Social entrepreneurs are inventing new technologies to solve the world’s problems – disease, malnutrition, pollution, and illiteracy – to name just a few. But it takes more than a fancy new gadget to make life better. That’s why the organizations profiled here are working with businesses, NGOs, and governments to get their inventions into the hands of those who need them most.
The social entrepreneurs profiled in this article offer solutions to problems in the developing world. They do so by not only offering useful products, but by asking hard-nosed economic questions that help them understand their products’ distribution, adoption, and maintenance. What’s the payback period? Will users perceive enough financial return to part with their very hard-won cash? Is the product ready to use on its own, or will someone need to build an infrastructure to support it?
Cleaning the Air
Visitors to most large Asian cities can’t help but notice the byproduct of the region’s sturdy, yet inefficient, two-stroke engines: a haze of blue smoke and unburned oil. In Western countries, two-strokes primarily power chainsaws, go-karts, small boats, and other such machines. But in Asia, more than 50 million two-strokes power many basic vehicles, including the three-wheeled “tuk-tuk” taxis of Thailand.
Cleaner four-stroke engines cost more than $1,000 apiece — an exorbitant sum in developing countries. So a nonprofit company based in Fort Collins, Colo., Envirofit International Ltd., has developed a retrofit kit that greatly reduces two-stroke engines’ emissions. In trials in Manila last year, the kit reduced hydrocarbon emissions by 89 percent, carbon monoxide by 74 percent, and particulates by 80 percent. Just as important to the people who buy the kits, it also improved fuel economy by 30 percent or more.
Based on technologies first developed at Colorado State University to reduce emissions from snowmobile engines, the kits use a direct fuel injection system licensed from Orbital Engine Co. of Perth, Australia. The fuel injectors replace one or more carburetors, which ordinarily blend air, fuel, and oil together before sending the mixture to the engine’s cylinders for combustion. Standard two-strokes suck some unburned air-fuel mixture — along with its pollutants — through the cylinder and into the exhaust. Directly injecting fuel into cylinders eliminates this “blowby,” increasing efficiency and decreasing pollution.
The target price of the retrofit kit is $250, which is about the same price a taxi owner will save in one year from reduced fuel costs. Because portions of the kit are designed to be produced in its target markets, it also creates employment opportunities for mechanics and machinists.
The first large-scale deployment of the kit will be in the Philippines, where 1.3 million two-stroke tricycles are used as taxis. In Vigan, a UNESCO World Heritage site, the city government is requiring the 3,000 taxi owners to convert their engines by the fall of 2007.
Harnessing the Sun
Electric power improves the lives of the world’s poorest consumers. But until recently, bringing electric power to rural areas required building costly infrastructures of power plants, substations, and electric wires. As the cost of photovoltaic technology has fallen, it has become increasingly economical for residents of unwired locations to generate their own electricity using the power of the sun. Yet the poorest households, which could benefit from solar power the most, still have to borrow money to buy a system.
That’s where SELCO Solar Light Private Ltd., a Bangalore, India, firm, comes in. With 25 centers throughout India, the company not only sells the solar systems, but also helps customers pay for them by working with local banks and microfinance companies to finance the purchase. The company also works with local businesses to devise earned-income schemes to pay off the loans. For example, when SELCO linked home garment workers with a local hospital that needed a steady supply of blankets and pillow covers, the workers realized that they could afford a solar power system that would power their sewing machine, among other things.
“Technology is just one part of a whole chain of linkages,” says Harish Hande, the founder and managing director of SELCO. “It is possible to achieve social change on a commercial basis — at SELCO, we’ve provided solar power to 55,000 poor people in rural areas, and they paid us for it!”
SELCO’s standard solar home lighting system (SHS) can operate lights, a black-and-white television, a radio or cassette player, and a small fan. The next size up (of four possible sizes) provides enough power for four hours of lighting from four lamps each evening. Each SHS is a turnkey system that includes a photovoltaic module, a battery, a charge controller, wiring, fluorescent lights, and outlets for other appliances. Providing all of the necessary components makes it easy to install the SHS in a home. SELCO also organizes networks of service personnel to maintain the systems, dramatically improving their reliability.
Hande is passionate when he talks about the power of commercial ventures to serve the poorest consumers. “They’re the smartest users, because they have to look at the financial benefits more closely than anyone. And if we listen to them — and provide financing mechanisms matched to the income generated with new technologies — we can do well.” As he says, it’s not about the technology. “What was relevant in 1995 — financing, income generation, service and repair — is just as relevant today.”
Enhancing Nutrition
In many villages in the developing world, seasonal oversupplies of produce are often wasted for lack of ways to preserve and store them. Because these villages don’t have affordable and reliable electricity, solutions that depend on refrigeration are not workable.
The VitaGoat system uses a bicycle- powered grinder and wide variety of locally available fuels to prepare protein-rich soymilk, soy yogurt, tofu, and nut butters, as well as fruit and vegetable purees and energy drinks.
VitaGoat users first apply pedal-power to grind soybeans, cereals, fruits, or vegetables at a rate that is 10 to 50 times faster than hand-grinding. This process produces flours, pastes, nut butters, and even ground coffee. For foods that require cooking, users then feed VitaGoat’s steam boiler with wood, coal, gas, or even dung chips. The boiler, which is 10 times more efficient than open-fire cooking, injects steam into a 15-liter vessel, where cooking under pressure saves both time and fuel. A final feature of the VitaGoat is a hand-operated screw-press that can be used to extrude liquid out of cooked proteins for products like tofu and soy yogurt.
VitaGoat was created by Malnutrition Matters, an Ottawa, Canada-based nonprofit. Initial tests in Guinea, Mozambique, and Chad have shown that the VitaGoat can produce 20 to 40 liters per hour of soymilk, sauces, purees, and juices, and 6 to 12 kilograms per hour of ground meals, nut pastes, and coffee. In other words, a single VitaGoat operated for several hours can provide 0.25 liter of soymilk for 500 to 1,000 people.
The benefits from VitaGoat go beyond preserving food. An individual, a cooperative, or a microenterprise can base a business on it, using the VitaGoat to add value to produce and then selling the product at a profit.
This year, Malnutrition Matters’ goal is to manufacture up
to 90 percent of the VitaGoat components in Africa. The organization also wants to expand fabrication and training to India, where the construction of the first five models is now under way.
Helping People See
Far more people in the world need spectacles than there are optometrists to fit them. In fact, the WHO estimates that 1 billion people — almost one out of every six people on the planet — need vision correction but do not have it. Training optometrists is expensive and takes years, and lens-manufacturing equipment is also costly. But without needed glasses, schoolchildren often can’t read or learn, and adults may lose their jobs as their vision deteriorates with age.
To solve these problems, wondered Oxford University professor and inventor Joshua Silver, would it be possible to create inexpensive spectacles that users could adjust or “tune” themselves — taking optometrists out of the picture altogether?
The answer turned out to be yes. Silver’s adaptive lenses consist of thin Mylar membranes with colorless silicone between them. While reading an eye chart, the wearer uses adjusters on the frames to pump fluid into or out of a lens to change its shape. A thicker lens magnifies better, compensating for nearsightedness, while a thinner lens helps farsighted users. After both eyes are correctly focused, the wearer snaps off the adjusters to seal the holes and maintain the correct focus.
Developing the adaptive lenses took many years. Silver began tinkering with the idea in 1985. His first prototypes weren’t tested until 1996 in Ghana. After that, a larger test with 213 participants was conducted in South Africa, Ghana, Malawi, and Nepal, and his team published the results in 2003. Now more than 20,000 pairs of his Adspecs glasses have been manufactured in China and delivered to Africa. And the need is huge: According to ERC Statistics International, whereas 45 to 50 percent of U.S. and European residents have corrected vision, the figure is 10 percent for Asia and just 5 percent in Africa.
Adspecs are produced by Adaptive Eyecare Ltd., a U.K. company whose mission is to bring affordable eye care to developing countries. The World Bank funded the first deployment in Ghana, through a program in that country’s education ministry that supports adult literacy efforts. The World Bank is now studying the development of a microcredit program that would let users borrow the purchase price of a pair of Adspecs — targeted at $10 or less — and pay it back over the following year. In addition, the U.S. government has purchased 8,000 pairs for a humanitarian assistance program in Angola and Georgia.
Adspecs may have applications in developed countries as well — venture capitalists have been knocking on Silver’s door for some years now — but, he says, it’s clear to him: “We will introduce this first to those people in the world who will most benefit from having it.”
++++
Excerpted from Stanford Social Innovation Review, a SustainableBusiness.com Content Partner.
Loading...