Green Design » Social Entrepreneurship

Ashoka: Continuing to Connect Social Entrepreneurs Globally

WorldChanging Team — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:43:00 +0000

Ashoka is a non-profit organization supporting social entrepreneurs to help them achieve the maximum impact in their work. Ashoka believes in the ability of individuals to make a difference, in the high impact of non-violent and ethical actions, and the power of the entrepreneur to change society. Bill Drayton founded Ashoka in 1980, inspired by the social and economic gap he observed while traveling through Asia. Working in 60 countries across the globe, Ashoka finds and invests in social entrepreneurs, engages communities and helps entrepreneurs to network with each other, and provides needed infrastructure for the network. Ashoka has identified entrepreneurs as a leading and growing force for social change, and is helping that force to effect change.

This piece is part of Worldchanging's Attention Philanthropy campaign. All week long, the Worldchanging Network will be delivering "attention grants" to worthy projects, individuals, resources and more. You can learn more about these gifts of notice and find other entries by clicking here.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Social Entrepreneurship at 9:43 AM)

Ashoka: Continuing to Connect Social Entrepreneurs Globally

WorldChanging Team — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:43:00 +0000

Nominated by Pamela Hawley

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Social Entrepreneurship at 9:43 AM)

Pop!Tech: Rice Power to the People With Husk Power Systems

Robert Katz — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:48:58 +0000

Chip Ransler is the co-founder of Husk Power Systems (HPS), a for-profit company that cost-effectively converts rice husks into electricity. HPS utilizes a proprietary technology to run 35-100 kilowatt mini power plants, delivering pay-for-use electricity to un-electrified villages in India's "Rice Belt." HPS' five pilot projects have become operationally profitable within six months, delivering sustainable, environmentally-friendly, low-cost energy that is dramatically improving the lives of rural Indians.

Chip is also a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow. We sat down this week at the conference for an interview. For more context on Husk Power Systems, check out their profiles in Virginia Business (Chip and his business partner, Manoj Sinha, are MBA candidates at the University of Virginia) and Rediff.com.

Rob Katz, NextBillion.net: Tell me briefly – what is Husk Power Systems?

Chip Ransler, Husk Power Systems: Husk Power Systems is a rural electrification company. We go where the inputs are cheap and where electricity is most needed and valued. In practice, that means rural villages – places where 3 or 4 thousand people live. Our systems are truly community based – we don’t have to truck in wires from all over the place. It’s a relatively small, off-grid system. There are 350 million people in India without power living in small villages; and those communities harvest 92 million tons of rice harvested every year – we’re meeting the need and using the best, local materials. Also, this is not a dream – we’re in 5 villages, power 12,000 people’s homes. Our goal is to build 100 as quickly as we can – then scale our model throughout the developing world.

NextBillion.net: Tell me about rice husk – what is it, how much is there, where do you find them? What do farmers do with them now?

Chip Ransler: Rice husk is the outside of a rice kernel. When you harvest rice, husk represents about 30 percent of the gross weight. As a result, husks are removed and discarded before transport. In a typical village, about 1500 tons of rice are harvested every season, yielding 500 tons of husk and 1000 tons of edible product. The farmers either burn the husk or allow it to rot in the fields.

Rice husk is cellulosic, which means it can be heated up and released for energy – the gas released is similar to methane. It also contains silica, which is released as a waste product when burned.

So, why is this interesting? If you took a map of the world’s energy poor areas and compare it to a map of rice producing areas, these two maps would look nearly identical. So we use husk to make electricity. The gas we make out of the husk is filtered, then run through a diesel-like engine to generate power.

Like I said, farmers throw away or burn rice husk – releasing methane into the atmosphere. This is an opportunity too. We’re working with the Indian government on getting our Clean Development Mechanism certification to sell carbon credits associated with our plants. And the silica – which is the other waste product – is sold to concrete manufacturers. So we take agricultural waste and turn it into electricity, minerals and carbon credits.

NextBillion.net: How do the plants work?

Chip Ransler: We’re using an older technology – gasification – which has been around since World War II. (Editor's note: check out this YouTube video of a rice husk gasifier.) We retrofit machines to work with multiple types of raw material – not just rice husk, but corn husk and wheat husk, too. We work with two Indian manufacturers to build gasifiers with the right specifications.

NextBillion.net: Talk about village power systems – why isn’t there a better way already?

Chip Ransler: In India and throughout the developing world, there are mega-power plants – huge plants that serve big cities with megawatts of power. There are also micro-power plants – like a home solar system, which might generate 20 to 60 watts. But there are not enough meso-power plants, serving small villages. Husk Power Systems plants are 35 to 100 kilowatts systems, serving 600-700 households with a full complement of power (for lighting, water pumps, small businesses, etc.)

NextBillion.net: How do you deal with micro grids? Do you build your own?

Chip Ransler: It’s easy to build grids. You need tri-phase, insulated aluminum wire for transmission. You string this over bamboo poles, which start at the plant. The grids aren’t fancy – but they work, and they’re built by and serve local people, so they are well-maintained.

NextBillion.net: How much do your customers pay for power?

Chip Ransler: Our clients pre-pay on a per KW basis. Households and businesses are charged rates competitive with or below government rates, across the board. Our installed cost per KWh is 900 to 1000 dollars right now. Compare that to coal, which is at least twice as expensive. Solar is 10 times as much; wind is 7-fold more. Our power is on par with developed world prices, which, for electricity, is pretty good.

NextBillion.net: What do your customers use electricity for? What did they do before Husk Power Systems came to town?

Chip Ransler: The first thing our customers do is charge cell phones. 90 percent of rural villagers in Bihar have cell phones, which they charge from motorcycle batteries for 25 to 50 cents each – a total ripoff. After cell phones, clients get lighting, radios, fans, crop irrigation (subbing for their diesel gen sets) and finally, business infrastructure. Our marketing is easy. We light up a village – then the surrounding villages see it and they come asking, how can we get this too? It sells itself.

NextBillion.net: How do you work locally with people in India?

Chip Ransler: My business partners, Manoj, Ratnesh and Gyanesh, all come from villages and small towns in Bihar. Our process is all local – we have hired only 1 person (besides me) who is non-local. First, we seek out the elders, the panchayat, and sit with them and talk. If they buy into our value proposition, we train operators and materials handlers; we set up an electricity council in each village, which is responsible for administering the payments.. We are all about simplicity and speed – we’re learning faster and now, our central staff has less and less involvement for each installation.

NextBillion.net: What’s the response to your systems from villagers on the ground?

Chip Ransler: The best quote was from a village teacher in Tamkuha. He told us, "We earned our independence from England 60 years ago, but today – when you came into our village – we got independence from poverty."

NextBillion.net: Where do you see this going in 5 years? 10 years?

Chip Ransler: We think we can power 2500 villages – 750,000 people.

NextBillion.net: Tell me about your financing.

Chip Ransler: Just this week, we secured a grant from the Shell Foundation, which may help us get a loan from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. This is a good American and Indian story – American money, Indian engineering, Indian talent and shared vision.

Rob Katz blogs at NextBillion.net, where this post originally appeared.

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(Posted by Robert Katz in Social Entrepreneurship at 11:48 AM)

Pop!Tech: Bunker Roy on Scaling the Bottom of the Pyramid

Robert Katz — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:19:15 +0000

Outside, it is grey and rainy, but inside, the Camden library is warm and inviting. Today's special session merited an early arrival to Pop!Tech: Scaling the Bottom of the Pyramid, a 2-hour talk by longtime BoP innovators Paul Polak and Bunker Roy.

Bill Gordon, a Pop!Tech board member, kicks things, describing Pop!Tech's active social change mission – realized through its Accelerator and Social Innovation Fellows Programs. He then introduces today’s speakers as the "heavyweights of the social enterprise world." I, for one, don't argue with that description.

Bunker Roy admits that he is the product of a "very expensive, elitist education" in India, which prepared him for a career as a doctor, engineer or diplomat. When he decided to work in a village instead however, his mother was appalled; but it marked the beginning of a remarkable career.

Roy founded the Barefoot College, a school only for the poor, in 1971. He asserts that rural India is full of professionals not recognized for their skills, such as water diviners and traditional midwives. His college is open only to people without a formal education and seeks to combine the knowledge of local people with modern technologies.

Roy's students create buildings that harvest rainwater and win architectural awards without a professional architect's involvement. They share knowledge and learn other skills, which they share back home. In 38 years, the Barefoot College has served 3 million people who live on less than $1 per day.

So, who are these barefoot professionals? Roy suggests that they all share three common traits: competence, confidence and belief. The college supports 300 competent, confident believers – 150 staff and 150 students. Its work focuses on architecture (geodesic domes, waterproofed roofs), water (rainwater harvesting) and energy (solar engineering).

During his presentation, Roy suggests that "if only we had the humility to listen to our elders and learn how they have been collecting rainwater for generations," we might not have 1.4 million people in the world without access to safe drinking water. His point is clear: don't reinvent the wheel if you don't have to – often, poor people often know better than the government or the 'professionals' – if only we would ask them!

The Barefoot College's results speak for themselves – there are low-income people from Ethiopia, Gambia, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Bolivia electrifying their own communities and building long-lasting water tanks to bring drinking water and sanitation to thousands of schools, all without the help of governments or certified professionals. Amazing.

I do take issue with one aspect of Roy's presentation, however. He shows a movie about barefoot women solar engineers; in it the narrator states that "when you're dealing with the poorest of the poor, those making less than 50 paise (about USD $0.01) a day, it's inhuman to talk about business models." Sure, 50 paise is critically poor - but it's the larger idea that I take issue with. If those business models serve poor people's basic needs, is that really inhuman? And aren't prices – the building block of business – one of the best listening devices we have?

Stemming from that comment, I begin to wonder where the Barefoot College get its funding. Does it have a plan to reach the rest of the communities in the world that might benefit from its worldview and programs? If it won’t scale using a business model, then how will it? It turns out that Barefoot generates 30% of its revenue from earned income; the rest of its budget is from donors (the Government of India, Skoll Foundation, UN Development Program, etc.) As for scale, Roy's answer is straightforward, even though I might not agree with it: you don't need more colleges per se; each trained entrepreneur is a walking, talking Barefoot College!

While taking questions, Roy suggests that we keep making the same mistake: applying an urban solution to a rural problem. Poverty must be approached totally differently – but we're comfortable with the status quo of development. He says he knows it's going to fail – citing projects like the Millennium Villages – but it's already too far gone.

Ultimately, Roy's presentation is nothing short of inspiring. He embodies what it means to listen to the voice of the poor, to work with them – not for them – and to believe in the power of people.

For more on Bunker Roy, check out this Pop!Cast from 2005.

You can read my post on Paul Polak's talk, as well as a short interview with him, .

Rob Katz blogs at NextBillion.net, where this post originally appeared.

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(Posted by Robert Katz in Social Entrepreneurship at 4:19 PM)

Google’s Project 10^100 Seeks Submissions for World-Changing Ideas

Sarah Kuck — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:36:01 +0000

During our daily search of all things world changing, we came across Google's latest contest Project 10^100, being held in part to celebrate their 10-year anniversary and in part to help those who want to help others. During the next three months, the Internet search company will solicit world-changing ideas from anyone, anywhere, no matter the size or scope and will reward the top five ideas with $10 million to see their projects come to life.

In today's Seattle Times Google's Managing Director Andy Berndt gave us some insight on why the company feels like this kind of a project is necessary:

"Never in history have so many people had so much information, so many tools at their disposal, so many ways of making good ideas come to life. Yet at the same time, so many people, of all walks of life, could use so much help, in both little ways and big."

Google will select the 100 best ideas before having the public vote for the top 20 semifinalists in late January. Five finalists will split the $10 million, which Google will give to them to help get their projects off the ground.

The categories for entry seem to be primarily humanitarian aid innovations, including things like water solutions for rural villages in developing countries, and solutions for bringing wireless internet to disconnected rural areas.

You can find both of the example ideas mentioned in the Google release -- from organizations First Mile Solutions and Hippo Water Roller in the Worldchanging book. We fully support identifying people like this who are making a difference, and getting their names and project ideas out there so that fortunate connections can continue to turn smart ideas into real-life solutions.

It's wonderful to see so many great contests and companies actively seeking solutions. We're looking forward to seeing and covering the plethora of exciting new ideas sure to come!

Photo credit: Google, The Hippo Water Roller.

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(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Social Entrepreneurship at 2:36 PM)

Nokia Announces Contest for Social Innovation

Sarah Kuck — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:08:35 +0000

Having a personal computer the size of your hand is something that, in a relatively short period of time, went from being seemingly impossible to practically ubiquitous. In fact, many of us can barely imagine leaving the house without one. These tiny personal pieces of technology allow to send messages and images anywhere -- from across the table to across the globe, connecting us to each other and the world.

Exploring the extent to which this technology could benefit society as a whole is mobile company giant Nokia. Yesterday, Nokia announced its contest, Calling All Innovators, encouraging developers to design applications that could help better society.

“Calling All Innovators is not just about making mobile applications that could help society; it’s about developing mobile applications that will help society,” Tom Libretto, Vice President of Forum Nokia said. “Imagine if an application could help relief workers reallocate resources in real time for disaster-torn areas — how much could that help both those in need as well as the relief workers in the area?”

Developers wishing to enter the contest have until Dec. 15 to submit their ideas within three categories:

• ECO-Challenge: Make a difference by submitting an application that will work to minimize mobility’s global environmental impact and develop ways to offer mobile solutions that help consumers make sustainable choices such as reducing their energy consumption or carbon footprint.

• Emerging Markets: This category opens up new opportunities for developers to imagine the possibilities of pioneering applications and services impacting the daily lives of millions in developing nations, which could include solutions for education, health data access, infotainment, rural agriculture, or any other application that improves lives in emerging markets.

• Technology Showcase: This is an opportunity to create and showcase compelling, experience driven applications, using any technology that runs on Series 40 or S60 devices, such as Flash Lite, Java, Python, or open source. From a single-purpose application to completely community driven, this developer’s showdown will help open consumers' minds about what an application can do.

Winners will be notified in January 2009. Their reward (which, of course, will include cash and fabulous prizes) will be to see their design distributed throughout the world. And even though I know little about how to design mobile phone applications, the possibilities here seem endless and putting technology and information in the hands of those who need it most is entirely fascinating. I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

Photo credit: Flickr/blueoneiam, Creative Commons license.

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(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Social Entrepreneurship at 10:08 AM)

Water filters — “All you need is terracotta clay, a compliant cow and a match.”

Alex Steffen — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:55:17 +0000

God knows we've written our share of water purification posts, but this is pretty cool: An Australian professor has come up with a way of making DIY water purifiers (PDF), suitable for the developing world:

A handful of clay, yesterdays coffee grounds and some cow manure: the ingredients that could bring clean, safe drinking water to much of the third world. The simple new technology, developed by [Australia National University] materials scientist Mr. Tony Flynn, allows water filters to be made from commonly available materials and fired on the ground using cow manure as the source of heat, without the need for kiln. The filters have been tested and shown to remove common pathogens including E-coli.

They are very simple to explain and demonstrate and can be made by anyone, anywhere, says Mr Flynn. They dont require any western technology. All you need is terracotta clay, a compliant cow and a match.

Commercial ceramic filters do exist, Flynn says, but with prices which are often too expensive most people in the developing world. (The PDF also includes a step-by-step guide for making your own -- paging Mark Frauenfelder) Flynn has declined to patent his invention.

It works through microfiltration, as the creator explains in this interview:

BLANCH : So what are the basic principles that allow the filtration process to work so effectively?

FLYNN : Well, in the case of the addition of coffee grounds to the local clay, it does a couple of things. First of all it greatly increases the total volume of the tiny holes or pores within the filter structure and when its fired as Ive just described in the manure mound, the heat burns the coffee out, leaving the holes but which also contain small fractions of silica that arent combustible and are a result of the combustion of the combustible fraction of the coffee grounds. Now these small voids or holes in conjunction with their silica content and the network of tiny holes that are joined in three dimensions within the clay particle mass, act as the filter structure and they are small enough to allow the simultaneous passage of water through them, while equally being small enough to remove bacteria that we tested for in this case E-coli.

Being maybe the least craft-y person in the world, I'm not sure I'd want to trust my life to anything I made by hand, but still, if it holds up under scrutiny, this seems to me to be a great example of the kind of innovation, simple-yet-advanced, that so much of the world needs. It sort of goes well with "Pot-in-Pot" refrigerator designs, I think.

(treehugger)

This piece is a part of our month long retrospective leading up to our anniversary on Oct. 1. For the next four weeks, we'll celebrate five years of solutions-based, forward-thinking and innovative journalism by publishing the best of the Worldchanging archives.

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Social Entrepreneurship at 10:55 AM)