Though much has been accomplished in recent years to make HIV/AIDS drugs universally available, poverty and malnutrition continue to undermine treatment effectiveness. HIV/AIDS treatment consists of an intensive, multi-drug regimen called anti-retroviral therapy (ART), which is very taxing on the patient’s body. Doctors recommend that individuals infected with HIV/AIDS increase their caloric intake by up to 50% and consume diverse nutrients in order to sustain the energy necessary for the drugs to work. Unfortunately, the majority of people infected with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa have limited means to acquire the quantity or quality of nutrients needed for effective treatment.

 

Malnutrition not only increases drug side effects but also limits their absorption and effectiveness. It also weakens the immune system, hastening disease progression. HIV/AIDS, in turn, limits the labor productivity of infected individuals, pushing individuals and families further into poverty. Though not a substitute for ART, good nutrition helps people infected with HIV/AIDS to stay healthy longer, adhere to drug therapy, and maintain a better quality of life. Most nutritional support programs for HIV-positive individuals provide short-term food aid. We believe that this long-term disease requires a long-term approach to nutritional support.

 

Gardens for Health International (GHI) aims to enable people living with HIV/AIDS in Rwanda to develop a sustainable means of nutritional support for themselves and for their families. GHI provides a unique program that complements the country-wide availability of ART: legal support to form cooperatives, land advocacy, home gardens, seeds and tools, training in sustainable agriculture and nutrition. 

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INeedAPencil.com is an innovative online education program that provides free SAT exam prep and college advice to high school students. As a social enterprise, INeedAPencil.com has two primary goals: help students get into college and generate leads for colleges.

A college education in today’s knowledge economy is more valuable than ever before. In fact, it is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. Yet for a student from a poor family in the South Bronx who cannot afford a Kaplan tutor, college is something “that only rich kids can do.” There are virtually no options for a growing segment of American teens that face harsh admissions criteria, impossible financial burdens and unimaginable information asymmetry. No more. Students from low-income backgrounds score an average of more than 300 points lower on the SAT than students from high-income backgrounds. No more.  

INeedAPencil.com provides two crucial services that empower students to raise SAT scores and make college a reality:
•    A comprehensive online program with SAT lessons, practice questions, status reports, an automatic score projector, digital notes, an SAT calendar, built-in calculator and much more
•    A blog series with unique college admissions information that walk a student through selecting schools, applying to college, earning scholarships and everything in between jasonshah910.0

Embrace is a sustainable social enterprise that aims to save vulnerable babies around the world through a low cost infant incubator.  20 million low birth weight and premature babies are born every year, primarily in developing countries.   Many of these babies die or grow up severely ill because they are not able to regulate their own body temperature.  This problem could be prevented with an incubator.  However, traditional incubators in the U.S. cost up $20,000.

The Embrace Infant Warmer is an innovative device that costs $25.  Embrace uses a phase change material incorporated in a sleeping bag design to regulate a baby's temperature. The product requires no electricity, has no moving parts, is portable and is safe and intuitive to use. Our customers will be private and government hospitals, as well as NGOs who can help bring the product into a community setting. We plan to prove the product and business concepts in India, where the largest need for this product exists, and then roll out in the rest of the developing world.

One of the U.N. millennium development goals is the reduction of infant mortality by two-thirds by 2015.  The Embrace incubator will help families save their babies, and governments work towards this goal.  By 2013, Embrace aims to save the lives of 137,000 babies and prevent illness in another 780,000 babies.  This will lead to cost savings of $146 million to governments, and an increase in GDP of $1 billion due to improved health.

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 Drinking and cooking kill in developing countries.  Diarrheal illness caused by dirty water and respiratory disease caused by smoke inhalation from wood fires are the two leading environmental causes of disability and death in the world, representing 10% of the total global burden of disease and far outstripping more publicized illnesses such as malaria and cancer.

Seeking to address these issues from the ground up with locally-available, low-cost materials, SolarCycle’s founders looked to the most unusual of resources - trash.  We have designed a revolutionary material made from used plastic grocery bags and the aluminized interior of chip bags, which will replace virgin plastics and mirrors in solar concentrating applications. Using this “upcycled” manufacturing process, SolarCycle produces the most durable, sustainable, and financially accessible solar cookers and community-scale water pasteurizers on the market and turns a serious trash problem into a solution for diarrheal illness and respiratory disease. 

A single $5 SolarCycle cooker will reduce smoke-related illnesses, save 60 days and 2700 miles of walking to collect firewood, prevent 20,000 lbs of firewood consumption, and produce annual social benefits estimated at $34.  By purifying enough water for 80 people over 10 years, our $350 water pasteurizer will reduce the incidence of diarrheal illness by 40% among users, producing a staggering annual $2500 in social benefits.  Beginning in Sub-Saharan Africa, SolarCycle will use local waste products and easily scalable manufacturing processes to achieve rapid growth and widespread environment and health improvements for the people that need it most.

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