The Nation Newspaper

Category: Impact Journalism Day

  • The women cooking their way to independence

    The women cooking their way to independence

    South Korean-based social enterprise OYORI ASIA was initiated in 2008 with the aim to “help marginalized women through the restaurant business,” according to founder and CEO Jihey Lee. The company has since trained women across three Asian countries, helping them find their feet again.

    “I have been making the broth for twelve hours now. It is not easy to flavor the broth without MSG.”

    In the early days of the summer with temperatures reaching 27 °C, Vo Thi Ngoc Nhon (37) was making a broth in a small kitchen. For Ngoc Nhon, who became a single mother after she emigrated from Vietnam to South Korea to marry a Korean in 2006, the kitchen is the only place she can earn an income. After seven years of doing a variety of different jobs while also looking after her new-born baby, she opened a Vietnamese restaurant near Jangsungbagi Station last year. It has been twenty years since the phenomenon of ‘international marriage’ emerged in Korea to relieve the problems of rural men who could not marry. Such international marriage, based on economic interests rather than love, led to a surge in divorce rates. In the last five years, 128,864 international marriages were registered; however, the number of divorces reached 50,853. How does Korean society embrace ‘multicultural single moms’, like Ngoc Nhon, living in economic isolation following divorce?

    That’s where OYORI ASIA has stepped in. Jihye Lee, the company’s founder who launched Oyori in 2008, said, “I wanted to help marginalized women through the restaurant business.” The enterprise started its business in a small corner of Sangsu-dong, Mapo-gu, and is now expanding its activities even as far as Nepal.

    A cooking license after 19 attempts

    Ngoc Nhon became the first entrepreneur produced by Oyori. In 2006, Ngoc Nhon migrated to Korea and gave birth to a child shortly after. However, her marriage did not last long, due to her husband’s gambling addiction and debts. In 2010, she found herself alone with her son, without divorce alimony. Two years later, Ngoc Nhon met the founder of Oyori. She received four years of systematic cooking training from the head chef of Oyori, and finally gained a cooking license in Korean cuisine after 19 attempts.

    Last year, she opened a Vietnamese restaurant called ‘Asian Bowl’ on the second floor of a building near Jangsungbagi Station. Her restaurant started with a deposit of 20 million won and a monthly rent of 80 million won. To make profits, she needed to sell more than 80 dishes of 7,000 won. However, this half-year-old restaurant has a maximum of 50 customers per day.

    “I do not use MSG. I will find a soup flavor that even babies can eat,” Ngoc Nhon said, as she continued to check the boiling soup. She knows that using a large amount of MSG creates an addictive flavor. However, she prefers to make a homely taste using only natural ingredients. Her principle is to boil the meat broth for twelve hours every day and to discard the unsold portion rather than reusing it.

    Her dream is to completely settle in Korea while making food from her homeland with other women like her. She is currently working with another single mother, Pham Thi Thoan (26). Thi Thoan also married at the age of 19, and got divorced in 2011 shortly after her baby was born. The pair collaborate like sisters on the restaurant, which is open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

    “If they had been self-reliant in their homelands, they would not have had to come to Korea”

    The ultimate goal of the social enterprise OYORI ASIA is to support women like Ngoc Nhon to become self-reliant and live their lives. Why did founder Jihey Lee, who was once an outstanding marketer at an IT company, decide to set up this social enterprise?

    “I felt skeptical about the way I made money with the contents full of sensationalism. As a woman, I did not want such anti-feminist things, so I started a new business”, Lee said.

    She opened a restaurant with the conviction that the easiest point of entry for socially-vulnerable immigrant women without educational backgrounds or personal networks would be the restaurant business. Lee is also interested in the development of local franchises of Oyori for women in underdeveloped nations. One such franchise is ‘CaféMitini’, launched in 2013 in Kathmandu, Nepal. It offers free tutoring and internship programs for women who cannot afford barista training due to the high costs. She explained, “The reasons why women in poor countries choose international marriage are mostly economic. If they had been self-reliant in their homelands, they would not have had to come to Korea to marry an utter stranger”. She added, “We should extend the support for self-reliance to women in underdeveloped countries in Asia”.

    The efforts of Oyori are bearing fruits. Dawa Dabuti Sherpa, who has worked at Café Mitini for four years and first joined as a trainee, has finally realized her dream. Expect the opening of ‘Café Mitini No.2’ in July this year, she said.  “I dream of becoming a good barista through the program. I would like to open a big café in my homeland, Nepal, in the future.”

     

    http://www.oyori.asia/

     

     

  • The Nawaya Project: The Lebanese talent program taking on youth unemployment

    The Nawaya Project: The Lebanese talent program taking on youth unemployment

    It is rather customary to say that a simple encounter can change the course of your life. Nothing holds more true for Zeina Saab. In 2009, the Lebanese-American took her first humanitarian journey with USAID to the isolated Lebanese village of Chmestar. There, in a maze of alleyways, she met Nadeen Ghosn. The unabashed 14-year-old spontaneously presented Zeina with a collection of her drawings.  What Saab saw were not clumsy children’s pictures, but a series of elaborate dress sketches that would easily be at home in a sewing atelier. Nadeen, however, had never even learned the basics of fashion design.

    Zeina was blown away. Upon returning home, the young woman with an Master’s Degree in Urban Planning from MIT, had one idea in mind: to help Nadeen. “When I met her, I knew that she could one day become the next great fashion designer. Nadeen, however, had no support. Without means or resources, her talent would never be cultivated”, says Saab, now 33 years old.

    The idea continued to germinate in Zeina’s mind until 2012, when she founded “The Nawaya Project”, an innovative NGO that helps marginalised youth develop their talent so that they can integrate into the workforce.

    During the three years following her initial meeting with Nadeen, Zeina took the necessary steps to launch the “Talent Program”, in which she and the 10 members of the Nawaya team connect youth from underprivileged backgrounds with mentors and professionals. There have been over 300 beneficiaries since the beginning of the project, their main  objective: to develop and cultivate their passions and talents in various fields, such as design, music, athletics, writing, performing arts and even coding and robotics. Though she is currently focused on Lebanon, Zeina Saab has her sights on growth. “We want to expand our platform to the entire Middle East. If it works, we will create a globally connected community engaged in the development and empowerment of disenfranchised youth around the world”, she says with conviction.

    During the Nawaya Network’s first year, Zeina did everything necessary to enrol Nadeen Ghosn, the program’s first beneficiary, into CAMM Fashion Academy, one of the best fashion schools in Lebanon. Thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign, Nadeen was able to raise $15,000 for the full three-year program. “By accepting me into Nawaya, Zeina gave me the opportunity to take part in prestigious fashion workshops. Thanks to the Talent Program, I was taught and formed by renowned fashion professionals. I had the opportunity to learn how to create jewellery, clothes, handbags and so much more”, Nadeen enthusiastically explains. Today the young woman is independent. She works full-time at Atelier C. in Beirut, and dreams of creating her own clothing line in a few years.

    To maintain her NGO, Zeina Saab relies on sponsors as well as regional and international partners, which include Patchi Chocolates, Global Fund for Children, King Abdullah Fund for Development and UNICEF. Nawaya’s website also hosts an online donation platform. “Anonymous donations represent the majority of our funding. We also organize events for the general public and for investors from across the country. This program engages a lot of people since it primarily targets Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians”, explains Maria Achkar, Head of Communications at Nawaya.

    Today, Nawaya has a new headliner project, “Impact Lab”, funded by UNICEF, which aims to help young unemployed Lebanese enter the workforce. Youth are selected from across the country thanks to a series of organised meet-ups. “Participants should be between 18 and 26 years old and must be able to read and write. Otherwise the program would be difficult to implement”, explains the founder. The program organizes meetings and offers mentorship workshops. “We spend a week helping them develop creative and innovative solutions to the problems their communities face. The most viable ideas are then submitted to entrepreneurs, who contribute to the development and financing of the projects, up to $2,000 for the most interesting”, Saab adds. Ultimately, the youth-developed projects must become profitable, so that they are able to take their lives into their own hands. This is the heart of the Nawaya project.

    https://www.nawaya.org/impact-lab

     

  • Driving from a wheelchair

    Driving from a wheelchair

    Family business from North Moravia develops breakthrough vehicle for disabled drivers

     

    Many men have boyhood dreams of constructing their own car. The vast majority grow out of the idea, or settle for a go-kart. But Ladislav Brázdil and his two sons made sure their dreams came true: Elbee Mobility, their family business in the small town Loštice in the Olomouc district of North Moravia, the Czech Republic, is now manufacturing its own Elbee cars and is even beginning to tap into the world market.

     

    The Elbee is a weird vehicle. It opens from the front, and you don’t climb in, but ride straight into it with a wheelchair. It’s an unrivaled concept that saw the Brázdils and the Elbee voted among the top 100 bright ideas in Central and Eastern European countries at the end of 2015.

     

    Elbee Mobility was a spin-off from the business ZLKL (a Czech abbreviation for Loštice Light Construction Works), an outfit that originally had nothing to do with cars.

     

    Built up by Ladislav Brázdil Senior on the ruins of agricultural buildings that used to be part of a local collective farm, the family business today has about two hundred employees and an annual turnover in excess of 350 million CZK (more than 14 million US dollars).

     

    Ladislav Brázdil Senior bought the farm with a business partner when it collapsed after the Czech revolution. His big break came in 2003 when he decided to buy out his co-owners’ shares. Then, instead of reconditioning the old machinery, Brázdil Senior invested in modern and more reliable technologies.

     

    When a design engineer asked him about an idea he had in mind, Brázdil Senior went after his dream of creating his own product: an urban micro-car designed specifically for disabled drivers.

     

    “This was it,” says Brázdil Senior, remembering that first meeting. “It was something unique that we as an engineering business could produce in part, and at the same time it supported our own development as a manufacturing business.”

     

    The road to assembling the final product was a long one. The decision to make a front-opening vehicle meant considering how to raise both the hood and steering column to allow wheelchair users to drive inside.

     

    This direct driver access to the vehicle was a fundamental principle of the whole project. Ordinary vehicles adapted for wheelchair users simply do not resolve the problem of what to do with the wheelchair. If wheelchair users don’t have enough strength to stow their wheelchairs themselves, they need someone to help them.

     

    A major advantage of front-end opening is that wheelchair users can park the car facing the sidewalk. If they have rear-end opening they can reverse up to the curb, but for many wheelchair users, this is a very complex operation, especially if they have restricted neck movement. With face-forward parking, the driver can see where he or she is going and where to release the wheelchair ramp so as to ride out of the car safely, among pedestrians on the sidewalk, and not onto the roadway.


    Homologation is the approval process of certifying vehicles as roadworthy, and this was essential when the Elbee was still in development. Official certification was granted for the Czech Republic in 2010, for a vehicle with a two-stroke engine capable of a top speed of around 50 miles an hour. Three years later the car was approved for the entire European Union. The first model went to market at the end of 2014.

     

    The historic first customer was František Trunda from Brno, who lost both legs below the hips years ago, and for whom the car has provided a renewed sense of freedom. “It’s changed my life,” he says. “I can now go for a drive out of town or go to see my brother. I don’t have to wait until someone has time to go with me.”

     

    So far, the business has produced many vehicles which are now on the roads throughout Europe, namely in France, Italy, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

     

    One limiting factor and a risk for the project, specifically in the Czech market, is the price of the car. The current price is 600 thousand CZK (almost 25 thousand US dollars), and although the effective purchase price can be cut by two-thirds thanks to various subsidies and reliefs, it is still cheaper for wheelchair users to modify a normal car, and indeed many have already drawn on all available subsidies to do this.

     

    The entire project has already cost the family business 200 million CZK. But further investors are lining up who might boost development, perhaps by introducing serial production or joystick control.

     

    “We’re making something that’s really emotive,” says Ladislav Brázdil Junior, “and this inspires us to continue the project. We’ve had reactions from people saying that thanks to the Elbee they’re now learning to drive and they are regaining strength and ability. In our small way we’re restoring their lives.”

     

    http://www.elbeemobility.com/

  • Feelif technology: Feeling life under your fingers

    Feelif technology: Feeling life under your fingers

    New ways of helping children learn Braille and geometry

     

    Mia, an elementary school student at the IRIS Centre for the Blind and Visually Impaired Youth, is sliding her finger on the tablet screen covered with a special grid. By following the vibrating points, she skillfully detects the shape of a square on the screen. She then tries to solve the Memory Game and is delighted each time she finds compatible plates with animal motifs and is rewarded with appropriate animal sounds. She is already familiar with the Feelif device as she has tried it several times, and she is also contributing to its development with her suggestions. This innovation from 4WEB in Slovenia will not only make her life easier but can also improve the lives of millions of other blind and visually impaired people around the world.

    The blind and visually impaired can be very skillful at using tablets and smartphones with touchscreens. The groundbreaking innovation of the Feelif multimedia device now enables them to feel the shapes of objects on one-dimensional surfaces too. Until now, the closest thing to this was a Braille graphic screen which displays shapes with raised pins but it is prohibitively expensive: it costs around 50,000 euros. Only educational institutions for the blind and visually impaired are able to afford it.

    Feelif is about a hundred times cheaper. Željko Khermayer, the inventor and founder of the digital agency 4WEB, claims that this device can open up new dimensions of using information in a digital format, such as feeling shapes, making drawings, and using interactive stories. This ability may come naturally to those who can see but until now it was inaccessible to the blind and visually impaired.

    A tool for learning Braille and geometry

    Željko had the Feelif idea in 2013 while watching a documentary on the deaf-blind community in Slovenia. He was deeply touched by the fact that these people were deprived of many experiences due to their loss of vision, and they were also cut off from the rest of the world because of the high costs of communication technology. He decided to help.

    Željko then started developing innovative technology for the blind and visually impaired, like applying vibrations, sounds, and voices to help users identify shapes displayed on the tablet screen or which they drew themselves. The small elevated points on the grid allow for better orientation as the user slides his or her fingers on the screen.

    The Feelif was developed with the help of elementary school students and therefore the content is focused on school subjects, says Katarina Pavšek, a member of the 4WEB team. The application will be very useful for learning Braille and geometrical functions, and will enable quicker learning and independent studying. 4WEB is also looking for ways to apply the technology to adults. They are testing a device on the Slovenian market and the first users will receive it within a month.

    As it is meant to be fun, the Feelif will also stimulate the learning process. It is well-known that blind and visually impaired children often have a hard time staying attentive. “They need more encouragement during their learning process,” explains Katarina. She adds that existing learning methods are still needed to help children get fine motor skills.

    10 year old Damjan who lost his sight due to an illness was most excited about being able to draw. “If you draw with a pencil, you can not feel shapes with your fingers. With Feelif this has becomes a possibility. It’s really easy to learn how to use it,” says Damjan.

    Mrs. Maja Koritnik, mother of a visually impaired child remarks, “Parents of blind and visual impaired kids see the benefit of Feelif’s work in a simple and innovative approach; the source of the idea is a honest readiness to help others, and at the same time the idea is a reflection of social responsibility Feelif’s team.”

    88 million potential users

    The Feelif multimedia device consists of a tablet, a relief grid placed over a screen, and an application which connects all these parts into an experience that can be felt by the fingers of a blind person. It costs 500 euros. “When we are sure that the product is at an excellent level, we will make it available on the global market: first in European countries, and later in the USA,” says Katarina. There are about 14 million potential users of the device in both markets, and 88 million potential users worldwide.

    The company is also developing an open platform which will create a network of people linked to the blind and visually impaired: the blind and visually impaired themselves, their parents, their teachers, and those who want to create appropriate content for them. This platform will facilitate the sharing or selling of content, which in turn could create new business opportunities for the blind and visually impaired, and their parents.

    4WEB is searching for funding to develop this open platform, but considering their success as an innovator, this shouldn’t be too hard. At this year’s Webit Europe Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria, they were the second best innovation among 2,425 startup companies. 4WEB also won the Slovenian competition of social innovations and was one of the five finalists at the Podim conference for startup companies in the Alpe-Adria region. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) listed the Feelif device is one of the 150 best innovations in the world. Željko Khermayer, the founder and CEO of the company, has also been named as one of the 100 most influential innovators in Central and Eastern Europe.

    http://www.feelif.com/

     

  • Secretly Solar

    Secretly Solar

    An Italian company is making photovoltaic roof tiles that perfectly mimic materials such as terracotta, stone and wood

    In historic centres and buildings throughout Europe, obtaining permission to install a solar photovoltaic (PV) roof can be complicated. Aesthetic landscape constraints are often so strict that the limitations become prohibitive, unless the solar cells are invisible.

    Hence, many have tried hiding or embedding solar roof panels in a material that resembles what is often used for roofing, stone paving or to clad blind walls. Elon Musk’s Tesla, for example, came up with a glass-layered shingle. Products like these are more or less invisible from the street—but from a certain height one can see the dark cells, an unacceptable idea in places such as the renowned Paris roofscape.

    Now Dyaqua, a small family-owned company in Vicenza, Italy, has created a product called Invisible Solar, a PV roof tile unlike anything else on the market. And it has sparked an immediate boom.

    Dyaqua inserts the PV cells inside a polymeric compound that mimics common building materials such as stone or wood so that the solar cells are completely invisible to the human eye.

    “Since we started production a few months ago, we can’t keep up with orders, not only from Italy, but from France, Spain and the United States,” said Giovanni Quagliato, a Vicenza-born artist specialised in creating epoxy resin artwork, who discovered the secret to giving a totally natural look to polymeric compounds, while keeping them transparent to light.

    The compound can be transformed to look like any building material, whether terracotta, stone, cement or wood. It is non-toxic and recyclable, built to withstand high static loads and resistant to atmospheric agents and chemical solvents. “It’s all about density: it has to be enough to fool the eye, but not too much, so as not to block the rays of the sun,” explained Quagliato. Years ago, he launched a production line of LED lights called Medea, based on the same technology. He then went on to create PV systems with his line Dyaqua, launched in collaboration with the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA).

    “The principle is the same: in the lamps, the light comes from the inside and must go outwards, while in PV tiles, the rays of the sun come from the outside and must penetrate the transparent material and reach the solar cells,” Quagliato explained. Applying this theory, however, was no easy task. Achieving the ideal concentration took years of hard work. The prototype’s efficiency was then tested by an independent scientific body. The tests confirmed an impressive performance of 70 peak watts per square meter, or about half the performance of a classic photovoltaic module.

    Invisible Solar is available on the market for 7 euros per watt, against 1-2 euros per watt for standard PV modules. “You have to keep in mind that these are handcrafted products, designed specifically for historical centres: prices can often vary from 1 to 7 euros even for regular tiles and historic centre roof tiles,” Quagliato noted.

    For now, Dyaqua survives on the production of LED lamps. The photovoltaic products are not financially sustainable, because they require an exorbitant amount of manual work. So far, there aren’t any machines capable of replacing the careful hand of man in applying different layers of resin at varying densities, both above and under the photovoltaic cells, with the right curvature for the perfect roof tile. The creation of flat surfaces resembling stone or cement is simpler, but it is still a delicate task that cannot compare to the industrial production of ordinary tiles or solar panels.

    “To accelerate production and keep up with demand, we would have to invent machines that integrate or replace manual work,” said Quagliato. Only in this way can mass production be achieved, contributing to lower prices and increased product competitiveness with large producers, such as Tesla’s Solar Roof.

    But Dyaqua lacks the funds to invest in a machine. Quagliato’s children, Matteo and Elisa, launched a crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo, attempting to raise USD 20,000 to pay for one. “Invisible Solar is my dream of a healthy world,” noted Matteo, “where technology has the natural appearance of our landscapes.”

     

    http://www.dyaqua.it/

     

     

     

     

  • I-Drop Water makes a splash providing purified water to South Africans

    I-Drop Water makes a splash providing purified water to South Africans

    For Petunia Mohale, safe drinking water was not a given.

    After discovering rust inside the pipes at her home, Mohale was hesitant to drink the tap water.

    According to a 2015 report from the World Health Organization (WHO), 1.8 billion people around the world use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces. Mohale was one of approximately 300 million people in Africa who do not have access to safe drinking water.

    So when a sales representative for I-Drop Water approached her about installing a water purification system at her tuck shop in Soweto, Mohale agreed.

    “People don’t have a choice between this really stark alternative of either risking your health by drinking unsafe water or finding a way to pay for incredibly expensive bottled water which is environmentally devastating and just really inefficient,” said James Steere, co-founder of I-Drop Water.

    Steere and Kate Thiers Steere founded I-Drop Water as an alternative solution to make safe drinking water affordable and accessible for people like Mohale in South Africa and the African continent.

    Since its founding in 2015, I-Drop has partnered with grocery store owners in four African countries (South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Ghana) to install over 60 filtration systems and has already sold over half a million litres of safe drinking water.

    I-Drop purification systems are installed in any grocery store with access to a running tap, at no cost to the shop owner. Customers can then purchase safe drinking water for just R1 per litre – an approximate 80% discount on bottled water. At the end of each month, I-Drop splits the profit from water sales evenly with the shop owner.

    “It’s a price point low enough for just about everyone to afford and it’s incredibly efficient,” Steere said of the I-Drop business model.

    “We’ve removed these capital cost barriers by making it [the filtration system] free for any grocery store to install in their shop and start selling.”

    In the months after installing the machine, Mohale sold around five bottles of filtered water a day, with more on the weekends. She encourages customers to buy I-Drop water, despite their initial reluctance. At first customers thought it was just tap water and not safe like bottled water, she said.

    But the I-Drop filtration system is just as effective and more cost-efficient than the bottled water industry because of three major components: the filter itself, cellular networks and environmental sustainability.

    The I-Drop system’s water filter, which is manufactured in the United States, uses a nanocarbon configuration to filter out viruses, bacteria, and cysts – anything that is carbon based and could make someone sick – while retaining the water’s minerals.

    “The filter produces no waste water. It’s a simple configuration of water that comes in contaminated comes out the other side clean and that’s essential because there’s a lot of water constraint,” Steere said.

    While the filter is efficient, effective and requires minimal oversight, Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) technology connects each machine to the I-Drop platform, allowing Thiers Steere to monitor each machine remotely.

    “I’m the data nerd. I’m the one who manages the whole platform and I’m the one that diagnoses problems. The amount you can tell from the information we get is incredible,” Thiers Steere said.

    While an I-Drop technician is available to repair the machine should it malfunction, Thiers Steere is typically able to address any technical problems remotely via the machine’s cellular-based platform and the data she receives from it.

    As a result, the personal oversight by I-Drop over each machine is limited to a filter change every 6 or 8 months. But even then, storeowners can be trained to replace the filters themselves.

    “There are hardly any places in Africa that don’t have decent [cell] coverage. And because we’ve designed our system so that it can run on solar power completely, it can run a pump on solar power, it can run electronic communication on solar,” Steere said.

    While solar power is one of I-Drop’s environmental benefits, the project also reduces plastic consumption. Consumers bring their own container or purchase a reusable container instead of buying individual water bottles.

    Ultimately, I-Drop aims to be an environmentally friendly, affordable alternative to the bottled water industry and a practical solution to deteriorating water infrastructure.

    “The massive investment needed by the government to make all the water that’s reaching people safe to drink is unrealistic,” Steere said.

    According to the South African Institute of Civil Engineering’s Infrastructure Report Card 2011, the replacement value of the water resources infrastructure was R139 billion.

    “Instead, why not treat drinking water as a food. If you can bring the price down to a point that everyone can afford it and you use existing channels [grocery stores] to get it to them, you’ve addressed that specific issue,” Steere said.

    Yet, Steere and Thiers Steere acknowledge that R1 per litre is still unaffordable for some people.

    “We want to be part of the drinking water solution. We need to tackle this challenge using business and our business model enables that,” Steere said.

    As a for-profit business venture, I-Drop hopes to subsidize the cost of installing filtration systems by sales revenue generated from local storeowners. They have already installed a machine at Bapedi Primary School in Soweto, which allows the learners and staff to drink safe water for free.

    Steere and Thiers Steere believe in the eventual scalability of I-Drop throughout Africa and elsewhere. But in the meantime, their focus is first growing the South African market around Johannesburg and the Eastern Cape.

     

    https://www.idropwater.com/

  • Tackling child pneumonia with technology

    Tackling child pneumonia with technology

    Six months of coughing and a debilitating fever was too much for Olivia Koburongo’s 86-year-old grandmother, whose body had been weakened by other age-related conditions. My grandmother, the 26-year old says, died of pneumonia that could not easily be diagnosed because of a lack of proper diagnostic equipment. “For six months she kept taking wrong medicine. Several health workers in different health facilities had diagnosed her with malaria. Pneumonia was discovered after a postmortem was conducted when she died,” Koburongo reveals.

    Killer ailment

    Children and the elderly are especially vulnerable to pneumonia. According to Unicef, pneumonia accounts for almost one million child deaths worldwide every year; 922,000 in 2015 which is 16% of total deaths among children under five years of age. In Uganda, Unicef estimates that the disease kills up to 24,000 children under-five every year, many of whom were misdiagnosed with malaria.

    Uganda, like its neighbouring countries, lacks proper diagnostic equipment for many diseases such as pneumonia, therefore health workers rely on basic clinical examinations. It is in this context that in 2014, Koburongo and four others invented “Mama-Ope” (Mother’s Hope): a biomedical smart jacket that detects and analyses pneumonia symptoms among children, with the aim of providing more accurate diagnosis. Koburongo, a graduate of Telecom Engineering from Makerere University, says the team has developed a prototype that is three times faster than the standard diagnostic process in Uganda.

    According to co-founder Brian Turyabagye, also a telecom engineer: “The jacket diagnoses, measures the extent to which the disease has affected the lungs and also tracks the progress of the disease since diagnostic information is sharable.”

    Milestone

    Mama-Ope won runner-up prize in the Big Ideas Innovation competition run by the University of California Berkeley in 2015. The $6,500 (about Shs 22.7m) prize provided seed money that the team used to develop a prototype.

    The team is currently in the process of getting certification from Uganda’s Ministry of Health.

    According to Dr Flavia Mpanga Kaggwa, a Health Specialist at Unicef Uganda: “The jacket needs to be approved by a regulatory authority to have the possibility of commercial viability. Otherwise I think it would be a great addition to the tools used in diagnosing pneumonia.”

    Once certification is secured, the team intends to do mass production and supply the jacket to countries in East Africa at a cost of about $80 (Shs280,000).

    In the meantime, Mama-Ope has been gaining supporters around the world – in March this year, Brian Turyabagye won the Pitch@Palace Africa event hosted by HRH The Duke of York in London, England.

    “We plan to have the jacket also operate on solar energy which is more reliable for most East African countries,” Turyabage says.

    How it works

    Traditionally, doctors use a stethoscope to check for abnormal crackling sounds in the lungs. However, if medics suspect malaria or tuberculosis which also cause respiratory distress, they may end up misdiagnosing the patient.

    Currently at prototype stage, the Mama-Ope kit is designed to work as follows: health workers slip the jacket onto the child, and its sensors pick up sound patterns from the lungs, temperature and breathing rate. Each sensor is aligned to a particular symptom and in four minutes, data is computed and sent to a mobile phone application which does the diagnosis.

    “The processed information is sent to a mobile phone app (via Bluetooth) which analyses the information in comparison to known data so as to get an estimate of the strength of the disease,” explains Turyabagye.

    According to studies carried out by its inventors, the jacket can diagnose pneumonia up to three times faster than a doctor, and reduces human error.  The Mama-Ope team has also hired private medical researchers from Makerere University’s Infectious Disease Institute to test their prototype, and sought guidance from Unicef. Dr Namwase, a paeditrician at Mulago National Referral Hospital, said the device is “easy to use because there are not so many processes involved but also does not require special training to the health workers.”

    After displaying the result on the app, the technology goes on to advise on the appropriate action, e.g. if the disease is severe, it advises the user to reach out to the nearest referral hospitals. The beauty of this is that the doctor can gauge the severity of the disease from the point it was first diagnosed by using the information stored on the cloud.

     Aim

    Mama-Ope’s founders hope the smart jacket will help in saving diagnosis time and reduce the number of deaths due to pneumonia, which would be a great contribution to the country’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and save the government on wastage of drugs.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • ‘Bassita’ launches Egyptian initiative for development through clickfunding

    ‘Bassita’ launches Egyptian initiative for development through clickfunding

    One out of many basic needs to ensure a minimum quality of life is water.

    Egyptians in many areas, especially those in underprivileged villages in Upper Egypt, have been deprived of water resources for many years. They often resort to buying from water vendors who roam areas where there are shortages.

    In an effort to find a solution to this crisis, a group of young volunteers from the start-up “Bassita” (Simple) launched an initiative that would help raise money for charity through users’ clicks on social networking websites.

    The initiative takes advantage of Egyptians’ tendency to participate in charitable initiatives, the high number of Facebook users in the country, and the long time Egyptians usually spend browsing such social networks.

    The concept is adapted around the type and number of interactions on these sites. For example, when a user clicks the like or share button or writes a comment on a Facebook post by “Bassita”, that interaction is then translated into money (paid out by sponsors and donors).

    The “Bassita” team called this process “clickfunding”, a method of raising money by pressing a button.

    “Bassita” was founded by Salem Mesalaha, who spent the majority of his life in France, along with other founders including a French friend of his.

    Mesalaha said the idea behind the initiative is purely Egyptian. “We do not have to copy European ideas. This time we invented an Egyptian method that will hopefully be copied by Westerners,” he said.

    “Bassita” coordinates with non-profit organizations in order to create a promotional video of the charitable work they want to carry out in a particular region or for people in need of specific donations or reforms to improve their living conditions, health or education. The project videos are presented by charitable celebrities in a bid to catch the attention of a wider audience.

    Once “Bassita” agrees with sponsors and donators to these charitable organizations on the price for a certain number of clicks by users, the video gets published on social networking websites.

    Each interaction by a user on the video scores a point until the targeted number of interactions is achieved. The number of interactions is calculated through a progress bar which monitors the number of clicks until it reaches 100 percent, said Mesalaha.

    The progress bar registers a like as two points, a share as three points and a comment as five points, Mesalaha explained. These points translate into a certain sum of money to be paid by the advertiser or owner of the video (usually a charitable organization).

    So quite simply, the more that the online community engage with the promotional videos through their clicks, the more the sponsors will fund the charitable initiatives.

    The initiative involves those who want to participate in charitable projects but do not have enough money to donate themselves. They will be able to participate with the smallest effort—clicks, Mesalaha added.

    “Bassita” successfully participated in a joint campaign with UNICEF to provide running water for 1,000 houses in south Egypt.

    “The happiness on people’s faces after water reaches their houses for the first time is unforgettable,” Mesalaha said.

    “Bassita” published a video in February 2016 featuring actor-comedian Maged al-Kedwany to promote the idea of clickfunding with the hashtag “A click conveys water”. The video hit over 2 million views in just three days.

    Within six months, running water was accessible in 1,000 houses through water pipes in four provinces in south Egypt, according to UNICEF. The project included a hygiene awareness program and cost $170,000.

    “Bassita” has participated in many campaigns with charities that aim to improve the community role in poorer cities and villages. One such campaign provided food and blankets to over 7,000 families in cooperation with charitable banks. Another campaign established a range of community schools to educate disadvantaged children in cooperation with Misr El Kheir foundation, as well as eyeglasses for 100 men and women whose trade is knitting.

    Besides raising donations, “Bassita” aims to promote empathy among Egyptians toward the needs of others and encourage philanthropy, Mesalaha mentioned.

    “We are not promoting the foundation itself, but rather charity as a valuable cause in society,” he said.

    “Bassita” is planning more campaigns soon in coordination with other charities like “Helm” (Dream) to prepare accessible roads to Cairo University for people with special needs, and another campaign with “Safarny” (Let Me Travel) association to educate children about other cultures.

    http://clickfunding.org/en

  • Impact Water: providing safe drinking water solutions at scale

    Impact Water: providing safe drinking water solutions at scale

    When non-profit Impact Carbon was first introduced in Uganda, it sought ways of advancing the production and quality of improved, clean-burning cook stoves as a way to mitigate carbon emissions and reduce indoor air pollution.

    As operations at Impact Carbon progressed, there was a realisation of the need to simultaneously introduce water purification systems.

    “We found that we could also look into introducing water purification systems as a channel to reduce consumption of wood based fuel so instead of having to boil water and use lots of wood which has a negative impact on the environment, households and institutions could use purification systems,” Mark Turgesen, Director of Impact Carbon and Impact Water in Uganda explains.

    In 2012, Impact Carbon carried out a pilot study to identify how it could help schools in particular, primarily because it would allow the organisation to deal with a large population that needs safe drinking water and more so because children are part of the most vulnerable people in society.

    Statistics from Water.org, an organisation that provides water solutions on a large scale and operates in fourteen countries around the world, indicate that about 8 million Ugandans cannot access clean water. According to Turgesen, children have a right to survival and part of survival is adequate food, adequate water and proper shelter.

    “It should be accessible not for children to just meet their basic rights but to also enjoy the health implications which can affect attendance rates at school and attention in class,” he says.

    The Water and Sanitation Program Africa Region (WSP-AF) reported that 440 children die every week in Uganda because of waterborne diseases. Impact Carbon estimates that 40 per cent of diarrheal cases are attributed to water consumption at schools.

    However, amidst all this, one thought lingered on the minds of the team at Impact Carbon.

    “Do we offer free water purification systems to schools? Is that sustainable? What could we do that would have a profound impact to ensure that when we have introduced these systems, we are able to maintain them,” they wondered.

    The solution lay in operating the project as a business. More so, buying the systems would encourage schools to own the responsibility of carefully utilising and maintaining them. The idea birthed Impact Water which was registered in 2015, a social business that provides reliable safe drinking water to Uganda’s institutions.

    The process

    The water goes through a three stage process. For the first part of purification, Impact Water connects its Ultraviolet purification system to existing water sources such as national water taps, wells, boreholes and rain water harvest. The water is then filtered to remove dirt and large pathogens. To make it taste fresh, activated carbon purification removes dissolved substances and improves the odor. The water is then treated in the ultraviolet chamber to kill all bacteria and viruses that pass through the filters. The filtered water is finally kept in stainless steel tanks designed for schools.

    Response

    Mr Turgesen says the response from schools is the same as when Impact Water opened shop in 2015. “The response is, ‘when can I get started’? It is because schools are looking for solutions because they know it is a problem,” he notes.

    This was the case for Mr Adam Kakembo, a teacher and sanitary master at Kawempe Muslim Secondary School in Kampala. Kawempe now has three Impact Water systems and consumes about 4500 litres of water a day.

    Kakembo explains that before the installation of the purification systems, “We would boil 300 litres for the boys and about 200 litres of water for the girls in the students’ kitchens. We would consume about three to four lorries of firewood per week.”

    Kakembo notes that besides the cost implications, the water boiled in this way was inadequate, unreliable and laborious to supply.

    The students “would get water only during lunch time. Sometimes firewood would get wet and we would go three days without boiling water. Also, we would store the water in saucepans which exposed it to contamination,” he says.

    Today the school’s story is similar to that of Kibuli Secondary School, another beneficiary in Kampala. The deputy head teacher Hajjati Masitula says the system is convenient and provides easy access to safe water.

    Kakembo says safe drinking water is now always available, the system is energy efficient and affordable; the costs can be met within the confines of the school’s budget. Cases of typhoid have also been reduced.

    “Any school can afford it. The barriers between those who have the system and those who do not is the information gap,” Kakembo adds.

    This is possible because when business commenced, Impact Water sought a new way to make the water system affordable for schools. It put in place a credit facility that allows schools to pay over a two and five year long payment plan, each child paying an average of Shs800 per term.

    Since Impact Water’s inception, 650,000 students in 1300 schools have been able to access safe drinking water thanks to its systems.

    Impact Water is looking to expand further in institutions such as health facilities by specifically targeting bulk sales with non-governmental organisations and via partnerships with school associations.

    For now, the company hopes to extend safe drinking water to 1 million children daily by the end of 2017, reach 5000 schools in Uganda by the end of 2018 and 10,000 schools globally by the end of 2020.

    “Down the road five to ten years from now, I hope that with these meaningful engagements – with school associations for example – that safe drinking water will be expected in the school and that when a parent takes their child to school they know safe drinking water will be available just like food,” Turgesen says.

    http://www.impactwater.co

     

     

     

     

  • A second life for waste

    Just like nature creates a beautiful butterfly from an ordinary caterpillar, the pioneers behind the project “Papillon” morph unwanted items into something beautiful and useful.

    A group of young student-volunteers are working together for one very noble goal – to decrease the pressure of excessive waste on nature and reduce the pollution of the environment.

    Creative thinking is the main component of the project, which is centred on repurposing unwanted items in an environmentally responsible manner. The Papillon team’s inventive approach helps turn waste into colorful and attractive interior decorations and accessories for houses, restaurants and cafes. They are the first in Azerbaijan to engage in this process.

    The idea of founding such a company occurred to four students while they were taking part in a Bootcamp training session organized by Tekhnopark of Azerbaijan’s Social Innovation Lab. The participants had been asked to come up with a solution to address one of the main problems of the modern world – pollution.

    The concept was warmly welcomed at the competition and claimed second place at the Bootcamp, thus encouraging the Papillon team to open their own business.

    “Through our work we are meeting the demand of people for innovation and unordinary ideas,” they said.

    Recycling in Azerbaijan is only at the beginning of its development. Citizens do not currently sort their household waste. A big step forward in the sphere of recycling was taken with the opening of a plant for sorting solid household waste in Balakhani in 2012, with a capacity of 200,000 tons per year. However, only 20 percent of waste is recycled at the plant. After the separation of recyclable materials, the remaining mass is sent to a plant in Baku for incineration.

    Papillon aims to tackle waste at the source. “We are giving waste materials a second life, thus making them useful again. At the same time, in the future we plan to design homes, restaurants, cafes and other facilities,” the team explained.

    Papillon’s products are currently sold to individuals, companies and restaurants. Sales are usually made by featuring samples at exhibitions, or through an online network.

    The team said that despite the project having only launched this January, the company has already sold more than 50 samples of their goods and they predict further growth of demand for their products.

    The idea is to re-design salvaged objects using ornaments and decor. Participants in the project collect bottles, planks, old clothes and textiles from their friends or bring them from their own homes and then embellish them with colored threads and various fancy articles.

    “In this way we receive material from which we will manufacture our products, while unnecessary products will not be discarded and pollute nature,” the team noted.

    The first products were sold immediately. After strengthening their presence on the market, the company plans to buy up unnecessary items from ordinary people for a certain amount, with the aim of widening the scope of their business.

    The team is also gathering volunteers from among students, who are taught the heart and methods of the upcycling process. Volunteers get to devote their spare time to a good cause and gain a chance of becoming potential employees of this design company, which is at an early stage of development.

    Alongside making sales, an exhibition held in April gave the company the chance to showcase itself and recruit a certain audience.

    The future looks promising. Recently Papillon won the second place in Azerbaijan’s “Youth in Business” competition.