As exchange students at the University of Ghana in 2008, we were stunned by the magnitude of two issues: child homelessness and environmental damage. In Accra, Ghana’s capital, an estimated 60,000 children call the streets their home. Street children fend for themselves, often working in unhealthy, dangerous environments, eating poorly, and sleeping in unsanitary conditions.

 

Accra’s streets are not only filled with homeless kids, however; they’re also overflowing with trash. Since Ghana does not have an effective waste management system in place, people are forced to toss their trash directly onto the ground. The 40 tons of waste discarded each day have resulted in extensive environmental degradation.

 

So far, we have worked to address both forms of neglect through the following objectives:

1.     Decrease pollution and the number of children on the streets
aBAN on Neglect pays street children to collect waste and craft it into unique, handmade goods that we sell online and through school fundraisers. Since 2008, we have helped these kids make and sell over 1,000 bags and provided 20 kids with sustainable incomes for food, shelter, and education.

 

With the support of grants and other sources of funding, we aim to expand our programs and address the following objectives:

 

2.     Incorporate both a savings and an educational model into our program to help children attain their long-term financial goals.

3.    Increase public awareness of the issues by creating a city-wide campaign to educate the public about the urgency of child and environmental neglect in Accra.

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Thanks for reading! Check out our website at http://www.abanonneglect.com/

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Renewable energy systems are proliferating in the developing world, yet contextual factors continue to affect full adoption of such technologies. E2E provides a solution to the technical and educational barriers to energy technology use in the developing world by connecting innovative education to sustainable energy needs in Africa.

E2E, Education to Energy, provides both education and technical services through two key programs:

·         The GreenSquad provides technical support, training and consultation for teachers, students and other users of decentralized energy systems. We partner with local and regional businesses to provide installation, repair, and maintenance for new energy technologies. A team of community experts will be equipped to manage technology issues in communities. The GreenSquad is on call and available by mobile SMS.

·         The mobile classroom is an enriched learning space equipped with a library, lab space, and hands-on museum that serves students and community members. The service is delivered using innovative portable architecture that unfolds into a travelling “E-lab”. Designed for portability on bicycles used by GreenSquad personnel , it also serves as a marketing platform for our services. E-lab includes:

o   Learning Resources: Sugar Lab software with special energy features (i.e. solar panel power output program); open source learning activities.

o   Science equipment including local materials for basic science projects and more technical equipment for monitoring such as a wattmeter and thermometer.

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Chow provides a sustainable business solution, bringing together farmers and food producers with their customers through an on-line, auction-based marketplace. Chow’s mission is to be “The e-Marketplace Where Food Wins.” Chow will be known worldwide as the eBay of food, with a particular forte in locally grown food. Chow’s value proposition is that it will serve as an intermediary to link food sellers (e.g., farmers, food manufacturers, commercial food networks and distributors that aggregate food for larger scale operations) with food buyers (e.g., commercial food networks and distributors and small businesses that purchase food for their products such as restaurants and cooperatives, and individuals).

Chow will be measured with all aspects of a true triple-bottom lined, blended-return business: social and economic development for sellers in rural communities, and for emergency food networks to access to recovered food; financial rewards for the company; and environmental returns for buyers and society through reduced CO2 emissions and reduced pollution from transportation. Chow expands a well-proven on-line business model into the new segment of locally grown food.

Chow has a vision to change agri-commerce so food sellers have easy access to markets. Chow has a competitive advantage by selling food on-line in an e-market, ensuring the link of food sources to their consumers and eliminating the currently confusing, time-consuming and ineffective web of channels to bring these markets together. This business model will provide a free marketplace for buyers and charge fees to sellers for listing and selling products.
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 “I carry people and their goods to and fro; I spend my energy in the heat or the biting cold to save their energy, time and money. I only wish they treated me with some respect. I want to live without the fear of loosing my rickshaw and my livelihood”

3-5 lakh men pull cycle-rickshaws everyday to earn their living, and about 10 lakh people’s livelihood depending on them. These men work in oppressive conditions pulling loads and people well beyond their capacity. Most of them do not own their cycle-rickshaws and pay exorbitant rents. Moreover, they work in the unorganized sector and are frequently harassed by cops, local mafia and even customers. They have no social security and healthcare options. They are a high risk group, vulnerable to disease and suffering.

Seeking to address these issues, the idea is to provide them with an alternative source of revenue and raise their level or awareness and civic responsibility. Golden Wheel also plans to use this enormous human capital as green messengers. Regularizing their services will also strengthen last mile connectivity and serve to increase the efficiency of mass transit systems in urban India. Golden Wheel will bring these cycle-rickshaw pullers into the organized sector and try to provide them basic amenities.

The model is scalable and can be implemented throughout the city and in other cities of India. The outcomes will be addressing human rights issues and dignity of labour. The innovation has strong socio-economic benefits and financially, it is self sustaining.

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  Our idea is focused on solving water problems in India, using rainwater harvesting as a solution, by reaching out to different kinds of people and interacting with them in the way they understand best, by showing them their benefits in being a part of this movement.

 

In the first phase of the project, a web portal will be launched which will provide the basic know-how of water problems, rainwater harvesting, a rainwater calculator and installation techniques. The client may even hire a consultant from our consultant network or try implementing solutions themselves.

 

It is important that those who are planning cities, buildings and homes for us have a good knowledge about water issues and relevant technologies. To achieve this, training workshop programs will be organized to educate architects, civil engineers and urban planners about rainwater harvesting ideas and solutions to enable them to incorporate the same into projects that they undertake in their future. This will result in a value addition to their projects and also make them socially responsible professional.

 

Throughout the two phases awareness regarding water crises will be created by displaying and popularizing the website at events, exhibitions and expos.  Free seminars at schools and colleges will be conducted to attract youngsters to this issue.

 

In the final stage a robust and rigorous model for domestic rainwater harvesting will be developed using expertise and experience. Once built, it is expected that the models will guide formulation of public policy for rainwater harvesting. At the consumer level, we will acquire rainwater harvesting rights from home owners by paying a fee. The fee will be paid by utilizing subsidies. The rainwater will be channelled to underground storage facilities. This water will be supplied back to the community during water shortages or as per need as a paid service.

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The rise of electrical sciences in the late 19th century drove the world towards the 2nd industrial revolution resulting in huge economic growth that has changed the world ever since. However, more than 100 years on, there are many that still lag behind. 

Not known to many, at least 1.6 billion people do not have access to electricity for lighting, refrigeration, mechanical power, telecommunications and other beneficial uses. This represents almost 25% of the world’s population. Having access to electricity can reap huge social and economic benefits. Extending reliable energy to the world's poor is crucial to encouraging economic progress and improving social welfare in developing countries. In light of rising global greenhouse gas emissions, achieving energy goals in a way that is environmentally sustainable is also essential. 

Our idea is to start by empowering rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa with electricity. Sub-Saharan Africa is blessed with an abundance of irradiation of sunlight which can be harnessed and converted to useful electricity by means of solar photovoltaic panels. However, such devices are expensive and the technological barrier of entry to such locations is high. Hence, the idea is to also incorporate a financial model to finance the implementation of solar power to these areas.

This can indeed become a reality by connecting the financial mechanism of carbon trade with corporate and private social responsibility together.  To achieve this, we are in the process of inventing a device that will make such a project more cost effective.  AriffMunshi80.0

Rural Bio Gas Generation is our starting point. We setup Bio Gas plants in villages but maintained by us . The gas generated is supplied to the homes in the village through pipelines and it is charged a nominal fee per month. A small profit earned from these services should support the organising teams and further development of energy hubs.The vision is to pool in all the available energy resources  to a energy hub with in a  village and use them for village requirements. ganji.manu60.0

Our idea is to produce fresh drinkable water by using distillation as the primary process utilizing the vastly available solar energy. Though there are distillation units available for producing drinking water using solar power, a distillation process at lower partial pressure was not yet attempted. Therefore we have incorporated the basic principle of decreasing the boiling point of water by reducing the ambient pressure i.e. solar distillation at reduced pressure. In order to have a village level application at low cost, we propose manually operated vacuum pump to achieve lower pressure to enhance the boiling of water. According to our estimates our product will cost upto 1300 INR which can be brought down by mass production and subsidizing. We will be able to provide 21 litres of water per day.
                              
We got the idea from the basic concept that water boils at a much reduced temperature due to a lower atmospheric pressure in Himalayas. We aim at producing an artificial Himalayas like condition in the solar still distillation equipment.

The two major issues being addressed through this project are:

1) Making clean, drinking water readily available for the village community
2) This equipment does not consume electrical energy and rural India is not electrified completely as well.  
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Its high time we stopped taking drinking water for granted as a resource. Too little too late would land us up in a situation best described by the title.  With water tables depleting at an alarming rate and fresh water resources shrinking rapidly there is need for action.

A lot has been spoken about rain water harvesting, the methods and advantages. But it is one idea which has really not taken off on a large scale. This could partly be because of ignorance and lack of expertise.

I propose a website which shall help customers by providing good rain water harvesting solutions. Having good links with architects and civil engineers, new houses can be modelled with these solutions. This would mean an overall business for architects, engineers, website developers and customer satisfaction. The website would also include a host of eco friendly solutions like what type of solar panels/ wind mills to use and where to place them to optimize their effect.

This idea if recognised and supported would provide a strong and much needed impetus to rain water harvesting.
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One man’s trash certainly is another man’s treasure, but we’ve got an even more efficient formula that will make every man’s trash our treasure. We have come up with an extensive business model that will not only solve a tide of social, environmental and economic problems but will also make us a good a buck while we are at it. We will be using Lahore (major city of Pakistan), whose current state of affairs is mutual to those of many cities of the developing world, as our pilot city. Most of the problems these cities face are interlinked and we believe that the inefficient allocation of resources is a major cause. Our business model uncovers the links between the problems and provides a step-wise cycle to root them out.

Step 1: Involves the conversion of the various slums of Lahore into communities with hygiene-controlled collection plants. These communities will have residential facilities, for the slums’ population, with infrastructure of standard that far exceeds that of an average slum. The slums’ adult population, irrespective of their gender, will be offered full-time jobs in the garbage collection and sorting process. The collection plants are where the people who are hired as garbage collectors will bring all the garbage after collecting it from the area of the city assigned to them. On the plants, the garbage sorters will be responsible for separating and categorizing the garbage collected there i.e. separating paper, cans, glass, steel etc.

Step 2: Involves transporting this garbage from collection plants in various communities to a major processing unit. The employees that will be carrying out the logistics will originally be selected from a pool of unskilled labor, preferably from the lower-most class, and will be given the required training in order to attain drivers’ licenses and other essentials. Once transported, this garbage will be recycled into paper, cans, glass, containers, packages, and a lot more. Apart from the supervising staff, workers employed in the factory, too, will be selected from the pool of unskilled labor and will be trained for their specific tasks.

Result: We will have provided safe housing to those who would never have been able to afford it, provided them with jobs, provided healthy alternative to begging--a common practice in Lahore, cleaned the streets revitalizing beauty and aura of the entire city, reduced the number of trees being cut down for pulp to make paper, saved scarce resources such as fossil fuels which are used in making virgin plastic, and last but not the least made a profit. The complete package, a business model which would be every Economist’s dream; saves the government from having to spend colossal amounts in order to curb unemployment, provide housing, eradicate poverty, and at the same time gives it some tax revenue in exchange.

Sustainability: At present, 21.2% of all recyclable waste in Lahore is recycled, and it generates an amount of US$4.5 million per year. If recycling is adopted as an industry, it can generate revenues of around US$20 million per year, and can also save enormous amount of energy, as well as the natural resources.

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Tseai Energy Unlimited (TEU) is a closed symbiotic system that leverages small scale agro-processing for rural development and the production of clean, sustainable energy. The company will install and operate numerous small scale agro-processing mills in rural communities in West Africa to localize the production and commercialization of high margin products from indigenous crops. Specifically, TEU will process palm fruit from local farmers in Sierra Leone to produce and sell palm oil to various markets. Revenue generated is used to stimulate economic development and sustain social services. Waste from the mill is used to produce fertilizer and biogas, which is subsequently used to generate electricity. Unlike other agribusiness models in West Africa, TEU incorporates renewable, sustainable energy production for community development projects while supporting itself and its host community with its agribusiness operations. This innovation provides social benefit (electricity, access to education) to its recipients and simultaneously creates a viable market for palm oil farmers in the region. trevoryoung60.0

A small Capactor box (having  elecricity storage ability)attached with the wheels of  all the cycles and motor bikes in all over the world will make every one able to produce the electricity for their use with their own............less dependence on government electricity...........less resources consumption......environment friendly method........makes every one proud coz of adding his contribution in producing electricity...........and  make them  happy  with their self effort :)
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In developing countries, universal access to electricity is yet to fructify. The problem of providing electricity to the remote areas is even more acute. The costs outweigh the revenues and the remoteness further dissuades conventional power utilities to invest in rural electrification.

An initiative in this regard would be to utilize non-conventional energy like solar, biogas, ethanol, windmill or if possible tidal waves. The power units set up would be catering to the local population only, say a village or at best a few adjoining ones. The ownership would rest with the village-level local government.  

The power units being based on renewable sources can be eligible for carbon credits and would lead to revenues for the villages. This initiative will be able to

1. Provide clean affordable energy to the remote interiors

2. Financial self-reliance for the village-level governing bodies.

The concerned rural population will benefit as a whole.

 

Lack of electricity in the remote, interior parts of any developing country is a hindrance to socio-economic progress. The initiative would primarily try to address that.

1. Electrification will lead to better vocational opportunities for the village populace.

2. Access to better health care and education facilities can also be enabled. 

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Currently, 1.6 billion people around the world live without access to electricity.  Their options—diesel, conventional solar, and sometimes grid power—are all well beyond their means.  However, most of these people spend upwards of $100/year on energy for kerosene lighting, cell phone charging, and batteries for flashlights and radios.

SoluPower has developed a patent-pending solar concentrator that can provide electricity for cell phone chargers, batteries, or other devices through our charge control circuitry.  The solar starter kit is the first and only affordable, entry-level power system for a household in emerging markets.  The retail price of $50 is a fraction of the cost of existing home generation systems and will be affordable for the majority of the population.



A Tanzanian villager using the concentrator prototype to charge his cell phone in from of his mud thatch hut.
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Ever since the Pakistan military initiated ground offensive in Waziristan, thousands of inhabitants of the conflict-affected areas have fled to neighboring districts including Dera Ismail Khan and Tank in the southern area of North West Frontier Province and are taking refuge in with friends and family in local communities. Internally Displaced people face difficult hygiene conditions with limited access to safe drinking water and sanitation. UNICEF reports significant water quality problems for the IDPs in Dera Ismail Khan and Tank. Provision of clean drinking water is a major logistical challenge. Boiling the water is an option but energy is not readily available and the other alternative sources are scarce, limited in quantity and have drawbacks. 

The solution lies in the newly developed gravity-driven device which will remove all particulates before passing the water through a membrane that removes bacterial and viral contamination The clean water is stored, ready for use. It can serve the need of 30 people and has a lifetime of 2-3 months.It will produce 8L per hour of potable water. It can be folded for the ease of transport and storage. It does not require any chmeical purifier, hand power, energy or pressure.

AQUAValue aims to import this device and distribute it to across the region. This will address the need for clean supply of water in the region. pate100.0

Greenscape aims to revolutionize the lawn care and landscape industry by simultaneously addressing food security and youth unemployment.  Our mission to promote local food systems while providing safe access to healthy food for the community’s most impoverished is sustained by our innovative revenue generating business model. 

Tapping into a $40 billion dollar market, Greenscape operates an eco-friendly lawn care and landscape service operated by teams paired by senior gardeners and at-risk youth.  We utilize manual or electric equipment powered by renewable energy to make our operations as environmentally sustainable as possible.  To promote the value of local food as a significant factor in a community’s sustainability, Greenscape implements backyard organic micro farms in the numerous single dwelling homes that characterize the North American city landscape.  A portion of the food yields from gardens that our teams service is donated to a food bank for emergency relief.  Revenues that we generate go towards the support of community garden development in the inner city, with the long term goal of aiding the construction of a small greenhouse on one those lots for year round food production. 

Greenscape therefore synthesizes the mission of youth employment and mentorship, the organic food and local economy movement, and the goal of increasing the environmental sustainability of communities nationwide. 

 

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Non-profits do a good job mobilizing their members’ political power to elect representatives who reflect their communities’ values, but have been unable to mobilize their members’ economic power to support businesses that support those same values. Networthy is a web-based platform that empowers these organizations to quantify the collective spending power of their membership and direct it towards businesses that support their mission.

 

Networthy builds on a new generation of online financial software to quantify the collective buying power of a non-profit’s members. Non-profits convince their members to join the website where the members grant Networthy permission to view how much each of them spends at stores where their credit and debit cards are used. Non-profits can then launch a campaign asking their members to spend more or less at a target company based upon an issue important to their membership (wages, sustainability, etc.) Networthy tracks how the members’ collective spending changes over time and communicates a credible signal to the target company telling them how much that issue or policy is benefiting or hurting them in dollars and cents. Instead of feeling like isolated consumers who are powerless to impact a company’s behavior, understanding the collective buying power of their non-profit’s membership empowers members make companies listen to their opinions.

 

From fair wages to pollution, the private sector often has the largest impact on social and environmental sustainability. Networthy shows consumers that by acting together we have the power to tell those companies the way they need to behave.

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Energy upgrades such as programmable thermostats, and energy efficient refrigerators can save people a considerable amount of money on their energy bills.  However, lower-income families, who already spend a disproportionate amount of their income on energy, are often unable to afford the initial investment for these energy upgrades.   At the same time,  these families often suffer from poor or non-existing credit scores,  locking them out of the American financial system. That’s why we’ve created the DoubleGreen credit builder loan – a small loan that will finance the purchase and installation of these and other energy and money-saving upgrades.  In this way residents will be able to affordably lower their energy expenditures and carbon emissions.

Additionally, as they make the low monthly repayments on the loan,  residents will receive the added benefit of building their credit score, which will provide them with greater access to capital and other financial opportunities.  Borrowers also receive training on how to budget, build credit, use bank accounts, and reduce energy costs in other ways.  In this way, the DoubleGreen loan promotes financial stability and upward social mobility.  Lastly, the DoubleGreen loan creates much-needed jobs for the contractors that will install the thermostats, energy-star refrigerators, etc.

It can be difficult for average Americans to find meaningful ways of being eco-friendly. But it doesn’t have to be. Not with the DoubleGreen credit builder loan. The first of its kind in the country, the DoubleGreen loan allows residents to be green and save green at the same time. peacefulloflove70.0

PROBLEM: 26 billion plastic water bottles are thrown away each year.

SOLUTION: iG Filtered Water Bottles!

 

It is not often a revolutionary product comes along that has the potential to transform the market place and the entire world! The problem solver, by Inspire Green Incorporated, is a reusable bottle that filters tap water. Plastic water bottles are a major contributor to pollution, and take 700 years to decompose.

 

Our customization is the important aspect of our business because we are targeting colleges, big business and organizations. The consumer is able to put their logo onto the bottle.  This is a great way for businesses and campuses to promote themselves as eco-friendly and initiating green actions. By targeting these large markets, we will reach more people at a fast rate. Instead of trying to sell on an individual basis, companies will purchase the bottles from us and use them for personal advertising or fundraising.

Our business is simple; we have low start up costs, so prize-money would go very far with our business. It will help us advertise and get our bottles out there.

What sets Inspire Green apart from the others is that we could have a large, rapid impact on the world that we live in today. Not only would we influence our generation, but help save our planet for the many years to come. As we are increasingly trying to preserve our Earth, this new way to drink water will pave the way to a completely eco-friendly world!

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