve oneself is an open issue in many countries, whether it be in rivers, roadsides or holes in the ground. But while water and sanitation development projects have been implemented in poor countries, few solutions have proven to be effective as the sanitation crisis continues to worsen.
https://www.borgenmagazine.com/sanergy-converting-waste-profit/

Alumni in the News

Eqalix and Drexel University Announce Grant of U.S. Patent for OmegaSkin™ Plant Protein-Based Wound Dressing

Eqalix, Inc., a Northern Virginia regenerative medicine company, has achieved an important step in its development of technology for wound healing. A plant protein-based nanofiber scaffold technology invented at Drexel University and licensed to Eqalix recently received U.S. patent protection. The patent is U.S. Patent No. 8,790,921, entitled “Alimentary Protein-Based Scaffolds (APS) for Wound Healing, Regenerative Medicine and Drug Discovery.”
http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/2098595

Alumni in the News

Solar Energy Start-Ups Bring Light Off the Grid

Mera Gao Power is a solar energy start-up that seeks to bring electricity to India’s rural villages. Co-founders Nikhil Jaisinghani and Brian Shaad saw the potential in the market for solar energy microgrids. In 2010, they left their jobs and started Mera Gao Power, which now operates microgrids in 600 villages in the Sitapur district in India.
https://www.borgenmagazine.com/solar-energy-start-ups-bring-light-grid/

Alumni in the News

The Wello Water Wheel

Wello Water is social venture that wanted a way for people (particularly women) to transport water effectively, hygienically and affordably. By doing so the goal was to allow time for school and more efficient family care. Wello believes that “[w]omen with even a few years of education have smaller, healthier families, and are more likely to send their children to school. Female education is a key means of breaking the cycle of poverty.
https://www.borgenmagazine.com/wello-water-wheel/

Alumni in the News

Invention Awards 2014: Charge Gadgets With Your Footsteps

Stanton worked closely with Hahna Alexander, a fellow Carnegie Mellon University engineering student, over three years to create the SolePower system. Instead of using piezoelectric and other inefficient, bulky methods of generating electricity, the pair shrunk down components similar to those found in hand-cranked flashlights. The result is a near standard–size removable insole that weighs less than five ounces, including a battery pack, and charges electronics via USB.
https://www.popsci.com/article/science/invention-awards-2014-charge-gadgets-your-footsteps

Alumni in the News

Get to Know the Luciérnaga Value Chain

A few weeks ago, while sitting in a conference room at the Hotel Aloha, in Managua Nicaragua, I suddenly realized just how unique of a meeting I was a part of – I was sitting in the presence of the entire value chain of a solar light business!!
https://luciernagasolar.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/get-to-know-the-luciernaga-value-chain/

Alumni in the News

Improving Energy Efficiency on the Factory Floor

Taryn Sullivan has worked every job in a Chinese factory. After years of traveling to China to source and develop products for American companies, the founder and CEO of Efficiency Exchange wanted a deeper understanding of how Chinese factories work.
http://www.chinabusinessreview.com/improving-energy-efficiency-on-the-factory-floor/

Company_Page / Richard Heinberg Prizes

Sunsaluter

Sunsaluter received an Honorable Mention notice in 2014 Richard Heinberg Sustainable Prizes, sponsored by the Foundation for a Sustainable Future. They also received 3rd place in the Next Generation award category, …

Alumni in the News

Announcing a New Investment: LabourNet

LabourNet today announced an undisclosed equity investment from Acumen, a pioneering nonprofit global venture firm addressing poverty across South Asia and Africa, and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, an organization focused on improving the lives of impoverished children through education and health in the United States, South Africa and India. LabourNet is a leader in the private vocational training & education sector in India, enabling livelihoods via work-integrated job training for informal sector workers in trades such as construction, manufacturing, leather, and beauty among others.
https://acumen.org/blog/labournet/

Alumni in the News

Hydroponic rooftop gardens turn Cairo green | Blog

‘We make use of vertical hydroponic gardening, which consumes seventy percent less water and takes up less space’, Tarek explains. While these are important benefits in a country with huge shortages of water and fertile soil, they also make it possible for the families to produce cheap and healthy vegetables on a roof of limited size.
https://www.bluebiz.com/en/BizClubs/Club-Africa-News/Hydroponic-rooftop-gardens-turn-Cairo-green

Alumni in the News

Buen Power Peru Announces USAID Grant to bring Solar Lights to 10,000 rural Peruvians

Buen Power Peru (BPP), a solar energy enterprise co-founded by an American engineer and a Peruvian entrepreneur, has just announced its intention to bring solar lights to approximately 10,230 low-income Peruvians with Stage 1 support from USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures (DIV).
https://www.altenergymag.com/news/2013/11/25/buen-power-peru-announces-usaid-grant-to-bring-solar-lights-to-10000-rural-peruvians/31489

Alumni in the News

Recycling waste can create 500,000 jobs in Nigeria – Wecyclers CEO, Bilikis

Many of our customers are living in abject poverty and they love the incentives. Sometimes they say, “can I use my points to get a house, or a car,” but I tell them this might take you a lot of years of recycling! For some of these people their immediate problem is not waste, it’s survival. They aren’t thinking about “the environment”, and so the best way to train them is to incentivize them.What kind of impact could Wecyclers potentially have?

http://www.theafricareport.com/West-Africa/recycling-waste-can-create-500000-jobs-in-nigeria-wecyclers-ceo-bilikis.html

Alumni in the News

Efficiency startup penetrates deep inside Chinese factories

Most students of Chinese and Asian studies at The George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs do not parlay their degrees into stints as factory workers in Chinese manufacturing facilities. But then, most students of Chinese and Asian studies are not Taryn Sullivan.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/efficiency-startup-penetrates-deep-inside-chinese-factories/

Alumni in the News

Zenful Bites: Building a New Food System

In May 2012, Josephine co-founded Zenful Bites with Yolanda Hawthorne, a social enterprise in Washington DC, which uses food as a medium to transform people’s lives, by creating a sustainable, healthy and just food system through education and eco-catering.
http://www.takingonthegiant.com/2013/10/11/zenful-bites-building-a-new-food-system-through-food-education-and-eco-catering/

Alumni in the News

N.C. A&T farm to house high-tech hog waste/asphalt plant

Bio-Adhesive Alliance is currently reviewing bids for what will be a mobile facility that could operate both at N.C. A&T itself and be moved to other locations, said Elham Fini, the professor of civil engineering whose research spawned the startup. Bids on the project have ranged from $400,000 to $500,000, and Fini said she hopes to select a contractor by the end of this month and have the facility finished by next August.
https://www.bizjournals.com/triad/blog/2013/10/nc-at-farm-to-house-high-tech-hog.html

Alumni in the News

The Andean Collection

It offers a way for their artisan partners to earn a living from the revival of their ancestral jewelry making technique. Even the string and beads used in the jewelry are grown in local gardens, and then handmade by the same gardeners who sow the seeds.
http://thekindlife.com/blog/2013/10/the-andean-collection/

Alumni in the News

China’s Factory Owners Hunt for Energy Savings

Taryn Sullivan, a consultant who founded Efficiency Exchange in Dongguan in 2010, has developed software to identify inefficiencies. At every factory in China she has visited, Sullivan has spotted energy waste, and she estimates an average potential savings of 13 percent.
http://www.christina-larson.com/chinas-factory-owners-hunt-for-energy-savings/

Alumni in the News

DIARY OF AN UNDER 30 CEO: THE PAPER BAG EMPEROR

With no initial capital, I cleaned the environment by collecting used plastic bottles and sold them to a plastic recycling plant. After I had raised my initial seed capital of 36,000 Ugandan shillings ($14), I soon started making paper bags at a small scale while still in high school.
http://venturesafrica.com/diary-30-ceo-andrew-mupuya-real-paper-bag-emperor/

Alumni in the News

Women and children first: Fellows Friday with Zubaida Bai, who creates lifesaving kits for maternal health

Through her company AYZH, she develops health products — such as the $2 Clean Birth Kit — designed to reduce maternal and infant mortality in underprivileged communities around the world. AYZH is about to launch an Indiegogo funding campaign to produce an impact analysis report on Clean Birth Kits, as well as a mobile health education platform. Here, she tells us about how she got started and her vision for women’s health.
https://blog.ted.com/women-and-children-first-fellows-friday-with-zubaida-bai-who-creates-lifesaving-kits-for-maternal-health/

Alumni in the News

Let There Be Light: Bringing Solar Power to Rural Retailers in Kenya

We believe this project with One Degree Solar will go a long way in helping retailers and kiosk owners extend their operating hours, reduce their operating costs and experience the numerous benefits of renewable energy,” said Patrick Pech, managing director of Nairobi Bottlers Ltd., a local Coca-Cola bottler.
https://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/let-there-be-light-bringing-solar-power-to-rural-retailers-in-kenya

Alumni in the News

Salif Romano Niang: Determined to Build a Solution

“Malô was born because of that crisis.”The convention of academia would be to work on the problem by researching and debating it, conferring with think tanks or the United Nations, lobbying with governments. But the urgency that Salif felt for the problem was too great to wait for a better understanding, especially when in 2008 he saw the price of rice skyrocketing, resulting in shipping embargos and riots.
https://www.echoinggreen.org/ideas/salif-romano-niang-determined-build-solution

Alumni in the News

Mali: Transforming a Country Through Rice

Aspen Institute 2013 New Voices Fellow Salif Romano Niang is the co-founder and chief impact officer of Malo, a company working to revolutionize the rice industry in Niang’s home country of Mali.
https://allafrica.com/stories/201307121639.html

Alumni in the News

Bio-Adhesive Alliance Inc-PiGrid

Bioadhesive Alliance Inc. is manufacturer of a green, low cost, and durable construction adhesive called PiGrid. PiGrid provides the pavement industry a lower production cost and an enhanced performance, and provides a solution for hog producers, governments, and trade associations looking for appropriate solutions for waste management from traditional swine waste decomposition lagoon designs. Main customers of PiGrid are asphalt terminals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUmvGRyDC8s

Alumni in the News

Meet the unflappable Harlem entrepreneurs behind ‘Peartree Preschool’, ‘Curvy Girlz Lingerie’

“I decided it would be easier to build my own school than to keep searching!” Adusei said. “And that’s exactly what I did.” Simone is now a student at Peartree, which held a ribbon-cutting on Monday at its spanking new home on W. 112th St.
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/manhattan/big-dreams-well-drafted-blueprints-fueled-entrepreneurs-success-article-1.1339973

Alumni in the News

Five questions with Sam Dargan

Sam Dargan founded a music production company to promote the solar LEDs and other devices that he sells in Rwanda. His company, Great Lakes Energy, Ltd, sells low-cost technologies that improve the quality of life in off-grid and under-served communities.
https://www.engineeringforchange.org/news/five-questions-with-sam-dargan/

Alumni in the News

Acuity Brands Acquires Adura Technologies, Inc., a Leading Developer of Wireless Controls and Energy Management Solutions

Acuity Brands, a market leader in innovative energy-efficient lighting and control solutions, announced it has acquired the assets of Adura Technologies, a leading developer of wireless controls and energy management solutions.
http://www.abl-internationalsales.com/2013/01/acuity-brands-acquires-adura-technologies-inc-a-leading-developer-of-wireless-controls-and-energy-management-solutions/

Eccolizer
Company_Page / Richard Heinberg Prizes

Eccolizer

Eccolizer received 2nd place in 2013 Richard Heinberg Sustainable Prizes, sponsored by the Foundation for a Sustainable Future. Eccolizer worked to solve the food crisis in Bangladesh by providing low-cost bio-fertilizer …

Alumni in the News

YELI proposes eco friendly paper bags from recycled paper

I was born in the rural area of Mbale, Uganda, I moved to Kampala on a half bursary to study at an advanced level. It later became a hurdle to cater for my needs while at school after my parents became unemployed. In 2008, at the age of 16, I saw a market opportunity in creating paper bags. As the Ugandan government leaned towards a ban on use of polythene plastic bags, I decided to venture into an environmentally friendly project of paper bag production.
https://startup.info/yeli/