One Earth Designs and their solar stoves

Solar power is one of the best renewable energy sources available to help fight environmental issues. 4 million people die every year from household smoke and suffocation. University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health’s expert in climate effect on household energy Kirk Smith thinks it as a bigger threat than the outdoor pollution.

Nevertheless, Catlin Powers has the means now to help save the planet and million from this issue. She is the founder and CEO of One Earth Designs, which makes a signature solar stove product, named SolSource. In 2007, she was on a project to monitor climate change in the Himalayas, where she realized after a chat with local Tibetan that no matter how blue the sky is, the real gasses are in their houses. The air pollution in their homes was 20 times more than that found in Beijing then while being three or four times as per today’s standards. A typical stove that uses wood may have the effect of 400 cigarettes.

Powers also heads as program leader for the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard. For her, nations already underdeveloped increase burden of social security by not having the resources. Hence, she came up with an idea that uses the sun and nothing else to cook on a grill. SolSource is 92 percent efficient, costs $549 and has sold more than 4,000 units in 60 countries. Knowing it works only on the sun, which may hinder its performance at night and where sun is not available for most of the day, OED has worked on an energy-storage battery that is also 80 percent efficient. OED offices are located in Hong Kong, Boston, Massachusetts, Xining, western China, and Beijing. Apart from products like SolSource, OED also helps education initiatives in Himalayas, while conducting researches on heat-retaining phase-change technology and low-cost water testing.

Root Capital

William Foote is the Founder and CEO of Root Capital and has great experience with raising and lending funds, Emerging Markets, Value Chain Finance, Environmental Conservation and Impact Investing. It was in 1990 that Foote and his wife were traveling and came across a bunch of vanilla growers who were not able to fetch the short-term loans and as a result could not get involved in the International Markets. This motivated Foote to develop an organization which can help the farmers with their requirements of the short term credits.

This gave birth to “Root Capital”. Root capital is basically a socially invested fund that aims at growing the rural prosperity in poor and backward areas of Africa and Latin America by lending funds, imparting training, finances and strengthening their connections with the market so as to help grow their small and growing agricultural businesses.

Root Capital has an experience of more than ten years in impact investing. Its main clients are the various associations formed by the farmers and the individual businesses that help build regular earning opportunities by combining thousands of producers all through Africa and Latin America.

Until today, The Root capital has provided as much as $260 million in trade credit to the businesses that were earlier “missing middle” because of their size being too small for the banks or organizations to fund them and too big to raise micro-finance. The loans given by the Root capital mostly have the forward contract underlying and to a surprise, approximately, 99% of them are returned with interest.

Forte’s Root Capital has a major contribution in leaving its social impact on the growth and prosperity of the rural area of the country by lending to and investing into the small and growing businesses that helps the farmers gets a big chunk of money. In return, these farmers are able to sustain their crops together with maintaining the quality of their crops, ultimately benefiting the customers, the society, the nation as a whole.

Social Entrepreneurship and the Health Sector

Much of the world lives in underdeveloped or poor countries, where basic healthcare infrastructure is not present. Hence, it is important that social enterprises perform well in such areas, allowing basic healthcare to become possible for the citizens who cannot pay for it.

Technology has made it possible to ensure that people receive the best healthcare, with the easiest of manners. Hence, for social entrepreneurs who work in either health, education or poverty alleviation, more than 7 billion potential customers want their support. With technology, social entrepreneurs can find innovative solutions, which can be used to save lives. Major cause of deaths are preventable diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, obesity, and heart diseases. If day to day routines of citizens in a community are enhanced, it is possible to fight such diseases and prevent them.

The Hult Prize is the most prestigious amongst all Social entrepreneurs and provides seed money of almost $1 million in order to help make the plan work. In 2014, NanoHealth came forward to bring health to the masses in need. It helps manage chronic diseases in urban slums, by combing technology and human behaviour. Started by Manish Rajan in India, NanoHealth has social workers known as Saathis. They are trained and dedicated to a cluster of communities, providing basic low-cost healthcare through their product called Doc-In-a-Bag. They also provide health services by using interactive sessions for local community members.

In Mozambique, social entrepreneurs started a project to help patients remember when to take medicines and reminding them to show up at their doctor’s appointment. Hence, technology is making it possible for social entrepreneurs to work in health ventures such as providing prescriptions through mobile devices, allowing communities to use online interactive sessions to learn about chronic issues and sending barcodes on medicines to confirm original from counterfeits.

Nisha Ligon and Education Through Ubongo

Nisha Ligon has been part of the social enterprise system for some time now. A Thai-American, she has worked on education and its delivery in underdeveloped nations. Currently, her company Ubongo is helping kids in Tanzania and other parts of Africa learn math through cartoon series known as Ubongo Kids.

Nisha has been part of The Guardian, BBC, and the London Science Museum. She provided them with radio packages, podcasts and animated videos on development topics, particularly science. As per her educational background, it is well decorated. Nisha has a B.S. in Biology from Yale University and an MSc. in Science Media Production from Imperial College London, while also having a minor in Film and was an intern at the University of Dar as Salaam.

Her educational delivery success can be seen by her work with UK GCSE math and science curriculum. She was part of a team that managed to make animated learning videos for both students and teachers. From there, she thought it would be a brilliant idea to help children in Tanzania learn math and science through cartoons and animated productions. Co-Founded by her, she has a great team of writers, who work towards the best delivery methods, helping kids at home learn math at their own pace. The overall show is localized with his help of Tanzanian labor, rather than asking Western help. The group loves to portray it as something they have made in Africa for Africa. Ubongo TV and Kids has more than 1.2 million viewers in Tanzania, Rwanda, and Kenya. Although the show can’t solve the education issues, it provides the groundwork to help develop fundamental basics of math and science for kids. Nisha Ligon heads a team of experts that sits and works on the curriculum of 13 episodes. After they finalize ideas, they brainstorm on possible mediums and animations that can be handy. It then adds songs and melodies, cartoon characters that are appropriate to the script.

A few famous cartoon characters kids love include Mama Edge, a big green bird. A dancing frog named Da Chura, a professional monkey named Ngedere, and a rapping giraffe named Uncle T. kids love learning math with Mama Edge and it has been a complete success,

Lessons from Muhammad Yunus

This Nobel Peace Prize winner, founder of the Grameen Bank and a pioneer of microcredit and microfinance can teach us some valuable lessons on the social entrepreneurship.

Did you know that Yunus started his journey by lending US$27 to 42 women in rural Bangladesh? This can tell us that he was not interested in following traditional rules and markets, but in creating new and different business models. He believed that the poor will repay the money and he was right. This resulted in him being the pioneer of microcredit.

In the beginning, Grameen Bank (or “Village Bank”) completely relied on foreign loans to grow the business. This means that Yunus recognized that collaboration and partnership is not only beneficial but necessary for any kind of business, especially social business.

Grameen Bank started small and slowly but today has over 8 million borrowers, which is about half the population of Bangladesh. It’s important to recognize that growth of any business happens in stages, has its ups and downs, may take a lot of time, but eventually does expand.

After the success of the Grameen Bank, Yunus decided it was time to diversify into other projects, which later grew into separate organizations and entities: Grameen Motsho, Grameen Krishi, Grameen Trust, Grameen Fund, Grameen Software Limited, Grameen CyberNet Limited, Grameen Knitwear Limited and Grameen Telecom. In order for a business to grow, it’s essential to diversify.

In 2011, Yunus co-founded Yunus Social Business, which helps create social businesses around the world and provides post-investment support, while solving different social problems. It serves as a means for Yunus’ vision of humane capitalism. He also helped create the Yunus + You Foundation, which helps young social entrepreneurs to network and develop their social business ideas. In all his great work, he never forgot the bigger picture: helping poor people and giving each human being a fair chance in life.