mit global change reaches final stage during end of april

  • Agua Clara

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Reduce waste and pollution from plastic water bottles by testing, filtering and certifying water sources.

    CATEGORIESEnergy and Environment Water and Sanitation Finance and Entrepreneurship

    3VOTES

    3FOLLOWERS

  • Team Image
    Hope in Flight

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013We use Black Soldier Fly larvae to convert waste into a value-added product.

    CATEGORIESEducation and Training Energy and Environment Water and Sanitation Agriculture and Processing

    41VOTES

    9FOLLOWERS

  • Team Image
    Mashvarah

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Democratizing career advice

    CATEGORIESEducation and Training

    46VOTES

    14FOLLOWERS

  • Team Image
    Samperk

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Engaging school students to develop self-sustainable solutions addressing local needs of the community.

    CATEGORIESEducation and Training Water and Sanitation

    122VOTES

    29FOLLOWERS

  • Team Image
    Start!

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013inspiring young minds

    CATEGORIESEducation and Training

    46VOTES

    34FOLLOWERS

  • Team Image
    MoringaConnect

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Providing affordable technologies that enable subsistence farmers growing the moringa tree generate income by converting their seeds into high-value oil.

    CATEGORIESAgriculture and Processing

    116VOTES

    25FOLLOWERS

  • Team Image
    EducateSyria

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Syrian children have been through unconventional circumstances, so why educate them conventionally?

    CATEGORIESEducation and Training

    443VOTES

    118FOLLOWERS

  • Team Image
    The Global Efficient Cookstove Education Project

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Creating a stovebuilding curriculum that connects middle and high schools around the world.

    CATEGORIESEducation and Training

    238VOTES

    75FOLLOWERS

  • Team Image
    AgroDrone

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Help farmers improve farm yield and lower operating costs using unmanned aircrafts.

    CATEGORIESEnergy and Environment Agriculture and Processing

    4VOTES

    4FOLLOWERS

  • Team Image
    BlueLight

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Innovative consumer finance for the base of the pyramid.

    CATEGORIESFinance and Entrepreneurship Mobile Devices and Communications

    2VOTES

    9FOLLOWERS

x

  • Sana AudioPulse

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Mobile infant hearing screening to catch hearing loss before it's too late

    CATEGORIESHealth and Medical Mobile Devices and Communications

    31VOTES

    10FOLLOWERS

  • Team Image
    Nicaragua Zero Waste School

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Design and implement a zero waste school, zero energy, constructionist community school for a waste pickers community in Bluefields, Nicaragua.

    CATEGORIESEducation and Training Energy and Environment Finance and Entrepreneurship

    55VOTES

    21FOLLOWERS

  • Team Image
    GreenPrint Solutions

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013To empower the waste picker community in India by creating 3D printer filament from recycled plastic waste. www.greenprint.in

    CATEGORIESEducation and Training Energy and Environment Finance and Entrepreneurship

    203VOTES

    39FOLLOWERS

  • Team Image
    crowdSOS

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Providing BIG Data analytics to fight crime in developing regions.

    CATEGORIESMobile Devices and Communications Emergency and Disaster Relief

    6VOTES

    10FOLLOWERS

  • AGHAST: The Good Life

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013AGHAST seeks to collaboratively design and implement a sanitation project in Taha Village, Tamale, Ghana. AGHAST’s objective during the summer of 2013 is to build 10 toilets for a school in Taha.

    CATEGORIESWater and Sanitation

    4VOTES

    1FOLLOWERS

  • Coriolis Centrifuge

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013An off-grid, low-cost, manually-operated centrifuge easily reparable using local materials.

    CATEGORIESHealth and Medical

    5VOTES

    11FOLLOWERS

  • Waste to Gold

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013

    CATEGORIESEnergy and Environment Agriculture and Processing

    1VOTES

    1FOLLOWERS

  • Team Image
    Aasadeep Projects

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Providing employment opportunities for both uneducated and educated challenged people through eco friendly paper product manufacturing Industry and employability skill training program.

    CATEGORIESEducation and Training Energy and Environment Finance and Entrepreneurship Other

    105VOTES

    36FOLLOWERS

  • Plexx: Training the world

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Plexx is the mobile training center for young people to learn the skills they need to get a job and launch their career.

    CATEGORIESEducation and Training Mobile Devices and Communications

    3VOTES

    5FOLLOWERS

  • Team Image
    momedx

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Streamlining asthma management in the palms of your hand.

    CATEGORIESHealth and Medical Finance and Entrepreneurship Mobile Devices and Communications

    4VOTES

    1FOLLOWERS

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    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Your cleanliness, our business!

    CATEGORIESWater and Sanitation

    42VOTES

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    CATEGORIESEducation and Training Finance and Entrepreneurship

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    CATEGORIESEducation and Training Mobile Devices and Communications

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    CATEGORIESEnergy and Environment

    3VOTES

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    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Convert waste plastics into green oil in Chengdu,China

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    5VOTES

    2FOLLOWERS

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    Micro-Institution Spot

    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Creativity inspires and changes lives. We provide migrant students in urban China with arts education, knowledge and skills to navigate their futures.

    CATEGORIESEducation and Training

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    COMPETITION YEAR: 2013Our solar boats and recharge stations will solve the energy, transportation, and environmental crisis faced by indigenous Amazon groups.

    CATEGORIESEnergy and Environment

    35VOTES

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below we feature global challenge entrants with an educational focus

eg http://globalchallenge.mit.edu/teams/view/360/


Mashvarah

COMPETITION YEAR: 2013


SUMMARY Democratizing career advice 
CATEGORIES Education and Training

  • TEAM MEMBERS
  • S. Feroz
  • A. Jalan
  • D. Dugar
  • S. Nag

VIDEOS:

QUICK LINKS

Our Pitch

Career counseling is a critical component of preparing high school students for university studies. Schools in developing countries do not have the resources to employ career counselors. Pakistan is an example of a resource-constrained developing country that has limited career counseling resources available to high school students.

To investigate how students in Pakistan make career decisions, we surveyed 450 university students across Pakistan. Only 14% of university students at the four leading universities reported having adequate information when deciding their career paths. Furthermore, we surveyed 614 high school students from three schools serving very different socioeconomic segments of the society. More than 80% of high school students surveyed were interested in pursuing a very narrow set of career paths limited to engineering, business, or medicine. This again is a consequence of under-informed decisions and a “herd” mentality, rather than a creative and exploratory approach.

The goal of Mashvarah is to democratize career advice: every student that needs advice will have access to a career advisor. The web-based platform envisions bringing together a comprehensive set of advisors, including university students, university faculty, working professionals, and professional career advisors. We believe this will lead to more informed career choices, ultimately creating a more vibrant and intellectually diverse workforce.

Impact

Proof of concept by providing career counseling to 500 high school students in Lahore, Pakistan

Who We Are

Sohail Feroz Ali, Co-Founder, is from Pakistan and brings extensive first-hand knowledge of the education system in Pakistan. Since November 2012, Sohail has been surveying schools and universities in Pakistan to assess and analyze the unmet career counseling needs of high school students. Sohail will work full-time for Mashvarah in Pakistan and will serve as Mashavrah’s primary liaison with university collaborators, target schools and advisors. Sohail holds MS and MS-CEP degrees in Chemical Engineering from MIT and a BS in Chemical Engineering from Georgia Tech.

Amrit Jalan, Co-Founder, takes an active interest in education policy and practice especially in enabling access to quality education for underprivileged children. In his spare time, Amrit volunteers with EGE Global Education developing services for Indian students aspiring to study abroad. As part of Mashvarah, he brings an understanding of the challenges faced by students in educational institutions and strategies to maximize their potential. Amrit is pursuing a doctorate degree in Chemical Engineering from MIT.

Deepak Dugar, Platform Development, brings an operational background in imparting technical education in India, and will work on the platform growth aspects of Mashvarah. He currently sits on the board of an educational society that runs diverse programs and graduates more than 5000 students annually. Deepak is pursuing his MBA from MIT Sloan and PhD-CEP from MIT, and holds MS-CEP in Chemical Engineering from MIT, and M.Tech and B.Tech in Biochemical Engineering from IIT Delhi.  

Sreeja Nag, Portal Development, brings experience in online education technology development and will work on the web portal development for Mashvarah. She has worked as the student lead of the SPHERES Zero Robotics program, which allows high school and middle school students to program satellites onboard the International Space Station. She has interned at Selco India Ltd. to apply IDEO's Human Centric Design to design solar powered battery chargers in rural Indian schools with the dual intent of encouraging students to attend school to charge their electric lamps and preventing health problems associated with the commonly used kerosene lamps. The internship, funded by MIT's PSC, gave her the opportunity to conduct several weeks of fieldwork in rural schools and understand the educational culture. Sreeja is pursuing a doctorate degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT after completing an SM in the same. She also has an SM in Technology and Policy from MIT.

Our Community Partner

Partner Name

Lahore University of Management Sciences

Location

Lahore, Pakistan

Description

Samperk

COMPETITION YEAR: 2013 http://globalchallenge.mit.edu/teams/view/424


SUMMARY Engaging school students to develop self-sustainable solutions addressing local needs of the community.
CATEGORIES Education and Training Water and Sanitation

  • TEAM MEMBERS
  • N. Mehta
  • S. Pandian
  • P. Sinha

 
 

VIDEOS:

Water quality issue in Madhya Pradesh
Water crisis in Madhya Pradesh

QUICK LINKS

Our Pitch

Problem: Rural areas in Madhya Pradesh, India reported 92% increase in easily preventable water borne diseases. Unfortunately these areas have no provision for clean drinking water.

Context SAMPERK has identified two needs that are complimentary and will fulfill each other: Students who have to do school projects for credits and local community in need of drinking water. Thus, SAMPERK not only satisfies both the needs but also integrates classroom education with solving societal problems. This will bring in behavioral changes in the mindset of students and also in turn the society.

Solution:

From Children comes the change

SAMPERK is a self-sustained customized rural development plan included in school curriculum as projects and implemented by students. In this particular case students will develop a domestic filtration unit in classroom and install them in rural areas of Madhya Pradesh.

Impact

Local impact: Provide safe drinking water to 1200 people in Madhya Pradesh,India by installation of cost-effective domestic water filtration units. Nation wide impact: Implement the plan in 1100 schools thereby helping in development of 220,000 villages.

Challenge

2013 Yunus Challenge - Education: Solutions for Learning

Who We Are

We are two enthusiastic and self-motivated individuals who want to bring a sustainable change in the society. We believe that the solutions of socio-economic challenges faced by developing countries like India cannot follow the traditional approach where the boundaries are defined by ease or popularity. Instead, the problem has to be addressed in a way to bring change in the mindset of individuals.

  1. Neha Mehta– Neha is a native of India and belongs to Rajasthan state. She has familiarity with the Indian social and political conditions which are valuable assets for the progress of our project. It also provides us an edge to connect more effectively to local organizations and community by talking fluently in their native language. She completed her undergraduate degree from premier institute of India- IIT Roorkee in Paper Chemistry. After completing her undergraduate, she joined University of California Berkeley to pursue masters in Chemical Engineering. Before joining MIT, for a second masters in Technology and Policy she worked in the field of water purification at Porifera nano Inc, CA. Given the nature of our project, her expertise in water purification and treatment technologies and ability to understand and deal with policy frameworks will be a great value addition to our team.

  2. Swarna Pandian, Ph.D – Swarna was born and brought up in India. After earning her masters in Genomics from Madurai Kamaraj University she pursued her Ph.D in Neuroscience in a joint program offered by MIT and Portugal. Currently she is a postdoctoral Associate in McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. She brings a unique skill set to the project since she spent her early childhood near Shivpuri district (Where Samperk is introducing its pilot project) she is well aware of the local social system there. She is also fluent in many Indian local languages, which will be a big asset when dealing with local population. She did her schooling in different Kendriya Vidyalayas (Target school for Samperk) across India and have good understanding of how the school system and curriculum works. Apart from that her summer internship at University of Oxford has created within her a profound interest in Autism Behavior Analysis, which is one of the venues Samperk will pursue in parallel in its upcoming years

Our Community Partner

Partner Name

Sambhav Social Service Organization

Location

Madhya Pradesh, India

Description

Sambhav Social Service Organization is a voluntary agency working in the areas of rural and urban development, child education and women empowerment through advocacy, direct program interventions and capacity building of the community to access the benefits of State Programs. Sambhav has a deeply rooted goal to bring about a change in the lives of deprived communities through peoples organization and capacity building. It has been actively involved in the organizing Sahariya Tribal communities to assert their rights of equality, Health, food and secured livelihood and a respectful place in the society.


Start!http://globalchallenge.mit.edu/teams/view/434

COMPETITION YEAR: 2013

 


SUMMARY inspiring young minds
CATEGORIES Education and Training

  • TEAM MEMBERS
  • C. E
  • S. Kaushal
  • S. Batir
  • A. Robinson
  • T. Bohlen

QUICK LINKS

Our Pitch

At Start!, we believe that education should be an intellectual adventure driven by big questions. As children across the globe begin to access online educational resources, we believe that providing an inspirational spark and a supportive network will allow them to tackle the world’s biggest challenges. Start! aims to provide the inspiration to enable children to believe in their ideas, and to learn the power that can come from working with others.

Over the past several months, Start! has established connections with several community supporters in order to implement and advance our mission: matching students with mentors as they set out to change their communities and the world. Our three primary community partners are MIT’s Eyewire project; Spokes, a team of MIT and UC Berkeley students dedicated to educating high school students across the United States as they bike coast to coast; and One Laptop per Child, which aims to take affordable, durable laptops into classrooms around the world.

Our project bears a high likelihood of success because of our close connections with our community partners. Claire is director of educational outreach at EyeWire, and is a member of the Spokes team; Sean and Claire have worked closely with software producers at OLPC; and Shivani is involved with a number of humanitarian organizations where we're recruiting mentors for our student-mentor network.

Impact

Inspire 50 kids in the US and 50 kids abroad to pursue what they love, and match them with dedicated mentors.

Who We Are

  1. Claire is a graduating junior at MIT studying brain & cognitive science. She is currently working as director of educational outreach at EyeWire, a citizen science initiative that she cofounded during January of 2011. In her spare time, she loves running with her teammates on the MIT cross country and track teams, and competing in the 3k steeplechase. She believes that there is a pro- found connection between education and cognition, and aims to spend her life discovering that connection and using it to change global education.

  2. Sean is currently an MIT undergraduate studying Computer Science and Biology. Interested in acting as a scion for the neuroprosthetics industry, his re- search focuses on neural engineering and hijacking neural circuitry to restore lost functionality. Sean owes the discovery of his passion to having a bril- liant mentor early on in life, and hopes to do the same through Start! He believes that the key to transforming the world is educating the youth and talented minds of tomorrow, improving the world one child’s mind at a time.

  3. Shivani is a sophomore at MIT studying Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and hopes to become a doctor in communities lacking sufficient medical resources. She has always had a passion for helping kids reach their potential, originally inspired by understanding the different learning needs of her autistic cousins. She has had numerous experiences working in education, from being a Big Brothers Big Sisters men- tor, to tutoring for ReachOut. Outside of volunteering, Shivani enjoys running on the MIT cross country & track teams. She hopes to align her global healthcare goals with her involvement in Start!, and believes that every child has the potential and power to love what they learn.

  4. Amy works at Sebastian Seung‘s computational neuroscience lab at MIT on project EyeWire, a game to map the human brain. She is working to make science universally more accessible and exciting by facilitating the creation of an online global community dedicated to understanding what could be today’s biggest mystery: the mind. Amy is interested in learning what motivates the site’s top users in order to understand how to engage an audience from afar, and works with TED to communicate her findings.

Our Community Partner

Partner Name

Spokes, EyeWire and OLPC

Location

MIT

Description

Spokes is dedicated to revealing the exploratory, self-directed, and boundless nature of learning to students across the US, and will be crossing the country by bike this summer in order to do so. The team is partnered for Teach for America, and will be piloting the mentorship network that Start! aims to implement on a global scale. EyeWire is an online community of “citizen neuroscientists” who map neural connections by playing a game. It has been used in a number of educational programs, including MOSTEC and several classes at the BB&N upper school in Cambridge, MA. See student research papers here on the EyeWire wiki, and read about the BB&N program in a recently-published article. OLPC aims to provide each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop. To this end, they have designed hardware, content and software for collaborative, joyful, and self-empowered learning. With access to this type of tool, OLPC believes that children are engaged in their own education, and learn, share, and create together – they become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future.

EducateSyria

EducateSyria

COMPETITION YEAR: 2013


SUMMARY Syrian children have been through unconventional circumstances, so why educate them conventionally?
CATEGORIES Education and Training

  • TEAM MEMBERS
  • N. Doukmak
  • A. idlbi
  • A. Al Bastami

 
 

VIDEOS:

Short Clip
Unconventionality in Syrian Refugee Education

QUICK LINKS

Our Pitch

Since March 2011, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have left their homes to escape the recent crisis in their country. Many are left without school, yet it is important to remember they have gone through unconventional circumstances. Therefore, it makes no sense to educate them in conventional ways. At MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten group, Abdulrahman Idlbi challenges the modern notion of schooling and looks to models of nontraditional education as more conducive to learning. Specifically, we believe that children learn best when they are empowered to design and create, encouraged to ask questions, allowed to explore their own interests, and provided a learning environment with safety and respect. The current model of school rarely offers this, so we're working on something new. The emphasis of education should be on the development of leadership, problem-solving, and community-building skills. In this spirit, we are developing generative, hands-on workshops accompanied by material (video/written) explaining the ideas behind the workshops and how to run them. Abdulrahman will go to a refugee camp for about a month in the summer to start 3-4 workshops, alongside local teachers/mentors, as a form of training for them. The teachers/mentors will then continue the workshops with their students for the remainder of the year. A follow-up trip may be planned for the winter.

Impact

Train 5-10 teachers in one refugee/IDP camp and impact 100-200 children

Challenge

2013 Yunus Challenge - Education: Solutions for Learning

Who We Are

Noor Doukmak is an MIT undergraduate student pursuing teaching certification in high school math. She has interned at NuVu Studio School, which introduces high school students to the architecture studio model to engage them in project-based learning. She is currently a teaching assistant for the “Producing Educational Videos” seminar at MIT.

Abdulrahman Y. idlbi is a Syrian graduate student and research assistant in MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten group. Before joining the Media Lab he worked in teacher training and designing and implementing learning activities in and outside the school context, in Syria and Saudi Arabia. He spent time in January 2013 working with teachers and students in various refugee communities on the Syria-Turkey border.

Anas Al Bastami is a Ph.D. student in the Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems at the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. He took part in teaching fundamental courses at Texas A&M University at Qatar, worked at The Princeton Review, where he taught high school students, and is interested in research and educational projects for the improvement of the region.

Our Community Partner

Partner Name

Watan

Location

Reyhanli, Turkey

Description

According to Watan, “Watan represents a progressive movement that works through the various institutions of civil society and aims to achieve comprehensive progress in Syria. These institutions are run by specialized personnel. The movement is open to all Syrians, irrespective of their racial, religious or national affiliations.”

http://globalchallenge.mit.edu/teams/view/384


The Global Efficient Cookstove Education Project

COMPETITION YEAR: 2013


SUMMARY Creating a stovebuilding curriculum that connects middle and high schools around the world.
CATEGORIES Education and Training

  • TEAM MEMBERS
  • A. B
  • R. Lehrer
  • I. N

VIDEOS:

Stove Building at Brookwood

QUICK LINKS

Our Pitch

There are currently no educational resources to teach middle and high school students about efficient biomass stoves…our project is changing that! The Global Cookstove Education Project (GCEP) uses project-based learning to connect students from around the world through the issues of personal energy use, biomass resources, and efficient cookstoves. Pioneered in 2012 by a group of educators from 4 countries, the GCEP allows students to participate in a global educational collaboration as they investigate biomass use, build small cookstoves, test stove efficiency, and search for solutions to the health and environmental problems that arise from the fact that half the earth’s population burns wood or charcoal to meet their daily energy needs. Although still in its infancy, the GCEP has recently begun to gain traction in terms of not only educating students about biomass use issues and efficient cookstoves, but also by serving as model for the use of STEM design projects to encourage collaborations between students around the world.

Impact

The participation of over one hundred students in a global collaborative stove building process.

Challenge

2013 Yunus Challenge - Education: Solutions for Learning

Who We Are

Anthony McHugh is a 1st year MIT undergrad studying Civil Engineering. He is a resident of iHouse, a living-learning community designed to prepare its occupants for careers in international development. As a resident of iHouse, he participated in a seminar entitled Topics in International Development in the fall of 2012, and has had the opportunity to speak with leaders of many development projects both on campus and in the surrounding community. He participated in the founding and organization of a summer mathematics camp for middle school students while he was in high school. He will serve as the team leader, and will take charge of marketing and publicity for the project.

Ishwar Kohale is a 1st year MIT undergrad interested in studying Biological Engineering. He is also a resident of iHouse, and participated in the seminar. Ishwar Kohale grew up in a rural area in Maharashtra, India and is familiar with the educational system in India. He will work on strengthening connections with the Srishti School and other cookstove projects in India. He will take the lead in conducting research and developing a prototype.

Rich Lehrer has taught science at the middle school level in Canada, Venezuela, Brazil, and the United States. Interested in issues of global education, he has taught for six years in Massachusetts, and has recently implemented a cookstove education project at Brookwood School in Manchester, MA. Along with Anthony and Ishwar, Rich has also been working closely with four former students who have played a key role in developing, revising, and refining the project.

Our Community Partner

Partner Name

Colegio Bandeirantes

Location

São Paolo, Brazil

Description

Private Brazilian high school.

http://globalchallenge.mit.edu/teams/view/373

LOCATION:

  • Service Location Gisozi, Rwanda

Plexx: Training the world

Plexx: Training the world

COMPETITION YEAR: 2013


SUMMARY Plexx is the mobile training center for young people to learn the skills they need to get a job and launch their career.
CATEGORIES Education and Training Mobile Devices and Communications


 
 

VIDEOS:

Mobile Learning Revolution

QUICK LINKS

Our Pitch

Plexx will train the world's youth.

Young people are suffering from chronic global unemployment. 20%, 6.8M, of 15-24 year olds in Brazil are un- or underemployed yet 57% of Brazil’s employers reported recruitment difficulties. Plexx will deliver skill building content to young people around the world via their mobile phones so they can secure a job and launch a career.

Impact

Train 5000 Brazilian youth with 30,000 pieces of training content

Challenge

2013 Yunus Challenge - Education: Solutions for Learning

Who We Are

Yscaira Jimenez is a 2014 MIT MBA candidate who grew up attending public schools in the Bronx, taught English to students in a shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, and has spent most of her professional career working for high impact tutoring. She also founded and ran La Pregunta Arts Cafe, an arts cafe in Harlem, NY education startups (Rocket Learning, Learn-It Systems, Platform Learning) in business development and operation roles serving more than 10,000 low-income students across the U.S. through that operated for 5 years. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003 with a BA in English & Latin American Studies.

Sergio is a 2014 MPP, MBA Candidate in the dual degree program at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. First in his family to graduate from a four-year college, he believes making learning more accessible and affordable can alter the lives of lower-income communities. He graduated from Northeastern University with a degree in Industrial Engineering in 2007, worked in management consulting in Deloitte’s Strategy & Operations practice, PepsiCo as a Supply Chain Associate, Teach For America as an Education Pioneers Summer Fellow, founded USAdelante.org, and was an Echoing Green semi-finalist.

Victor Popov will graduate from Howest University in Kortrijk, Belgium in June 2013 with a Bachelors in Multimedia & Communication Technology in Digital Design & Development. His skillset includes Oldskool P&P, PS, ILLU, FL, AE, C4D, MOCHA. He programs in HTML5/CSS3/JS, PHP5, AS3, jQUERY, jSON. His portfolio can be found at www.phrofyz.com. He developed our wireframes, website, and minimum viable product.

Our Community Partner

Partner Name

Secretaria Municipal de Educação Rio de Janeiro

Location

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Description

The municipal secretary of public education oversees primary and secondary education of Rio de Janeiro's youth.

ab-X

COMPETITION YEAR: 2013


SUMMARY Promoting socio-economic growth in developing countries through incentive based educational programs
CATEGORIES Health and Medical Education and Training Energy and Environment Water and Sanitation

  • TEAM MEMBERS
  • S. Bhattacharyya
  • K. Dande
  • C. Garry
  • S. Scott

 
 

QUICK LINKS

Our Pitch

Problem In India, there is a huge waste of talent pool due to the lack of resources and opportunities. For eg., less than .1% of ~1 million engineering students get world class education, hands on learning or cutting edge research exposure. There is a tremendous lack of entrepreneurial effort and R&D to build a robust high-tech environment. A structured program to create leaders, entrepreneurs and researcher to push the community forward is totally absent.

Context Conventional path of directly going to the villages and doing charity to alleviate poverty have failed again and again. We believe in involving everyday people in giving back to the community and helping in building a sustainable economy. One of the problems we notice in countries like India, is the huge disparity in the living of the urban and the rural people. As engineers we wanted to use new strategies to alleviate poverty. We thought of programs that will not only help the students be leaders and innovators, but also connect them to the large majority of the population who they can help.

Solution •Locate a rural area in India, and identify a problem with a viable technical solution •Design a competition to address the problem •Allow students from the smaller colleges to participate with a faculty mentor •Incentives in every stage for developing idea, prototype, and implementation •Students are supposed to work in the villages actively so as to make a product customized to their needs

Impact

Promote hands on learning, creative thinking in smaller engineering schools. Atleast have 4 teams come up with low cost technology prototypes that can turn into successful start ups. Improve people's life in at least one rural community

Challenge

2013 Yunus Challenge - Education: Solutions for Learning

Who We Are

A group of individuals from MIT and outside MIT who believe poverty is not an isolated problem. We promote socio-economic growth by what we call "strategic resource distribution" . We promote incentive based innovations among urban youths who go to small engineering schools and are eager for opportunities. We give them global exposure, entrepreneurship opportunities- with a condition: you need to give back to the community. Two of the founders having attended very small engineering schools recognize the huge talent waste and brain drain in developing countries. Lab-X Foundation came up with an intelligent strategy to promote socio-economic growth through different structured educational programs.

Our Community Partner

Partner Name

Startup Village

Location

Bangalore, India

Description

Startup Village is India's first Public Private Partnership model Technology Business Incubator. The promoters of Startup Village are Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, Technopark Trivandrum and MobME Wireless. Kris, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Infosys and the most successful IT Entrepreneur from Kerala is the Chief Mentor for Startup Village.Startup Village aims to incubate 1,000 product start ups over 10 years and start the search for a billion dollar company from a college campus by turn of this decade. Startup Village will create an ecosystem and provide a platform for start-ups to create breakthrough technologies for the global telecommunications industry. Startup Village will focus primarily on student startups from college campuses.

LOCATION: http://globalchallenge.mit.edu/teams/view/377

  • Service Location India

Practical Education Network

COMPETITION YEAR: 2013


SUMMARY PEN empowers teachers to engage students in hands-on science
CATEGORIES Education and Training

  • TEAM MEMBERS
  • H. Beem
  • E. Burnell
  • F. Safir
  • A. Walker
  • D. Hanus

 
 

QUICK LINKS

Our Pitch

PEN designs hands-on STEM activities that infuse national standards with hands-on activities and train teachers in how to execute these activities within the structure of traditional education programs.

Key to our success is the coupling of these resources with sustained support after our workshops end. To this end, we are developing OurLabs, a mobile community-building and information-sharing tool for educators. Through this, they will regularly receive tips on their upcoming practicals, and they will share progress and questions with each other.

Impact

Challenge

2013 Yunus Challenge - Education: Solutions for Learning

Who We Are

Team leader Heather Beem (MIT PhD ‘14, Mechanical Engineering) has a passion for science education. She taught Ghanaian high school students to build a wind turbine, and taught workshops on solar energy through SPLASH and HSSP. She led the founding of PEN’s D-Lab class, and co-teaches it with Aron- teaching educational practices and mentoring the students in their international projects. She serves as MIT liaison, initiating and maintaining PEN’s communication with the MIT entities that PEN pursues collaboration with (D-Lab, MISTI, etc).

Edward Burnell (MIT ‘13, Mechanical Engineering) leads PEN's web development. He has taught many engineering lessons in Ghana with Anna and Grace, won the recent ‘Education Designathon’ with a book whose pages that both were circuits and explained them, and taught two MIT classes on wind turbines. He worked last summer on a flying wind turbine, and is currently researching model-free learning for a plane designed to fly through dense forests. Edward is also a partner of Rough Draft Ventures, a venture capital fund by and for Boston-area students. Brianna Conrad (MIT ‘11, Physics and Electrical Engineering) researches solar energy at the University of New South Wales, and has led make-your-own solar panel workshops.

Deborah Hanus (MIT ‘13, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and Brain & Cognitive Sciences) works on PEN’s web/mobile development team. This summer she will teach mobile application development in South Africa as AITI’s Technical Lead. As a 2013 Fulbright Fellow in Cambodia, where she has worked on educational projects in the past, Deborah hopes to expand PEN’s reach to Asia.

Madeline Hickman (MIT ‘11, Mechanical Engineering) coordinates MIT community relations and runs PEN’s SPLASH classes. She is a high school physics teaching assistant and D-Lab researcher, and has collaborated with D-Lab in Ghana, Kenya, and India on bicycle rickshaws, motorized mobility aids, and engineering education.

Grace Kane (MIT ‘11, Mechanical/Ocean Engineering) is a marine engineer in Scotland. She brings organizational experience as Chief Engineer at the Indian start-up Saathi, and has taught dozens of engineering classes for high school students in Ghana and the US.

Fareeha Safir (‘13, Mechanical Engineering) researches biomedical technologies and bioengineering. She taught lessons with D-lab in Tanzania, spent several terms working on a bicycle-powered grain mill with Global Cycle Solutions, and designed a lighter rickshaw truss with Gwyn Jones and the Indian Rickshaw Bank. She spent one year working with Engineers Without Borders on solar powered lighting in collaboration with a community in Degeya, Uganda.

Anna Waldman-Brown (MIT ‘11, Physics and Writing) is PEN’s coordinator of community relations in Ghana, where she was a 2012 Fulbright Fellow researching appropriate technology and piloting several PEN initiatives. She has taught science classes in Ghana, Peru, and the US.

Aron Walker (MIT ‘07, Chemical Engineering and Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Science) co-teaches PEN’s D-Lab class with Heather. He is a high school science teacher and brings experience in both teacher-training and collaborative curriculum development. During his four years in the Peace Corps in Tanzania, he founded Shika na Mikono (an initiative for hands-on science education), published a manual for volunteers, and worked with the Ministry of Education on 3 educational books.

Our Community Partner

Partner Name

Location

Description

LOCATION: http://globalchallenge.mit.edu/teams/view/436

  • Service Location Ghana

The Universe and More

The Universe and More

COMPETITION YEAR: 2013


SUMMARY What Harry Potter did for literacy, we're doing for science education.
CATEGORIES Education and Training Mobile Devices and Communications

  • TEAM MEMBERS
  • J. Gould

 
 

QUICK LINKS

Our Pitch

The U.S. is ranked 17th amongst nations for science education. Less than 6% of college degrees are in the sciences and engineering, and the repercussions are felt resoundingly in the job market. Most people are intimidated by science during their primary education, and avoid it like the plague when they get to college.

The problem starts in the education community. Good science teachers are hard to come by. Most high school teachers that teach science are not directly qualified or have any specialized knowledge of these abstract subjects like physics and chemistry. Only 1/3 of all physics teachers have degrees in physics or physics education.

Our solution is to make fun, addicting, and downright educational science software games. Teachers will use them in the classroom, and parents can get them for their kids to help them learn and improve their grades. We've already launched one Adobe Flash (TM) game to massive teacher acclaim and viral adoption (1.6 million hits on our website to date). It's a physics game that teaches kinematics in a fun and interactive way.

http://www.nms.org/Education/TheSTEMCrisis.aspx http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/hsteachers.pdf

Impact

Improve science scores of users by one letter grade.

Who We Are

Jordan Ledvina: has a B.A. in math and physics from Rutgers University. He has edited a general relativity textbook designed for students with a rudimentary calculus background. He is doing web and business development and helps with conceptual design of games. He is currently studying entrepreneurship and finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Matthew Blackman: has a B.A. in physics, and a M.A. in Physics Education from Rutgers University. He's been teaching high school physics for four years and has taught himself to design and program games. He is the highest ranked physics teacher in the state of New Jersey. He is the primary programmer and game developer for The Universe and More.

Our Community Partner

Partner Name

A Plus Physics

Location

Rochester, NY

Description

A Plus Physics provides students with educational physics materials to both students and teachers.

Reply to Discussion

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I have not seen in my 71 years of life an opportunity to support youth co-create futures like SDG Metaverse Prize - since my father met von neumann the year I was born my family has kept an eye on entrepreneurial revolution open societal flows. living up to smithian or keynsian values 
Special thanks to zasheem launches of 2 journals with adam smith scholars and around Glasgow's greatest 20th C alumni for good. See alsdo EconomistDiary.com and Greatests of All Time
Following on with Japan ambassador to Bangladesh support from 2010 in mapping last decade of Fazle Abed and the billion womens economic model he gravitated over 50 years http://www.abedmooc.com, Team of Asian media graduates, and friends and I were lucky to follow movements of Guterres (very granular levels of 100 ops leaders inside UN) around digital un2.0 from their start in 2016.
As a statistician, datawise. I can offer a quick start mapping every last mile operation branch of UN that is linking in to maximise tech nd deep data with smartest possible logistics even as sad new fractures of world trade flows are caused most lately by Russia. Whats still needed is more clarity on which multilateral has the most data on broken value chains- fortunately i personally know who at the world bank has since 2006 the most data on food prices across every country. Maybe you know // sources .
 Digital cooperation has been celebrated solutionwise in Geneva where the ITU has actually been the digital twin of ny policy headquarters from the start in 1946 (and actually earlier since 1865 collaborations needed for there to be one telegraph standard instead of many).
By 2018 the first digital cooperation report mainly chaired out of geneva with 30 national tech leaders eg melinda gates representing USA to guterres and he formed tech envoy transformation office round 10 transformation processes -see Overview of the Office’s Ongoing Work | Office of the Secretary-General's Envoy on Technology
The ITU started taking its responsibility to a new level with AIforgood- specifically this went year round zoom not juts annual summit- and a first 50 operational branches of the UN identified at least one ai project each. Meanwhile Guterres hosted expert roundtables around the 10 processes uniting not just un branches and national leaders but corporations , leading ai university centres and NGOs -see https://www.un.org/techenvoy/sites/www.un.org.techenvoy/files/List_of_roundtables_key_constituents.pdf
Three more things came together- it turned out that 20 operational units of the UN had been discussing web1 &2 in annual vents of ITU -in thi=ose days called worldwide information society; the xprize out of moutnain view's singularity university got involved. By december the 10 million dillar avatar prize will  be debriefed- the last 4 xprizes have been on urgen tai solutions eg related to covid. And japan has been uniting about 40 cities' colleges through two investment streams geared to society5.0 and Osaka Data Track Expos - connection places where the UN has a training college and connecting AI regional epicentres fortunately Nordica, Netherlands & selected East Europe's smartest community AI researchers (ie who value DAO) are miles more connected than west EU's bureaucratic offices. (I did help moderate EU Knolwgeboard for 3 years so have followed this rather strange old world happening) You could also check with Romano Prodi as died and he shared most entrepreneurial revolution maps.
Back in 2018 the tufts arctic circle club were miles ahead on virtual reality than other boston students including mit100k prize that i once judged in a minor way.  The over 18 teams are effectively free to help the UN digitalise and connect this with web 3 or metaverse or ai or whatever is the leap forward 2020s that you see tech mobilising
 can a prize help celebrate new Greatest of All Time. This will be one way to unite celebrities of sports and fashions with real tech heroines.
Exponentially we are at a critical time as nature judges us. Due to last week's supreme court rulings, around the world nations are being told taht it is only at the state level they can expect any american partners of climate, energy etc. However there is a chnace e that if we map who cares about water this may even unite some republican states. 
Thanks to the work led by people like Eban he has a listing of which institutions joined their youth in March 2022. Is there a way to see who wants to help youth connect before december's starting line for year 1 of sdgmetaverseprize.org? As far as I can see this prize isnt just us last chance to be be trusted rest of the world on cop26 but it is every community's chance to benchmark digital gov. UN2.0 if succeeds  Meta will not only provide a benchmark for digital multilateral but will in effect unite every best govtech - at community state nation level. So already when it comes to goal 4 education places like singapore and south korea are both leaders of ai for every age group and leading connectors of Guterres Digital UN , and in effect every sustainability goal solution. of course the problem is penisular and  developed island states are not sufficient to help with massive inland solutions on continent scales let alone messy landlocked nations borders. The reality is west (US and EU) depends on Asian solutions  more than many Atlamtic policymakers view. Europe is not yet better situated for peace than the 1920s and this time round the US is not united on being a leader in saving the world. The great thing about the prize is with teams of 2-6 getting on with deep digital solutions youth can advance in joy and productivity even as elder generations have designed 60 years of accelerating media to propagate hate or fear or mental illness.
i welcome any way to follow this up eg whatsapp +1 240 316  8157, zooms, last month while wall street was still investing mainly in naked apes - educators started an NFT aimed at connecting 6000 educators; to be frank this is mainly k-12 leaving the 2 main areas fazle abed's last 20 years focused newly on university and pre-school maximum opportunity to represent women empowerments voice if you should so choose to collaborate
cheers chris macrae

===================please note most of this column is due to be re-edited we hope to issue a list of yunus top 10 stories but when it comes to solutions matching those challeges there's all to play for as web3 is humanity's last chnace to leap ahead

  hottest youth-spring question of our life and times-can online education end youth unemployment for ever ? yes but only if you help map how!

Breaking News to action now!

About Pro-Youth economics at Norman Macrae Foundation online library of norman macrae - The Economist's Unacknowledged Giant -videos 1 2 -fansweb  NMFoundation- youth projects - include yunuschoolusa

 

fullest press reports  Grameen Brand Partnership Architecture

exponential impact advisory: the social business youth networks inspired by muhammad yunus -without which millennium goal actions networks would be way behind are worth far more than any individual parts according to Norman Macrae Foundation  trilliondollaraudit methodology and charter notespace

Beyond the extraordinary investment of the members bank at Grameen, and the approximate third share its members foundation holds in grameenphone, here is our Unofficial League Table of Most Impactful Social Business Investments around yunus - last update 1 dec 2012

! Grameen Solar

2 Grameen Mobile Nursing nets and college

3 Portfolio of investments linkedin by Japan

4 Portfolio of youth-led networking inventions in US educationsystem  tertiar and secondary - transparency note NM Foundation has minor donation/loan interest

5 Investments in Grameen as collaboration brand linked in out of paris- the origin of global social business partnership funds

6 OpenTech investments of Grameen Intel

 

-------- while not controlled by yunus we see wholeplanetfoundation microcredit investment table and conscious capitalsm movements and hugely important to advancing pro-youth economicsmission of friends of youth and yunus

 

email chris.macrae@yahoo.co.ukif you have questions or recommendations of entries that should be in this league table

-please read notes about what pro-youth economists mean by superapps being most

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