The Nation Newspaper

Tag: #impactjournalism

  • 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/

  • 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

  • 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.

     

  • Hello Tractor, The Uber for tractors

    Hello Tractor, The Uber for tractors

    For small-scale farmers in Nigeria, especially in the northern parts of the country, getting tractors to use on their farmlands to boost their yield has always been difficult.

    Many farmers can’t afford to buy one due to the high cost, while the country’s federal government, which is the major supplier of tractors, is not able to meet more than four percent of their requirements. Africa has less than 50 agricultural tractors per 100 square kilometres of arable land, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which ranked Nigeria 132 out of 188 countries surveyed on agricultural mechanisation. Farm sizes in Nigeria are small, making it difficult for individual farmers to own a tractor.

     

    However since mid-2014, the introduction of the Hello Tractor project has been addressing the prevalent problem of crippling poverty and poor crop yields amongst small-scale farmers. Hello Tractor is the brainchild of Jehiel Oliver, an American who developed the idea while working as a global finance consultant focused on SMEs and agricultural industries at Aya Consulting in the United States.

    He relocated to Nigeria to implement the project; a social enterprise that improves food and income security by facilitating Nigerian farmers with the right tools to efficiently harvest their land. Hello Tractor promotes collaborative consumption by building a network of “Smart Tractor” owners, enabling small-scale farmers to request and pay for tractor services via SMS and mobile money, as and when they need specific services.

    On what makes the solution unique, the operators say, “Our powerful booking system allows farmers to conveniently request, schedule and prepay for tractor services, from nearby Smart Tractor owners, through SMS messaging and mobile money. Once service is completed, the pre-payment is automatically released to the Smart Tractor owner.”

    Since it was launched in mid-2014, farmers who participated in the beta period have reportedly seen their yields increase by 200 percent using a machine that’s 40 times faster than manual labor. “We have designed an innovative, low-cost “Smart Tractor” specifically for small farmers’ unique needs,” remarks Oliver, the founder of Hello Tractor.

    “The smart tractor is a two-wheeled tractor with GPS antennae that allows us to track its usage and telematics, which collects and transfers data in no Internet areas such as the rural areas,” Oliver adds.

    According to Oliver, each tractor on the platform reaches an approximate 250 Ha of farmland annually, which is substantial in Nigeria where farmers own, on average, just over one hectare of land.

    With one of the fastest growing populations in the world, and huge pressure on the employment market to provide new jobs, optimizing Nigeria’s agricultural industry is key to combatting youth unemployment for the next generation.

    “Despite the profitability of agriculture in Nigeria, there remains a substantial risk (both real and perceived) preventing banks to engage more deeply,” remarks Oliver. To address this issue Hello Tractor also coordinates low-cost financing to help facilitate the purchase of a Smart Tractor. “Equipped with various attachments, owners can tailor its use for a variety of crops and stages of the production cycle, allowing them to serve their customers throughout the year. The GPS antenna allows Hello Tractor to track its usage and gather data on location, market trends, and uptake,” Oliver explained.

    “At the beta phase we’re prioritizing land preparation because first of all, it’s the first stage of production,” Oliver said. “It’s also the most labor intensive. It takes about 40 days of manual labor to prepare the land. Our tractors do it in eight hours.”

    On the impact so far, Oliver told The Nation that, “Farmers are reporting that having access to tractor services saves them money on land preparation while removing the labor constraints that have prevented them from planting the land that they have access to.”

    Hello Tractor has just been launched in Kenya with a pilot this year. Oliver believes the results there should be as promising as those in Nigeria.

    Lekan Otufodunrin

     

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  • Impact Journalism Day: Stories that change the world

    Impact Journalism Day: Stories that change the world

    Today, for Impact Journalism Day, 50 newspapers join forces to highlight stories that change the world.

    Beyond the constant stream of negative news, there are many stories of hope and concrete solutions. Stories of changemakers tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues with innovative ideas, in order to change the lives of millions for the better. Stories worth reading and spreading, not only to rebalance our view of the world, but to help these existing solutions be replicated worldwide.

    The media can play a crucial role in telling the individual stories behind this global movement. That’s why for the last five years Sparknews has invited newspapers to take part in Impact Journalism Day, harnessing the power of collaborative journalism to bring stories of change to the surface. Every year these newspapers explore and publish an array of groundbreaking solutions in special supplements on the same day, reaching 120 million people worldwide in print and digital media. Many publications have come to realize the impact of these articles, and now incorporate more solutions-driven stories into their day-to-day coverage of the world.

    For the fifth edition of Impact Journalism Day, the media are joined by organizations that believe spreading these stories is a first step toward change. These include the United Nations as well as One Young World, which annually gathers together 1,500 young leaders from social and corporate sectors who are involved in positive innovations. A large community of well-known personalities and ordinary citizens have also joined the chorus in signing a manifesto to show that everyone – governments, the private sector, civil society, NGOs and everyday people – can take action for a better future. You, too, can be part of this transformational movement.

    Discover those who have successfully brought answers to challenges such as good health, access to water, quality education, decent employment and clean energy. Each serves as a concrete example of the power of individual or group initiatives to help reach the UN New Sustainable Development Goals, to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity and good health for all.

    We hope you enjoy the read…and that you become part of the solution. Sign the manifesto (sharestoriesofchange.org) and share the stories that impress you most on Facebook and Twitter (#ImpactJournalism, #StoryOfChange, @Sparknews, @thenationnews ).

     

    Christian de Boisredon, founder of Sparknews and Ashoka Fellow & The Sparknews Team.