Category: Online Special

She is just 15 years old, but has already designed a smart device that generates electric power from raindrops. Reyhan Jamalova, a ninth grade student at the Istek Lyceum in Baku, Azerbaijan, came up with the idea for Rainergy after her father wondered: “If you can make energy from wind, why not from rainwater?”

Rain is one of the last unexploited energy sources in nature. When it rains, billions of liters of water can fall, which have enormous electric potential if used in the right way. “We designed Rainergy to produce electricity from the rain, to solve the problem of energy deficiency in rainy and low income countries,” says Jamalova, whose motto is “Light up one house at a time.”

Jamalova and a friend, Zahra Gasimzade, assisted by their physics tutors, worked for four months running calculations and developing a device to harvest energy from rainwater. The State of Azerbaijan underwrote the initial costs of building it, 34,100 Azerbaijani manats (USD 20,000). Rainergy has since attracted interest from other investors, in particular from India.

The nine-meter-high instrument consists of four main parts: a rainwater collector, a water tank, an electric generator and a battery. The collector fills the reservoir with rainwater that will later flow at high speed through the generator to produce energy. The generated energy is stored in the battery, and can relieve pressure on the local power grid by providing communities with an additional source of electricity. The team has developed two prototypes.

One lights up three LED lamps while the other produces enough electricity to light 22 LED lamps for up to 50 seconds using only seven liters of rainwater. Jamalova says that underprivileged communities can use Rainergy to power items such as street lamps.

Rainergy’s competitors for renewable energy include solar panels, wind turbines and piezoelectricity (which results from subjecting some solids to mechanical stress). Most of these alternatives require substantial investment, labor, and energy or electricity experts to build and operate them, whereas the Rainergy device has a relatively simple design.

“Our model is much more efficient in comparison with similar systems,” explains Jamalova, noting that piezoelectric rain generators produce only 25 microwatts of power. Rain-harvested energy emits 10g/kwh of CO2 during electricity production, which Jamalova claims is “very low compared to alternative energy solutions.”

Another advantage of the Rainergy device is that it stores energy in a battery, so that it is effective even when there is no rain.
Rainergy was first presented at the Global Summit of Entrepreneurship in India in November 2017. While Rainergy’s creators originally conceived of the device for regions of Azerbaijan with the heaviest rainfall, they are aiming to market it internationally – especially since, as Jamalova says, “Azerbaijan is not a rainy country.”

In countries such as the Philippines, India, Malaysia and Indonesia, where monsoon rains are frequent, this device could be a perfect solution for reducing dependence on power lines and improving access to electricity. 21 percent of the population in India and 11 percent in the Philippines lack access to electricity, according to the Global Tracking Framework 2014 report.

“In the future, we want to create a business based on this device,” says Jamalova. For now, the invention has landed its young creator on Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list 2018 – the first Azerbaijani person in history to make the rating.

Having wild bees as pets might sound a little off the wall, but such is the case for Tom Strobi and Claudio Sedivy. The two biologists from Zurich are working with an environmental issue at heart: boosting the populations of these endangered pollinators.

In 2011, a United Nations report set alarm bells ringing. It said that the worldwide bee population is in free fall. According to the UN, the phenomenon is due to a reduction in flowering plants, as well as the presence of pesticides and air pollution. And the stakes are high. Without bees acting as pollinators, one-third of our food supply could disappear. Of the 100 plant species accounting for 90 percent of the world’s food, more than 70 percent rely on bees for pollination.

A growing number of documentaries and articles about the issue indicate that the countdown has truly begun. But is the demise of these insects unavoidable? Could we take individual action and work toward a reversal of the trend? Banning pesticides worldwide is beyond any one person’s control. However, the Zurich startup Wildbiene + Partner, founded in 2013 by Strobl and Sedivy, offers each one of us the possibility to make a simple gesture for the survival of the bees. By setting up a mason bee nest on a balcony or in a garden, any person can become a breeder and provide bees with a place to reproduce.

Unlike honey bees, mason bees have no queen, do not sting and do not produce honey. These furry little amber-colored insects prove rather agreeable company in an urban garden or on a balcony, where they can enjoy a diversity of plants. They are hard-working pollinators. “One single wild bee pollinates as much as 300 honey bees,” Strobl said. But not all flowers have quite the same draw for mason bees. They particularly enjoy fruit trees and plants such as strawberries, raspberries and blackberries.

Five years after the launch of the startup, the concept has already won over some 30,000 clients and 300 farmers in Switzerland. And the number of takers is firmly on the rise. Starting this year, the offer was extended to France. All one needs to do to become a breeder is order the equipment from the startup’s website, then wait for delivery of a bee home and a population of 25 bee cocoons.

The Swiss-German startup sells two different bee home options, one for private clients and the other for professionals. The first is a small home, around 20 cm wide, with roughly 100 nesting holes. It costs 120 Swiss francs (USD 120). The second is a similar structure but eight times the size, and it sells for 200 francs. Strobl and Sedivy recommend that breeders have as many different homes as possible to optimize pollination. “Depending on the nature of their crops, we advise people to install two to four nests, or homes, per hectare,” Strobl said.

To increase the population of wild bees in Switzerland, and fight their extinction, Wildbiene + Partner suggest that bee home owners pay a small fee to send the inside structure of their bee homes back every autumn and the nesting tubes each hold six to 12 cocoons. The eggs, collected by the biologists, are then used to make new stocks and replenish the bee homes. They claim each bee home can lead to the birth of more than 100 bees per year.

In exchange, the biologists check the returned bee homes for parasites. “As this is not their natural habitat, the risks of infestation are higher,” explained Strobl. They keep statistics for every bee home, giving breeders a way to know exactly how many bees they’ve brought into the world since setting up their operation.

Aside from boosting pollination, the two Zurich biologists are trying to raise people’s awareness of how bees live. For a slightly higher fee, individuals can order a bee home equipped with an observation drawer. Any curious breeder can then study the insect along its evolutionary cycle from egg to cocoon. Although mason bees zoom in and out of their homes between March and June, from July onward the majority of their activity takes place inside the structure.

www.wildbieneundpartner.ch

It was his fourth day of fasting. In 2010, Ezequiel Vedana was determined to start eating again only when he had a bright idea for a new business. Who would have thought that the toilet would provide his inspiration?

The fasting period was a way for the Brazilian to seek divine inspiration for a new stage in his life. Vedana, who once owned a graphic design business, wanted to change direction. His epiphany – not religious, but technological and environmentally friendly – would help to save billions of liters of water that literally go down the drain.

Until then, the most common way to reduce toilet water use was by using modern flushing mechanisms. “Ecological” toilets consume between three and six liters of water each time they are flushed. Older formats, such as toilets with water tanks mounted high and operated using a pull cord, consume anywhere between 10 and 15 liters per flush.

Vedana and his co-workers, including his wife, Ariane Pelicioli da Rosa, thought the so-called ecological toilets didn’t save that much water. The solution they sought would reduce water waste by nearly 100 percent. That’s when they came up with the idea for Piipee (pronounced peepeh).

They wanted to create a solution that, when it comes into contact with urine, neutralizes its smell and color, eliminating the need to flush it away.

Tests led the entrepreneurs to an essentially natural formula involving plant extracts and baking soda.

They also had to create a dispenser so that the solution would be activated every time someone went to the bathroom. For smaller rooms, a common spray would be enough, since the Piipee also freshens the air.

For a medium-size or large company, they recommend that the dispenser be installed in every toilet bowl and urinal, at a cost of 79.9 or 84.8 Brazilian reais (USD 22 or 24). The price might seem high, but the system’s strong suit is that refills are cheap (24.9 reais for a 500 milliliter charge, 49.9 reais for one liter, 249,9 reais for 5 liters).

Since each application consumes only one milliliter, the unit cost is a mere 0.05 reais for every flush that’s avoided. Compare that to the price of a flush, which varies from 0.06 to 0.35 reais, depending on region and infrastructure.

By installing the Piipee, a big company, whether industrial or retail, with 1,000 employees and an average flush rate of two times a day, could economize as much as 2,640 reais and 132,000 liters of water per month.

“Very few people know how much each flush costs. Few people know how many liters of water are used, or how much they pay for each liter of water used at home. And when people find out, they are stunned,” says Vedana.

 

One company that has already tested Piipee, a restaurant in Brasilia, reduced its water bill from 4,172 to 2,720 reais in four months.

Such impact has earned the company 12 important international awards. The World Intellectual Property Organization recognized the idea as a global climate innovation, and Brazil has presented the device at climate summits such as COP 21 in Paris in 2015.

Companies that have tested the system include Braskem (a partner in the project), Itaú bank, Whirlpool, retail chain Renner and magazine publisher Grupo Abril.

Production started through a system of pre-orders; the company sold the product and promised delivery within 60 days. Vedana was proud that the first lot of Piipee devices was manufactured and delivered in only 30 days. He estimates that the device has already saved 8 million liters of water.

Vedana won’t reveal sales numbers, but claims the company grew nearly fourfold from 2016 to 2017, and says that based on current trends, 2018 promises record sales. He is looking for international partners, and recently traveled to South Africa to that end.

He plans to sell Piipee soon using a model similar to that adopted by cosmetics companies, with self-employed representatives marketing the device door to door.

Working in a foreign country, often for weeks without a break, with no friends or knowledge of the local language – this was the situation for Yani, a young woman from Indonesia living in Taiwan’s capital city, Taipei. Until then, she had been pursuing her father’s dream for her: a chance at a better life through education. But her father’s sudden death left Yani with no choice but to join the workforce to support her family after graduating high school. Having heard that higher salaries could be found abroad, she left everything familiar behind and emigrated to Taiwan.

Yani’s story is not an unusual one. Many families in Southeast Asian (SEA) countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines send members abroad to find better job opportunities. Today, Taiwan hosts almost 600,000 migrant workers from these countries, or one in forty residents. Although jobs can be found –mainly in laborer positions such as domestic caretaking or fishing– a vicious cycle is perpetuated because these jobs usually offer limited transferable skills, restricting the workers to low salaries when they return home. Just as bad is the isolation endured by these migrant workers due to differences in language, religion and culture.

The One-Forty Foundation, a Taiwanese non-profit, aids migrant workers in cultivating personal goals and bridging the gap with the locals. By doing so, it attempts to improve the structural economic problems in Southeast Asia as a whole. The organization holds a variety of intercultural activities providing a platform for residents and locals to create mutual understanding.

The founders of the One-Forty Foundation, Kevin Chen and Sophia Wu, started it in 2015, after Chen took a three-month trip to the Philippines. He made many local friends and discovered that most of their families had worked in Taiwan. Even as a Taiwan native he had not realized the impact of these migrant workers on his home country.

The One-Forty School holds classes teaching SEA migrant workers skills that they need for a steady career in either Taiwan or their home country, including Chinese lessons and business courses. The Chinese classes start with listening and speaking, then move on to reading and writing. One-Forty also encourages migrant workers to take the TOCFL (Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language) to show concrete proof of their skills to future employers.

In the business courses, migrant workers learn to manage their personal finances and to run a business with marketing and cost calculation tools. Recently, One-Forty also created classes in subjects such as computers and cosmetics. Having started with just 15 students in the first semester, the school received more than 100 applicants this year. Since 2016, the organization has broadcast lectures on its YouTube channel, catering to workers with little spare time or living in different cities. Today there are over 100 videos on the channel, and more than 13,000 people have subscribed to it.

Through continuous fundraising, the One-Forty Foundation hopes to establish a brick-and-mortar school for migrant workers in Taiwan. At the same time, the organization is promoting its online classes overseas.

In addition to classes, One-Forty holds an Open Sunday event once a month. Open Sunday not only allows migrant workers to enjoy some leisure time, but also creates a forum for them to socialize with locals. This cultural gathering is often based around a cooking party theme, where migrant workers teach participants to cook the traditional delicacies of their hometown. Sometimes the group takes day trips around Taiwan.

Chen and Wu believe in the importance of making issues real for an audience, and their foundation’s website features a “Migrant Life” channel, giving voice to migrant stories. These activities and stories help locals to recognize the inaccuracy of stereotypes and to overcome feelings of discrimination against migrant workers, seeing them as more than just factory workers or caretakers.

Yani, the Indonesian dreamer, was one of the fifteen students who attended the first semester of One-Forty School. Now she has returned to Indonesia and is employed as a Chinese translator at a Taiwanese cooperation, earning a monthly salary of $20,000 New Taiwanese dollars (about USD 660), three times the local average. Thanks to the One-Forty Foundation, co-founder Sophia Wu and Yani became close friends; Wu was even Yani’s bridesmaid when she got married in Indonesia. “What’s really impressive is that you really join someone’s life, become a part of their life journey. Yani said she is grateful to me, but I appreciate her so much too,” Wu noted.

https://one-forty.org/

An interface called Hope is saving lives by offering a solution to blood shortages in Senegal. “Hope is a web-based and mobile digital platform that allows blood banks and other healthcare facilities to manage blood stocks and to communicate interactively at anytime with blood donors all while raising awareness of the importance of giving blood,” explained Cameroonian engineer Evelyne Inès Ntonga.

She co-founded Diambars Mobiles, the startup that launched Hope, with Jean Luc Sémédo of Senegal. Both are alumni of the Multinational Telecommunications School of Dakar.

Families and healthcare facilities often race against time when transfusing a patient with a rare blood type. “When an urgent situation arises, the platform sends emergency SMS messages to all compatible donors in the same geographical area,” Ntonga said.

Hope is well-adapted to large healthcare facilities such as the National Center for Blood Transfusion of Senegal, which hosted the pilot phase of the project for seven months in 2016. “During this period, we reached nearly 30,000 people across all our platforms. What’s more, thanks to our solution, the number of blood donations in this center more than tripled,” said the engineer.

The startup won the 2015 Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award from mobile network operator Tigo and Swedish NGO Reach For Change. The innovation also received the Global South eHealth Observatory Award from the Pierre Fabre Foundation.

The economic development of postwar Japan has been supported by people working long hours, submitting to job relocations and rarely refusing to travel for business.

It is difficult to combine such a work culture with family life, namely providing child-rearing and nursing care.

Karoshi (death from overwork) and companies that overwork their employees have become real problems in Japanese society. And yet, according to a 2017 OECD report, Japan’s productivity ranks the lowest among G7 nations, well below the average.

With a working population decreasing due to a decline in births and an increase in the number of elderly, there is a widespread labor shortage in the country that has affected even the service industry. Many enterprises have been forced to shorten business hours due to lack of staff.

One might think that working less leads to fewer profits. But in Hadano, Kanagawa Prefecture, one ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn) managed to double its profits despite closing its doors three days a week. The average annual salary of its staff grew by 40 percent.

A few simple yet highly effective changes to the way the business was run made all the difference.

The Jinya inn’s watershed moment came after the sudden death of its owner in 2009. His eldest son, Tomio Miyazaki, now 40, left his job as an engineer for a major automaker to take over the business. Miyazaki’s wife, Tomoko, also 40, became its manager just two months after giving birth, even though she had never worked in a ryokan before.

The couple found that the inn had debts of one billion Japanese yen (USD 9.1 million) due to mismanagement and excessive waste. When they attempted a management analysis, they found only paper ledgers to provide data.

Viewing information technology as the solution to the business’s problems, they developed software to manage and standardize a range of tasks, from reservations to accounting.

They distributed tablets to all staff members so that employees could share information, such as customer preferences, to improve customer service. The new system also gave the staff a more positive approach to their work.

The owners installed sensors on the communal bath, notifying employees when the number of customers who had used it exceeded a certain cut-off. The sensors meant that staff no longer had to visit the bath repeatedly to check whether it needed cleaning.

With the introduction of IT, the couple reduced wasteful working practices, and channeled their employees’ energies toward creating better meals and other selling points. They gradually raised room rates, and created an extra revenue stream by selling the management system to other inns.

The business’s performance improved, but at the same time, a new problem emerged – Tomoko was exhausted from working nonstop without any days off.

“Even if customer satisfaction rises, it is meaningless if the workers’ quality of life does not improve too,” she said.

In 2014, the couple made the radical move to close the inn every Tuesday and Wednesday, a decision that drew complaints from customers expressing disbelief that a ryokan would close on certain days.

They went further in 2016, deciding to close after lunch on Mondays and to stop taking overnight guests on Mondays.

In spite of the changes, total annual sales for the inn and its group companies increased from 290 million yen in 2010 to 726 million yen today. Part of this growth was due to the improved quality and reputation of the food being served.

Before the changes, the inn had 20 regular employees. But under the new system, the team has been reconfigured to include 25 full-time staff and fewer part-timers.

The staff is also sharing in the benefits of the business’s growth. Annual average incomes have increased from 2.88 million yen to 3.98 million yen, while employee turnover has dropped from 33 percent to 4 percent. This is an industry where incomes are generally low, even if people work hard. “The service industry has taken for granted workers’ dedication to customer satisfaction,” said Tomoko.

The Jinya ryokan marked its hundredth anniversary in 2018. “I want to promote a way of working that can accommodate different stages of life, such as child-rearing and nursing care, for the entire [service] industry,” Tomoko said. “I’m aiming to make inns an industry in which people long to work.”

When asked why he resigned from an engineering career to start anew as a farmer, Pasawut “Jack” Roongrasmi, 33, simply replied, “Because I wasn’t happy.”
Like him, dozens of young men and women in Thailand are turning away from the modern comforts of big cities, determined to make a self-sufficient life for themselves through agriculture. To help them, a grassroots network of experienced farmers has developed a “smart” agricultural community called “Dare to Return,” assisting the youngsters in setting up their farms with modern and sustainable methods.

“I went through all kinds of training but I wasn’t able to build upon what I had,” Roongrasmi said. “The training I got from the Dare To Return initiative opened a whole new dimension for me. I was able to learn from those who had experience working and living a better life, and little by little I was able to transform myself.”

The Dare To Return initiative is a collaborative effort to empower a new generation of self-sufficient farmers in Thailand, at a time when rural populations are aging. According to the Thai National Economic and Social Development Board, the number of people over 60 living in the countryside rose to more than 11 million in 2017 – or 17 percent of the total population.

The network aims to encourage young people who emigrated to the cities to return and develop their rural hometowns with innovative farming technologies.

They believe agriculture is a vector of sustainability and resilience that can provide a long-term foundation for a society ready to adopt technological change.

Through mutual assistance, community learning and self-transformation, they hope to bridge the gap between old and new generations and build the basis for a more collaborative society, improving the quality of life for all.

“Once I internalized the fact that I am a farmer, I found that it’s a much better life than that of a salaried worker. I’ve gone further than I ever thought I would. Agriculture works beautifully when it becomes a state of mind, focused on doing what is actually feasible,” Roongrasmi said.

He now claims to be happy with his 1,600-sq. meter farm in Chiang Mai’s Mae Rim rural district, where he uses automatic irrigation and electrical supply systems to grow bromeliad plants for export. He is also taking classes at Mae Jo University, studying the optimization of light for plants.

Purich Singkharaj, also 33, has a horticulture degree from Chiang Mai University. Born into a family of farmers, he chose his career path as a journey of self-discovery, among other reasons.

“After graduating, I used to work six days a week, doing overtime every day, until the company sent me to Nigeria for three years,” he said, noting that the trip gave him the chance to think about what he really wanted from life. “I realized that I was wasting my time, and that I should start my own farming operation while I still had the strength.”

Two years after returning to Thailand, he decided to open a homestay guesthouse. Visitors could use the land surrounding the house to grow onions, rice and organic strawberries.

“My return to Thailand coincided with an economic recession. I had zero capital apart from my chickens and my plants,” he remembered. “My income came from day-to-day product sales. But I had time to pursue my interests in art and music, unlike when I was working at the company. I like this version of me better.”

Aside from owning and running the Innkham Homestay and producing organic chrysanthemums and strawberries, Singkharaj organizes one of the Dare to Return networks of new-generation farmers. He also helps care for orange and lychee orchards on several hectares of family-owned land in Chiang Mai.

Duangjai Sirijai holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and lives in her family home in Chiang Mai’s Doi Tao rural district. The 38-year-old woman worked in Chiang Mai for seven years before transferring to Bangkok. But her life changed when her parents fell ill, forcing her to return to her hometown.

She started preparing her move three years ahead of time – saving money, renovating the family home, making investments, and learning about agriculture, particularly longan fruit.
Because the sandy soil of her land is particularly suitable for growing roots and tubers, Sirijai turned to permaculture farming methods. She prepped the soil for four months, growing groundnuts, then cultivating Japanese mountain yams and onions. Her agricultural activity is small-scale and focuses on quality, she said.
Today, Sirijai owns two longan orchards, which she harvests in and out of season. The first has 130 trees on 1.1 hectares, while the second has 60 trees on one-half hectare.
Her farming activities not only provide for her family of six, but also help others in the community learn how to develop their own operations. She makes some of her land available to the Doi Tao Agricultural Learning Center, where she teaches agriculture.
Sirijai’s determination has inspired a whole network of Dare to Return farmers who are now fully integrated into local communities and organizations.

http://www.konglakuentin.com/about