sustainable vision

On location in Myanmar

Submitted by dave on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 10:02

Enjoy these video updates from one of our Sustainable Vision teams: Stanford University's project to strengthening manufacturing capacity of Burmese metalworking firms to promote sustained development. The team believes introducing an improved manufacturing process for treadle pumps will eventually diffuse to other areas, broadly improving the local metalworking sector.

Sustainable Vision: 2006

Sustainable Vision: 2007

Sustainable Vision: 2008

Previously funded Sustainable Vision grants

Congratulations to our most recently funded Sustainable Vision grantees from the 2012 cycle:

Village Energy takes off in Honduras

Submitted by dave on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 08:59

For the past two years, a Sustainable Vision team from Baylor University has worked in remote villages in Honduras, helping locals build mini hydro-power stations.

Team leader Brian Thomas reports that the team's company, Village Energy, has launched an electricity generation business in a village called Danto Uno, and is establishing a second business in a nearby village.

Work is also underway to help local people use their new source of energy to spur entrepreneurial activities. A Baylor faculty member, Blaine McCormick, taught entrepreneurship to village people on a recent visit, and already villagers are creating businesses.

Pico-Hydropower Franchising: A Test Bed in Rural Honduras

Baylor University, 2007

Many poor villages in developing countries are located in isolated mountainous areas without access to grid-based electric power. Without access to electricity, villagers burn a variety of fuels for energy, which can lead to respiratory disease and environmental degradation. At the same time, a number of these villages have nearby streams that represent a considerable untapped natural resource for energy creation. This project seeks to take advantage of those streams, creating village-level pico-hydro systems that harness the small mountain streams to produce enough energy to serve the villages.

The team has developed and installed several pico-hydro systems in remote villages in Honduras. The team has replicated the process and made the pico-hydro systems sustainable by building them into community-owned businesses. Specifically, the grant allowed for the development of business plans for two types of companies: franchised power-producing operations in rural villages (villagers running the pico-hydro systems), and system design companies located in nearby urban centers.

Technology in Africa: Check these grantees' blogs

Submitted by dave on Wed, 05/27/2009 - 15:26

A couple of our Sustainable Vision grantees are active in Africa: read their blogs!

The Global Network to Support Sustainable Information and Communication Technologies Entrepreneurship project in Senegal. Read the blog.

The Mashavu project, a healthcare network based in Kenya. Read the blog.

GoodGuide featured on Bill Moyers Journal

Submitted by dave on Tue, 05/19/2009 - 08:37

Bill Moyers talks about smart grocery shopping, including using GoodGuide to gauge the environmental and social health of your food.

Watch the interview here.

GoodGuide is an NCIIA-funded Sustainable Vision project that helps people find safe, healthy and green products.

Sustainable Vision success stories and videos

Follow the accomplishments of our Sustainable Vision teams in 2008 and 2009, as reported online from around the country.

'BEST' Battery Certification Program to Reduce Lead Poisoning in Asia (University of Tennessee at Knoxville)

Global Resolve: Reducing Pollution in Ghana Using Smart Business (Arizona State University)

Village Energy: Bringing Electricity to Remote Villages in Honduras (Baylor University)

Affordable Solar Micro-Thermal Generator in South Africa (MIT)

High Efficiency Stove Models Come to Africa (University of Colorado - Boulder)

A Sustainable Irrigation System in Peru (UMass-Lowell)

Deciphering Good Products from Bad is a Phone Text Away with GoodGuide (Berkeley University)

10 ideas changing the world right now

GoodGuide (UC-Berkeley)

Grantee Videos

University Grants Manager Jennifer Keller Jackson had the opportunity to travel to Peru to learn about UMass Lowell's drip irrigation project (2008 grantee):

Grantees, such as University of Colorado-Boulder's Sustainable Technology Entrepreneurship in Afghanistan team, collaborate with non-profit, for-profit, educational or government partnerto bring socially beneficial products to the poor via an economically sustainable business model (as opposed to traditional philanthropy):