Author: blum

VIDEO UPDATE: #GlobalPOV’s Ananya Roy At TEDxBerkeley

[youtube id=”pKASroLDF0M”]
“Are you there, Bono? It’s me, Ananya Roy, and I live in public housing. I’m an educator, a professor at the world’s greatest public university, and I live in public housing…”

So began the first draft of Roy’s TEDxBerkeley talk, titled “(Un)Knowing Poverty.” She eventually cut the Bono reference at the top of the talk when we convinced her it was a bit much, but then she added another Bono reference somewhere in the middle. We win some, lose some. Here are a few (non-Bono) highlights:

I can say the home I live in is public housing because the tax deduction my partner and I enjoy on our mortgage is a more substantial handout than any money spent by the U.S. government on what has come to be stereotyped and vilified as public housing, and there are millions of other families that have enjoyed the same benefit . . . I start with this example because it forces us to (Un)Know Poverty, to call into question the familiar frames through which we know poverty, especially the frames of dependency and welfare.”

. . .

“The always snarky and smart William Easterly, in his influential critique of foreign aid, The White Man’s Burden, has this line: “The rich have markets, the poor have bureaucrats.” On this one, Easterly is wrong, very wrong. The rich have state help, the poor have self help.”

. . .

“To (Un)Know Poverty is to make a shift from asking how we can help the poor to asking how poverty is produced, to asking how wealth, power and privilege are maintained. To (Un)Know Poverty is to make a shift from tinkering with a charity that can do good to transforming the policies that enable wealth but impoverish poverty. To (Un)Know Poverty is to find the impossible space of poverty action.”

For more coverage of Prof. Ananya Roy’s TEDxBerkeley talk, click here.

Photos below by HalinaV Photography.

UC Press Blog Asks “Who Profits From Poverty?”

University of California Press, publisher of the forthcoming Encountering Poverty Point-of-View book, featured the #GlobalPOV’s latest vid (“Who Profits From Poverty?”) on its blog. In the post, UC Press writes:

Watch the video to learn about the surprising ways microfinance companies take advantage of the poor, how society tends to criminalize opportunism and innovation only when it comes from the lower classes, and why [Prof. Ananya] Roy is skeptical about the time-worn maxim, “If you teach a man to fish…”. Roy looks at what it takes to build a “pro-poor” economy—one that doesn’t profit off the labor, consumption, and debt of the poor. It’s a complex problem, and this project is a great start.”

To visit the UC Press blog, click here.

Generation Innovation: Luis Flores, 2013-14 Stronach Prize Winner, Takes on Cross-Border Economic and Social Justice

Luis Flores in Imperial Valley
Flores in Southern California’s Imperial Valley, where he will research transnational dynamics impacting social and economic conditions in the border region. Photo credit: Ericka Veliz

Luis Flores, a Blum Center student writer and soon-to-be first generation university graduate, has recently been awarded the prestigious Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize for the 2013-14 school year. Below, Flores shares how his family history has inspired his pursuit of global economic and social justice. The Stronach Prize, celebrating the life and work of art historian, activist, and poetry teacher Judith Lee Stronach, offers generous grants of up to $25,000 for UC Berkeley undergraduates looking to heighten awareness of issues of social consciousness and the public good.

I am happily surprised to have been awarded a Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize for the 2013-14 school year, which I will spend along the southern border with Mexico. My intended project straddles the line between community engagement and academic inquiry—or rather, proposes that they can (and must) be one and the same. Using different modes of community engagement, I hope to reveal the fundamentally transnational dynamics that made California’s southern border region particularly vulnerable to the Great Recession (the region now ranks the highest in national unemployment and embodies a series of other painful superlatives).

I was raised in a small desert town along the southern border convinced that my upbringing occurred in a bubble, disconnected from the cosmopolitan modern world. The education I received at UC Berkeley revealed the opposite. My native region, like all localities, is deeply interconnected with the “outer world” through a web of economic and social linkages. In fact, the tensions built into these relationships are particularly visible in border regions—where the irony of American economic power is a visible part of everyday life. It is these historical interconnections that my project seeks to uncover. A result of faulty immigration policy, World Bank-influenced economic policies, increases in free trade production, among other dynamics, residents on both sides of the border entered lives of credit dependency as early as the 1980s. It will be the effect of these economic histories that my project of community engagement will take on. The result will hopefully be the “denaturalization” of credit dependency and the opening of credit relationships as a new arena for political and social contestation.

While this project’s direction owes much to personal observation and experience, it is visibly imprinted by my time at UC Berkeley, where I’ve had the fortune of being a part of multiple communities. Enrolled in degree programs in History and in Political Economy, I benefited from the kindness and generosity of professors in geography, history, and global poverty and practice. Particularly, Khalid Kadir and professors Gillian Hart, Catherine Cole, and Ananya Roy have been formative mentors—constantly reminding me of the political stakes of academic research. I learned a great deal from the team of writers at the Berkeley Political Review, and have been perhaps most profoundly changed by my time living in the Berkeley Student Cooperative.

It is ironic that while I did not minor in Global Poverty and Practice, the Blum Center has become a sort of educational home. After two years of working as a staff writer, I’ve had the opportunity to meet dozens of GPP students, been exposed to the Big Ideas@Berkeley contest, and became involved with the center’s growing Global Poverty and Inequality Scholarship, like the Territories of Poverty conference and book. The administrative and educational staff members at the Blum Center are kind and supportive friends. The center attracts people passionately devoted to development—though from different perspectives. I’ve learned a great deal from these encounters and experiments within development practice.

While I am thankful to my mentors, family, and friends, I am aware that studying at UC Berkeley was the result of a series of incidental generational events and actions. This makes it problematic to congratulate myself. But whom or what should I thank? Should I go as far back as to thank the turbulent disagreements that compelled my grandmother and then-toddler dad to move from central Mexico to a town along on the Mexican side of the Arizona border—later facilitating my dad’s move to Baja California? Should I thank the low-paying municipal programs that made the prospect of illegal work in the U.S. more lucrative to my parents that their legal government jobs in Mexico? Surely I can thank the coincidental passing of an amnesty law in the 1980s, for granting my parents legal resident status and allowing for my privileged birth in a U.S. hospital. My point is that, particularly in moments of celebration, one can lose sight of how much an individual’s accomplishments are the result of the efforts of communities and generations, as well as of the random procession of history. There seems no difference in capability between many of my cousins in Mexico and me, who due to a different chance history are restricted from the opportunities that allowed me to apply for the Judith Lee Stronach Prize.

It is this sense of undue relative privilege that fuels what must be a life of social engagement. I encourage students interested in poverty research or social and economic justice to foster friendships with mentors and to seek out campus resources, but to never lose sight of the perspective and voices of the marginalized.

Flores is eager to assist students interested in applying to the prize or in projects of economic justice. He can be contacted at jr.luisf AT gmail DOT com.

#GlobalPOV On Mediabistro’s “AllTwitter”

AllTwitter, a Mediabistro website devoted to breaking Twitter news, highlighted The #GlobalPOV Project as part of its “Pay It Forward Friday” coverage. Regarding the #GlobalPOV video series, AllTwitter writes:

And the online videos they’re creating are intended to help “crystallize the nuanced teachings of Berkeley’s biggest minor, Global Poverty and Practice, offered by the Blum Center for Developing Economies.” The videos are posted online so those outside of the school can benefit (and learn/help) as well.

To read the full article, click here.

Students Draw Inspiration, Lessons from Weekend at Clinton Global Initiative University

By: Javier Kordi

Ngan Pham and Mohammad Yunus
UC Berkeley student Ngan Pham met microfinance pioneer Mohammad Yunus, one of her heroes, at the CGI-U conference.

In early April, eighteen UC Berkeley students attended the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI-U) conference in St. Louis, Missouri, eager to make progress on their “commitments to action”—student-led projects which aim to tackle the most pressing challenges facing humanity. With $500,000 available for investment in student projects—in addition to funds and support from the institutions in the University Network—and an all-star line-up of keynote speakers, this year’s event provided an unprecedented atmosphere of collaboration, innovation, and networking.

Ngan Pham, a student in the Global Poverty and Practice (GPP) Minor, described CGI-U as refreshing because it brought together a “group of ambitious and humble individuals” all aspiring to create a positive change. Pham’s project, “ServeFund,” prepares low-income students to be competitive and financially eligible for internships and public service opportunities—experiences that employers value highly in today’s job market. Because CGI-U brings together prominent public figures and private sector leaders, student attendees are often able to network with their idols. Pham recalls one serendipitous morning at CGI-U when she met and exchanged contact information with Professor Mohammad Yunus, an economist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient specializing in microfinance.

CGI-U supports a diverse spectrum of student commitments, from social service projects to science-driven solutions to local and global challenges. The conference gave Connor Galleher and Matt Pavlovich an opportunity to unveil their first venture in global poverty alleviation. Utilizing their knowledge of plasma physics and chemical engineering, the duo constructed a device that generates plasma as an affordable and low-input sanitation agent for water and surfaces. Requiring only electricity and air, their device has immense potential to curb infection and disease when used in developing countries. Galleher and Pavlovich were one of two teams to present on-stage in the “Solving the Global Sanitation Crisis” session.

Matt Pavlovich & Connor Galleher CGIU Display
Students Matt Pavlovich & Connor Galleher display their project poster at CGI-U. The experience taught them valuable lessons in marketing technology solutions to the public.

Pavlovich emphasized how easily it was to build partnerships with other attendees. The eerie glow of their prototype on display attracted many at CGI-U, including Stephen Colbert, who described the event as “a science fair for noble causes.” Even CGI-U host President Bill Clinton casually walked over to their booth, and—after listening to their pitch—picked up their business cards and mentioned the possibility of providing solar panels for their power needs.

Beyond networking, Galleher and Pavlovich’s exposure in the CGI-U space encouraged the team to rethink the way they presented and marketed their idea. Galleher recalled that “people were in pain when reading our [poster]” because few attendees were familiar with the language of plasma physics. The project team was compelled to “recalibrate [their] message” in order to make it more accessible. They now have a website and a pending project title—“PlasMachine”—that they hope will make the seemingly esoteric topic more understandable and accessible for the general population.

Karem Herrera, also a GPP student, described the three day CGI-U conference as “empowering” because it spoke to all aspects of the poverty challenge—including the inevitable failures and obstacles that aspiring change-makers encounter—and provided opportunities for collaboration. Herrera’s commitment is to organize a youth empowerment program in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Working with a team of approximately fifteen UC Berkeley students through MEND (an on-campus organization), her program will extend educational resources to economically disadvantaged youths in Aguascalientes. During the event, she met the directors of a similar project, Union De Jovenes Por Mexico (Union of Youth for Mexico), and may work closely with the group in the near-future.

Rajika Jindani and Chelsea Clinton
UC Berkeley student Rajika Jindani was excited to meet Chelsea Clinton at CGI-U and share her Commitment to Action, a microfinance project with Jaipur Foot.

Sean Burns, Director of Student Programs at the Blum Center, feels the conference offered an important experience for UC Berkeley students on a number of levels. “Students were able to analyze the vision and strategy of their projects,” he remarked. “They were able to meet and converse with dozens of experienced leaders in social change and innovation, and return to campus with a bolstered sense of enthusiasm and confidence for carrying forth their project commitments.” Burns, who serves as the UC Berkeley campus representative in the inaugural year of the CGI-U University Network, looks forward to continuing to work with these students as they seek to fulfill their commitments to action.

Read more about the Blum Center’s role in the CGI-U University Network.

Malaria-fighting “Faso Soap” Wins Global Social Venture Competition Grand Prize, People’s Choice Award

Faso Soap team at GSVC
The Faso Soap team accepts their awards at the Global Social Venture Competition Global Conference. Photo credit: GSVC/Bruce Cook Photography

Congratulations to Faso Soap, Grand Prize winner of the 2013 Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) and winner of the Blum Center People’s Choice Award! At the April 12th GSVC Global Conference, the team behind the anti-malaria initiative was awarded $26,500 in prize money to jump-start their business. Faso Soap is the first non-American team to win GSVC.

Faso Soap team members Moctar Dembélé and Gérard Niyondiko, students from Burundi and Burkina Faso, have developed an innovative mosquito repellant solution made with natural ingredients that are available locally in Burkina Faso. This solution, added to locally manufactured soap, provides a very accessible, low-cost anti-malarial tool.

With upwards of 300 million malaria cases each year globally, the mosquito-borne disease remains a significant—but preventable—health threat. In sub-Saharan Africa, where malaria is a leading cause of death, many families living on only a few dollars a day are unable to afford mosquito repellants and anti-malarial drugs. For this reason, Faso Soap is an incredibly important innovation in the ongoing fight against malaria.

The Global Social Venture Competition provides aspiring entrepreneurs with mentoring, exposure, and $50,000 in prizes to transform their ideas into businesses that will have positive real world impact. Founded by MBA students at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, the GSVC culminates each year with the Global Finals and Conference at Berkeley in April, gathering teams from around the world and Bay Area professionals for a day of learning and networking. GSVC has evolved into a global network supported by an international community of volunteer judges, mentors and student organizers and a partnership of premier business schools in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

The Blum Center applauds Faso Soap and the other GSVC winners and wishes them well in their exciting social ventures! Watch their pitch videos at the links below.

Full list of 2013 GSVC winners:

Center for Responsible Business Quick Pitch Award ($1,000):  Jorsey Ashbel Farms – Nigeria

Blum Center for Developing Economies People’s Choice Award ($1,500):  Faso Soap – Burkina Faso

Third Place ($7,500): Pulp Works – USA

Second Place ($15,000): Carbon Roots International – Haiti

First Place ($25,000): Faso Soap – Burkina Faso

FASO SOAP GSVC Pitch Video from Check-in films on Vimeo.

#GlobalPOV’s Ananya Roy At TEDxBerkeley

Since Bono delivered a TED talk about poverty earlier this year, Prof. Ananya Roy had to follow suit. (“Bono, Bono, Bono…”) Roy delivered a talk at this year’s TEDxBerkeley event, which explored the theme “Catalyzing Change.”  Roy’s talk rounded out the “Create” session and featured clips from U2’s 360 Degree World Tour The #GlobalPOV Project video series. According to the Daily Californian:

Ananya Roy, a professor of city and regional planning and founder of the global poverty and practice minor at UC Berkeley, concluded the “Create” session with her piece entitled “(Un)knowing Poverty,” disputing the common yet inaccurate notion people have of poverty. Her work addressed the question, “Why do we see the dependent in this way, and why is our own dependency so unknown to us?”

She also addressed what she believed to be a common hole in the motives of many philanthropists who are empathetic to those suffering in developing countries yet “squirm with their encounters with the homeless panhandler of Berkeley.”

To read the full Daily Cal article, click here. Video of the talk is forthcoming!

Blum Center Applauds Newly Appointed Chancellor’s Public Scholars

New Courses Will Link Scholarship and Community Action

ACES Awardees Sean Burns and Khalid Kadir
Sean Burns (left) and Khalid Kadir (right) have been named 2014 Chancellor’s Public Scholars. Each will design and teach a course emphasizing public scholarship and community engagement.

By: Luis Flores and Rachel Voss

April 18, 2013 – Dr. Khalid Kadir, Blum Center Lecturer, and Dr. Sean Burns, Blum Center Director of Student Programs, have been honored as 2014 Chancellor’s Public Scholars by the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship (ACES) Program.  Each will design and teach a new course in Spring 2014, emphasizing public scholarship and student engagement in community-based projects. These courses will be cross-listed as enrichment courses in the Blum Center’s Global Poverty and Practice (GPP) Minor.

ACES, a collaborative program between the American Cultures Center and the Cal Corps Public Service Center, aims to transform how community-engaged scholarship is valued on campus. Much like the GPP Minor, ACES seeks to enhance student learning through a combination of teaching and practice, encourage innovative thinking that impacts communities, and transform how the academy approaches ideas relevant to communities in struggle. ACES courses satisfy a campus-wide American Cultures requirement, exposing the entire undergraduate student body to important social histories and issues.

“It is wonderful to have the core faculty of the GPP Minor also actively involved in ACES,” said Dr. Ananya Roy, Education Director at the Blum Center and Professor of City and Regional Planning. “This breaks down the divide between critical poverty studies and practice—often imagined to be concerned with the Global South—and American cultures—often imagined to be concerned with ‘home,’ not ‘elsewhere’.”

Kadir’s and Burns’ awards solidify the Blum Center’s place at the forefront of efforts to transform the relationship between UC Berkeley and the local—and global—community. Working in collaboration with ACES and the Public Service Center, the Blum Center aims to stretch and invigorate Berkeley’s commitment to community-relevant scholarship and impactful community-campus partnerships.

Kadir’s and Burns’ selection follows Blum Center Lecturer Dr. Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales’ participation as a 2013 Chancellor’s Public Scholar. Negrón-Gonzales, whose ACES course focused on “Educational Justice: Undocumented Migrant Students & Struggles around ‘Citizenship’,” has also received the Chancellor’s Service-Learning Leadership Award for her work on this course.

Kadir, who received his PhD in Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley, first linked social science perspectives with technical problems while writing his dissertation on waste water projects in developing countries. Kadir now teaches a course in the International Areas Studies program on political economy and is a core faculty member in the GPP Minor. Kadir’s new course—among the first ever at UC Berkeley to combine technical and social perspectives with community engagement—sits at the intersection of environmental justice, social justice, and engineering. He hopes it will build engineering students’ understanding of both the possibilities and limitations of technically-based solutions.

“The goal is to help students look beyond the technical orientation of engineering approaches and learn to recognize the ways in which problems that may appear technical are at their roots deeply embedded in social justice,” said Kadir. By partnering with community groups addressing air pollution and soil contamination in Richmond, California, as well as drinking water contamination in unincorporated townships in the Central Valley, Kadir’s course will encourage students to combine interventions with local community engagement. “This class should contribute new scholarship and help shape a cadre of engineers who view problems through a more holistic lens,” he added.

Burns, who holds a PhD from UC Santa Cruz’s History of Consciousness program, published a biography on Bay Area activist Archie Green that was awarded the 2012 CLR James Award for Best Book from the Working Class Studies Association.

Burns’ new course, “Social Movements, Urban Histories, and the Politics of Memory,” examines a range of national and transnational progressive social movements which have had a prominent and influential impact in the San Francisco Bay Area. “The course will not only analyze what others have written and said of these movements, it will also organize community-based documentation projects which seek to expand public understanding of these histories, their legacies, and the contemporary experience of these communities and struggles,” explained Burns.

Making student engagement central to his course, Burns stressed that the class “will encourage students to see themselves as both history makers (people with political agency) and historians (people committed to and skilled in the practice of historical documentation). These skills and sensibilities are essential for engaging in poverty action and, like Khadir’s course, importantly complement the range of work we are taking up in the Global Poverty and Practice Minor.”

Generation Innovation: Rebecca Peters, 4th Generation Cal Student, 2013 Truman Scholar

Rebecca Peters, 2013 Truman Scholar
Rebecca Peters, a Blum Center student and the fourth woman in her family to attend UC Berkeley, was named a 2013 Harry S. Truman Scholar last week. Sixty-two college juniors received the prestigious award on the basis of their academic achievements, leadership accomplishments, and their commitment to becoming a leader in public service. The Scholarship provides leadership training, post-graduate opportunities in Washington, DC, and $30,000 for graduate study. Peters reflects on her winding journey to the Truman Scholarship and her future beyond the Blum Center and UC Berkeley.

April 17, 2013 – My path to the Truman Scholarship began to take shape generations ago, when my great grandmother frequented UC Berkeley’s hallowed grounds while pursuing degrees in Spanish and history. My grandmother, currently 96 years old and still reflecting fondly on her time at Cal, similarly began her studies here only to leave to take a job at Lawrence Berkeley Lab as an engineering designer. My mom also began to pursue a degree here before decamping to take a job in the city. I was born in San Francisco and grew up hearing about UC Berkeley, but it always seemed like a distant institution that belonged to my ancestors. As a graduating high school senior I was certain that I wanted to study environmental science and engineering at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to begin a career in Californian river restoration work.

However, my path radically shifted when I enrolled in an Appropriate Technology course that included fieldwork in rural Guatemala. Bearing witness to abject destitution profoundly refocused my perspective, and I began to understand the problem of poverty for the billions of people living without safe water, education, and health care. Learning how to negotiate the complex divides between poverty and wealth helped me develop my own solidarity in the context of inequality, and this experience learning to bridge cultural difference and seek transnational similarities inspired me to apply to transfer to UC Berkeley to enroll in the Global Poverty and Practice Minor.

Once at Berkeley, I declared majors in Society and Environment (B.Sc.) and International Development and Economics (B.A.) through the interdisciplinary field studies program. For my GPP practice experience, I sought to unite these fields by working on rural water projects with the Foundation for Sustainable Development and Water for People in Cochabamba, Bolivia from May to August 2012. Many of my days consisted of visiting communities without connections to the municipal water supply and discussing the role of water cooperatives in improving access. Through this work, I found a significant component missing from the work of the organizations: addressing the asymmetrical impacts of a lack of water on women and girls. I am now leading the expansion of gender sensitive water programs in twelve rural schools in Bolivia this summer, and am a finalist for the Human Rights category of the BigIdeas@Berkeley competition to support these efforts.

Rebecca Peters in Chiapas, Mexico
Peters examines the bottling mechanisms for community distribution from a safe water kiosk in Chiapas, Mexico, in March 2013. Three fellow GPP students will complete their practice experience at the site in Summer 2013.

While at Cal, I have participated in two Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program (URAP) projects with Blum Center associated faculty and am currently working with Professor Isha Ray to generate a literature review on the current state of water treatment models in Latin America. My first honors thesis, a formative component of my research engagement at Cal, analyzed the formation of current conditions of water access, control, and management in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The municipal government in Cochabamba theoretically incorporated civic participation as an element of their planning system through the conduits of varying levels of administration. However, a 2004 report by the United Nations RISD found clear evidence that elements of class-based discrimination and resulting inequalities in access to water existed in the residential peri-urban spaces of Cochabamba, with such inter-urban spaces becoming places where the population is an indicator of processes of social differentiation (UNRISD 2004). The insurgent urbanization of Cochabamba resulted in the rise of numerous squatter settlements, zones of informal housing, and distinctively “peri-urban” regions on the outskirts of the city. Asymmetrical political power distribution is most obviously manifested in the noticeable absence of municipal services that are provided to the wealthier districts of the city, including water and sanitation. In this way, I came to understand water as not just an environmental, economic, social, or cultural resource, but also the site of considerable politicized inequity. These diverse research experiences that often cross into advocacy have collectively reinforced my belief in the importance of working across disciplines to achieve the goals of reducing poverty, improving global health, and increasing equality in water and environmental resource distribution.

Over the past two years, I revitalized the Water IdeaLab, co-founded a DeCal on water and international human rights, and collaborated with faculty to create an undergraduate curriculum to improve water related student opportunities. I also lead the Nuestra Agua student group, and alongside fellow students introduced a social justice and human rights perspective to the organization which was previously narrowly focused on the role of UV technology and health outcomes for reducing water borne illness in rural Mexican communities. The program in Chiapas will be the summer practice experience for three GPP students to contribute to safe water programs.

While I am thrilled that my efforts thus far have helped engage students in water issues on campus, in the community, and around the world, there are still miles to go. The Truman and Udall scholarships, along with the Berkeley Law Human Rights Fellowship, are honors that I take very seriously as long-term investments to foster my commitment to water, social justice, and human rights work. My roots at Berkeley, beginning with my great grandmother, instilled in me a deep sense of history and appreciation for the educational experience here. I am still awed by the sheer physical beauty of the architecture, inspired by the intellect of my peers, and humbled by the opportunities I have as a student at Cal.

After graduating from Cal and working in Washington, DC with the State Department through the Truman Scholars Institute, I intend to pursue dual masters degrees in Water Science, Policy, and Management (M.Sc.) and International Development (M.A.) which will enable me to contribute to the design of meaningful policies that will shape the future role of the United States in water and the environment. In the future, I hope to work with the State Department’s new US Water Partnership to define its direction as a leader in US foreign policy related to issues of environmental sustainability and water security. My vision is to address inequitable water consumption practice while targeting the improvement of strong civil societies able to hold their government representatives accountable to the social, economic, and cultural demands of water. Through designing policies that empower governments to fulfill their obligation to provide affordable and accessible safe water to their people, I hope to make access to and control of water resources a more inclusive, transparent, and equitable process.

Some advice I would offer students looking for ways to get involved in poverty action are to utilize campus resources like the Blum Center, the Scholarship Connection, the Center for Effective Global Action, and Cal Corps. The mentorship and support I have received from the faculty and staff at the Blum Center have been critical to my activism, research, and advocacy for poverty and water issues. The lasting friends I have made through the Global Poverty and Practice minor – the other peer advisors, my classmates, and my Bolivian partners – inspire me every day with their creative brilliance, thoughtful innovations, and deep compassion. The Blum Center has effectively created a space to allow for a new vein of student driven and institution supported work that facilitates the millennial generation’s mission to theoretically and practically engage with the challenges of global poverty and inequality. Effective poverty action requires informed actors, and the millennials at Berkeley are capable of critically engaging to end the inequality that drives pressing economic, environmental, and social problems. Go Bears.

Visit Peters’ blog for more about her research and travels.

Read more about Peters in ‘Fourth-generation Berkeley student lands prize for water work’ via UC Berkeley NewsCenter.

UCB NewsCenter: Art, Vids & Twitter Take #GlobalPOV Curriculum To The World

The UC Berkeley NewsCenter recently sat down and interviewed the #GlobalPOV team to discuss the theory behind the project, the production process, and the fact that Prof. Roy would have had a much easier time writing and publishing a book already. (But then where would that leave Graham, VanMuijen…and Bono?) According to the article:

The project is a groundbreaking alternative to dominant forms of online education, a hot topic that’s on the minds of campus leaders as well as the University of California as a whole, the state and educators everywhere.

. . .

“What Twitter did for celebrity culture,” says Graham, “we think it can do in the academic world by making professors and scholarship more accessible.”

. . .

“There’s something about making one’s ideas accessible in this format that, to me, is quite important,” says Roy. “And I really think that’s partly what we must do as a public university: We have to invent new genres of public scholarship.”

To read the full article, click here.

UC Berkeley Students Head to St. Louis for Clinton Global Initiative University

Blum Center Joins Partnership to Bolster Student Action on Global Poverty

By: Rachel Voss and Javier Kordi

This year, eighteen UC Berkeley students will attend the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI-U) annual gathering, hosted by President Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton from April 5th-7th in St. Louis, Missouri.  The conference will include knowledge-sharing and networking opportunities for students committed to tackling the world’s most pressing problems and will feature keynote speakers such as Muhammad Yunus, Jada Pinkett Smith, Jack Dorsey, and Stephen Colbert.

CGI U 2012 Opening Plenary Session: The Power of Public Service
Credit: Adam Schultz / Clinton Global Initiative

Each year, thousands of students from around the world submit applications to CGI-U outlining a “Commitment to Action”—a concrete one-year plan to address a critical challenge in one of five categories: Education, Environment and Climate Change, Peace and Human Rights, Poverty Alleviation, or Public Health.  Finalists are invited to the CGI-U gathering, which provides attendees inspiration and guidance.

“The CGI-U conference and community helped me to carry out my commitment to increase access to financial education for microfinance borrowers in Nairobi, Kenya, by providing me with the opportunity to learn from professionals around the world and network with other like-minded student,” emphasized UC Berkeley alumna (’11) and previous CGI-U attendee Lauren Herman. “With the evaluation, leadership and fundraising skills that I gained, I made my commitment to global change a reality.”

CGI U 2012 EDUCATION WORKING SESSION - Public vs. Private: Who Decides and Who Provides?
Credit: Casey Wood / Clinton Global Initiative

The UC Berkeley students invited to the CGI-U conference were selected for their passion, energy, and the strength of their Commitments to Action, which address a wide range of social and environmental challenges.  For example, graduate students Javier Rosa and Todd Duncombe are expanding their “Build My Lab” project within the Tekla Labs initiative, a global on-line community to connect scientists, educators, and hobbyists who design and use home-built laboratory equipment.  Senior Caitlin Francoisse has been invited to present her locally-focused project, “Sexual Health for Youth,” which she started in the women’s section of the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center after receiving the prestigious Strauss Scholars Award in 2012.  Francoisse has committed to expand her project to the male detention center by building the base of Berkeley students volunteering within the program.

In addition to this year’s strong UC Berkeley student participation, the Blum Center for Developing Economies will this year represent UC Berkeley in the inaugural year of the Clinton Global Initiative University Network.  Colleges and universities in this new nationwide partnership will provide support and guidance to their respective students who have made CGI-U Commitments to Action. As CGI-U spokesperson Ragina Arrington explained, “Our hope is that these students will be better equipped to carry out their Commitments to Action, as they will have both more formal, fiscal university support for their projects, as well as greater access to on-campus university mentors who are ready to serve as a resource to them.”

Since 2007, the Blum Center at UC Berkeley has inspired and supported student engagement in issues of global development, aiming to educate and empower the next generation of poverty scholars through curriculum, field practices, mentorship, and partnership initiatives like CGI-U.  “CGI-U grows out of a set of urgent concerns and aspirations which also motivate the Blum Center’s work with Big Ideas@Berkeley, the Global Poverty and Practice Minor, and the Development Impact Lab,” noted Sean Burns, Director of Student Programs at the Blum Center.  Burns feels this new partnership will be an opportunity for the Blum Center to extend its well-known mentorship and networking capabilities to the greater UC Berkeley student community.

Junior Ngan Pham’s CGI-U initiative exemplifies this campus ecosystem of support.  Pham is part of the Global Poverty and Practice Minor and is currently a finalist in the Big Ideas@Berkeley contest. Her project, “ServeFund,” prepares low-income students to be competitive and financially eligible for internships and public service opportunities—experiences that employers highly value in today’s job market.  Pham will attend the CGI-U conference just days after the American Youth Summit in Washington, DC, where she will help the Obama Administration draft a National Young Americans Report.

“We are incredibly proud of the impact Cal students are making through our programs and opportunities like CGI-U.  For us at the Blum Center, the aim is to integrate and align these opportunities so we can boost the impact and significance of our students’ work,” Burns said.

Stay tuned for updates on Build My Lab, ServeFund, and other CGI-U commitments through the Blum Center’s Facebook and Twitter.

Design for Sustainable Communities Course

Author:
Brittany Schell

Professor Addy also teaches a course at UC Berkeley, Design for Sustainable Communities. The class gives students hands-on experience in the design and implementation of projects meant to improve the sustainability of communities in developing countries.

The students work in teams throughout the semester on practical projects, with guidance from professor Addy and other experts. The class, a mix of graduate and undergraduate students from various majors at Berkeley, meets twice a week to discuss their own projects as well as explore the methods of successful innovators.
“One of the most pressing challenges of the new century is to harness the extraordinary force of technological innovation…and make
its benefits accessible and meaningful for all humanity,” professor Addy said to begin class, quoting former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Cost effective, creative solutions to problems like unemployment and the lack of water and electricity in villages—like professor Addy’s ECAR water initiative—provide a new area of opportunities for businesses and social entrepreneurs. It’s innovation for the 90 percent, she told her students.

ECAR Safe Water Initiative: A New Solution to an Old Problem

Author:
Javier Kordi

Abandoned arsenic water filters 
litter the village of Amirabad, India like archaic ruins. For years, the community has seen foreigners come and go, bringing the promise of clean water and leaving behind hollow philanthropic gestures. Arsenic- contaminated ground waters have created the largest mass poisoning in human history. In Bangladesh alone, 40 million people are exposed to arsenic through their tube wells. From Latin America to Asia, arsenic-laden water has plagued the lives of millions.

Working in conjunction with
 the Blum Center for Developing Economies and the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, professor Susan
 Addy and her team of scientists have brought something new to the water table: a sustainable model for water purity— the Electrochemical Arsenic Remediation project (ECAR).

ECAR differs from its predecessors in its mode of arsenic extraction. The elusive arsenic particles cannot be removed with traditional filtration— they will not settle or get retained. ECAR works by literally grabbing these particles and dragging them to the bottom of a water basin, separating them from the clean H2O. It is a simple procedure.
First, a steel plate is placed into a tub of water. Then an electrical current
is passed through the steel, creating millions of rust particles. As the rust expands, it electrochemically binds
to arsenic. The rust-bonded arsenic settles to the bottom of the basin and the final step—adding Alum, a water coagulant—allows the amalgamation and separation of the poison. The 100 liter prototype produced clean water that was indistinguishable from bottled water, using only as much energy as a CFL light bulb.ECAR 1

But even the most brilliant of technologies cannot succeed if they are not embraced and maintained
 by the local community. “The technology is maybe 20 percent of
the problem,” professor Addy said. “The social situation, making it work sustainably, is maybe 80 percent of the problem.” Often times, water projects fail because they are a one-time gift from a donor. Working with financial institutions, a social marketing firm and local governments, the ECAR project will make the delivery of clean water part of the community’s livelihood. The product of ECAR (clean water) will become a good, to be sold and profited from in an open market, thus creating an economic incentive for continued production.

Professor Addy explained the plan
 for this year: “We’ve got two pilot projects planned this year that will serve water to about 2,500 students, maybe one to two liters per day, operating for several months.” As children learn about water safety in their classrooms, the neighboring water plant will transform the school into a community center—a nexus for health and education. Ultimately, the plant will provide jobs for the local people. While providing free water to children, the excess that is created can be sold to the community. ECAR aims to become a self-sustaining water plant, both economically and technologically. Because the government has an interest in increasing student enrollment, professor Addy believes there is potential for partnering with India’s Ministry of Education to further subsidize the project.

At the end of February, two scientists, Christopher Orr and Sivarama Satyam, will depart from Berkeley 
to spend six months in India testing out the new 500 liter prototype. After working with a manufacturer in Mumbai, the prototype will be shipped to Jodhpur University in Calcutta for a few months of testing. If all goes well, this prototype will be moved to the school in Amirabad, India, where it will provide six months of free water to local school children. According to Sivarama, local governments and communities are eager to adopt the technology, particularly after the success of the initial model. With continued successes, the full implementation of ECAR and the cleansing of the water table will soon be a reality.

Big Ideas @ Berkeley 2011 Spotlight: BareAbundance

Author:
Javier Kordi

Upon entering Berkeley’s all-you-can- eat dining halls, students undergo 
a strange biological transformation: their eyes seem to swell, far exceeding the size of their stomachs. Seven servings later, a tray full of half eaten entrées stares back at their defeated gazes before getting disposed of in the garbage. This propensity to waste is not limited to university dining halls. Every day, 260 million pounds of food are wasted while 50 million Americans go hungry. Witnessing this incongruity first hand, Global Poverty and Practice students Komal Ahmad, majoring in International Health and Development, and Jacquelyn Hoffman, majoring in Gender and Women’s studies, created BareAbundance—an organization that addresses the inequitable food distribution that causes millions of Americans to suffer every day.

When food is neither consumed
nor sold, or is nearing its expiration date, the organization sweeps in to intervene before it is tossed into a landfill. Receiving excess healthy food from a wide network of sources, BareAbundance redistributes this excess to people in need. Last year, BareAbundance signed a contract with Cal Dining, securing the excess foods from four dining halls and 10 on-campus cafes and restaurants. Currently, this food is being delivered to an afterschool program at New Highland School in East Oakland, where 70 percent of students are on free or reduced lunch.

Komal, one of the founders of BareAbundance, explains that the after-school program is about more than providing food; it’s also about food education. For a community lacking access to farmers’ markets, the nutritional model of the food pyramid is sometimes hard to meet. In addition to providing much-needed sustenance, the after-school program teaches “food driven values through an experiential method where [the students] consume and cook the food.”

Take one of the program’s three-day examples: children were first given donuts and asked to write about how they felt in their journals. Initially abounding with energy, the children reported stomachaches and lethargic feelings a few hours later. A similar feeling was reported the next day when the kids ate pieces of cake. On the final day, the children were given
a luscious piece of fruit. They wrote in their journals that, not only did it taste good, but it also provided sustained energy without a sugar crash. This technique trains children to recognize the importance of a healthy diet through direct engagement.

Last year, BareAbundance was selected as a winner of Big Ideas @ Berkeley, a campus-wide innovation competition managed by the Blum Center. A recipient of the Social Justice and Community Engagement award, the organization received funding for transportation, food storage, website creation and publicity, allowing it to grow dramatically. Komal humbly described how the Big Ideas @ Berkeley grant “legitimized our organization…our idea.” It compelled the founders to make their model of food redistribution a reality: as Komal said, it was “both a pat on the back and a kick in the ass.” In the future, Komal hopes to establish a nation- wide food recovery network to save and distribute excess food from college campuses around the country.

World Day of Social Justice

Author:
Brittany Schell

February 20th marked the annual World Day of Social Justice. “Social justice is an underlying principle for peaceful and prosperous coexistence within and among nations,” states the website of the United Nations. “We advance social justice when we remove barriers that people face because of gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, culture or disability.”

In 2007, the UN General Assembly declared February 20th of each year the “World Day of Social Justice,” to recognize groups around the world working to fight poverty and promote gender equality, access to health care and other initiatives that advance development and human dignity.

Here at the Blum Center, our students and faculty work actively toward these goals. Each year, we offer fellowships to students studying in the Global Poverty and Practices minor at UC Berkeley to help fund their summer fieldwork experiences.

World Day of Social Justice
GPP students in the field

Fieldwork has ranged from supporting tenants’ rights in New York City to providing access to clean water in India; improving child nutrition in Guatemala and addressing poverty in Vietnam; working with opium addicts in Afghanistan and HIV/ AIDS prevention work in Ghana; and even building community bread ovens in Tanzania. Our students have helped advance the foundation of social justice through hands-on work, making concrete differences in communities across the world.

Last summer, 40 students received fellowships from the Blum Center.

In IAS 120, Students of the GPP Minor Learn the Skills to Spread Global Awareness

Author:
Luis Flores

It’s a practical course,” explained Royce Chang about professor Tara Graham’s Field Reporting in the Digital Age: Using Media Tools for Social Justice. “I don’t think we get enough of that here at Berkeley.”

Professor Graham’s course trains students in Berkeley’s Global Poverty and Practice minor to use the Internet and social media as tools for global engagement. The course is an all-in-one tool kit for global awareness.

Last year, students received training in everything from film, photography and creative writing to web design. “The course was valuable because it trains you to look for things and to look for the best and most ethical way to go about acquiring material,” remarked Royce. Professor Graham is teaching the class again this semester.

Royce, a history major concentrating on ancient Greece and Rome, is currently working on developing media content for One World Futbol at Berkeley, an NGO that is working to spread global and community awareness among local K-8 students through sports. He continues to believe that no matter the initiative, the spread of awareness is a vital part of enacting positive change. To this goal, online media is a valuable tool.

Ryan Silsbee, another of professor Graham’s students last year, has since graduated and is completing a four-month organic agriculture apprenticeship with Real Time Farms in Hawaii. The importance of the media skills learned in professor Graham’s class are obvious by looking at his website: a clean site with vivid photographs, concise, creatively written updates and interactive maps and guides. His site allows readers to engage with his mission of promoting healthy and organic agriculture. “Spreading information and just getting people interested in where their food comes from and how it is grown is the first step,” Ryan said.

The theoretical courses in the GPP minor set Ryan on a path to change American agriculture, and Professor Graham’s course gave him the tools tostart making those changes. “I want people to step out of their busy lives, take a look at agriculture in the United States and decide for themselves if they think something should be changed,” he explained.
Many of professor Graham’s students, like Danika Kehlet, were first able
to put these skills to use during their summer practice initiatives. Armed with a small flipcam, Danika set out to chronicle her work promoting female development in Quito, Ecuador. Her lively blog illustrates her experience through the use of videos, photo collages and engaging blog entries.

This semester, Professor Graham is training a new group of GPP studentsin a similar course: Using Media Tools for Global Poverty Action. Practical courses like these are training the
next generation of tech-savvy global citizens. Exposure to the development possibilities of social media is empowering and inspiring students.

“It is very inspiring to know that something I create, write, photograph, film, or document can change the
way people view their world,” Ryan said. “If enough people see it, you can change society.”

#GlobalPOV At Cal Day

What’s on your Cal Day agenda? From 11-12:00 PM in 145 Dwinelle Hall on Saturday, Apr. 20, we’ll screen “Can We Shop To End Poverty?”, the second vid in the #GlobalPOV series. We invite you to come view and discuss it with our team. Visit the Cal Day website for more information.

How Social & Digital Media Create a Global Point of View
The #GlobalPOV Project combines critical social theory, improv art and digital media to explore innovative ways of thinking about poverty and inequality. Join the #GlobalPOV team for a discussion of the project and a screening of a live-action sketch video “micro-lecture,” written and narrated by Ananya Roy, award-winning professor and chair of the Global Poverty and Practice Minor.

#GlobalPOV Challenge: “Now Kids…”

Video #3 in the series will explore the question: “Who Profits From Poverty?” In it, Prof. Roy warns: “Now kids, don’t graduate from college without reading this book!” Here’s the challenge: NAME THAT BOOK. And while you’re pondering, here’s a photo of Prof. Roy receiving a friendly nudge from a sneaky shark. You’re welcome.

Prof. Roy and the Shark

Across Institutions, Across Borders: Networks in Poverty Alleviation

Author:
Javier Kordi

On October 10th, the Blum Center received national attention: Rajiv Shah, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) ventured across the country to meet with the UC Berkeley community. The Blum Center was honored to host Director Shah, as he spent the day engaging with students, meeting faculty and board members, and learning about the latest initiatives in poverty alleviation.

Dr. Shah’s visit marked the first in what will be a continued, symbiotic partnership between the federal agency and the Blum Center. Towards the end of his visit, he delivered a keynote address to an overflowing audience of students, professors, and community members. Dr. Shah praised the center’s focus on “deep analysis and broad engagement… that not only generates new ideas, but also tests and applies real-world solutions.” He noted the uniqueness of the Blum Center’s approach, which combines topdown efforts with empowerment and sustainability from the ground-up.

In his speech, Dr. Shah noted his interest in solutions such as the WE CARE Solar Suitcase and the Cell Scope. With their respective abilities to curb infant mortality and facilitate early disease diagnosis in rural areas, these initiatives are a sampling of the promise of university-level development to help the poor. Dr. Shah explained that the process of interdisciplinary collaboration that birthed these projects now serves as “the model for a network of development laboratories [USAID] is forming across the country.”

The next era in poverty alleviation will be defined by an open-source approach to development that breaks down barriers limiting the availability of the latest innovations. The opensource paradigm holds the key to implementing sustainable and replicable real-world solutions. An example Dr. Shah mentioned was a mobile phone equipped with geographic information system capabilities. Made readily available to the hands of vulnerable populations, this device would allow atrocity victims to record critical information (such as time, place, and photographs) to be used as substantive evidence in international courts.

USAID understands that even the most brilliant technologies are mere tools— without a solid implementation platform, their impacts are limited. For its projects to succeed, an organization must have a fluid ideology that can operate within the varying landscapes and climates of development. This requires a lively discourse on the methods and approaches to development. On university campuses, the conversation is ever-growing, and USAID wants to join in. According to Dr. Shah, USAID aims to spark a dialogue with the millennial generation of activists and scholars emerging from places like UC Berkeley. In pursuit of this goal, USAID has created an online-space called USAID Fall Semester which seeks to invite students to converse, critique, and collaborate with the organization.

Dr. Shah ended his speech with an inspirational call to action— stating that extreme poverty could be reduced by 90% if efforts were accelerated. He then opened the floor to questions, and a lively conversation ensued. It was a day to be remembered for the students and faculty at UC Berkeley. As the Blum Center’s model is replicated and leveraged, with new partnerships across people, institutions, and ideas— a new chapter in the fight against poverty begins.

Growing the Student Innovation Ecosystem: “Big Ideas in a Box”

Author:
Luis Flores

More than 450 undergraduate and graduate students submitted proposals to one of the Big Ideas@Berkeley’s nine contest categories – representing the largest contest to date. With $300,000 in expected awards, winning proposals will receive the critical support and funding that could spread their idea and address social and global challenges. To the benefit of big ideas everywhere, the opportunity to cultivate innovative plans into real-world projects could soon become available to university students around the country.

This year, UC Berkeley students interested in the Big Ideas@Berkeley contest were presented with two new global challenges: (1) develop a proposal that will preserve of promote the protection of individual’s essential rights and (2) design an innovative solution that will safeguard the health of expectant mothers and young children. Kicking  off a dynamic partnership, Big Ideas@Berkeley and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) collaborated to open two new contest categories. The new “Maternal & Children Health” and “Promoting Human Rights” contest categories were inspired by USAID’s “Savings Lives at Birth” and “Tech Challenge for Atrocity Prevention” challenges. USAID’s initiatives foster a similar level of creativity by allowing groups of all sizes and from all backgrounds to contribute to addressing these pressing issues. Big Ideas has taken problems important to USAID and challenged UC Berkeley students to address them.

In addition to expanding the number of categories in the contest, the Big Ideas team is working to expand the contest to other universities. We’re currently working to develop “Big Ideas in a Box,” explained Jessica Ernandes, a graduate student assistant for the Big Ideas contest. “Our goal is to share the framework and process with other universities so they have the tools that have proven useful for us.”

While still at an early stage of development, this collection of documents will detail everything needed to manage a university-based innovation competition. The idea to replicate this contest was prompted by the recently announced Higher Education Solutions Network (HESN). In partnership with USAID, UC Berkeley is working with six other universities to share and develop technologies and practices needed to collaboratively address global problems. A key piece of this effort is focused on challenging and preparing the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs.

That’s where Big Ideas@Berkeley comes in. The contest succeeds because it does not simply grant prize money. The contest application process itself is an ecosystem for nurturing social innovation. From the pre-proposal phase, Big Ideas provides guidance, mentorship, and support to applicants, allowing students to grow their ideas during the 8-month long contest. This key feature should be central to any Big Ideas contest replica. “To foster student innovation, you have to know where students need support and what they’d like to get out of a program like Big Ideas,” explained Ernandes. “Listening to them is a necessary first step to ensure that the Big Ideas competition continues to be relevant and impactful as it moves to other campuses.”

The growing focus on university students is encouraging to Alexa Koenig, interim executive director of UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center. A judge for the “Promoting Human Rights” contest category, Koenig believes young people are the best problem solvers. “Students are constantly being exposed to new ideas, whether from their professors, events on and off campus, or their peers, which can contribute significantly to creativity,” she explained.

“Big Ideas in a Box” is only one of many collaborative projects that will come out of the HESN, but it is a significant one. The Big Ideas competition will provide a pipeline of essential interdisciplinary and intergenerational perspectives on how to develop solutions to address social challenges.

It may not be long until students can apply to Big Ideas at universities throughout the country and the world. “In many ways, I think our model can be replicated because it is, at its heart, really simple,” explained Ernandes, “we support and allow students to do what they are great at being passionate, smart, and creative.”

D-Lab: Designing Sustainable Low-Cost Energy Technologies for the Poor


Author:
Christina Gossmann

Giving a man a fish is good. Teaching a man how to fish is better. Yet, fishing is useless without a river. According to Dr. Kurt Kornbluth, the history of development is filled with examples of good intentions with sufficient capital but insufficient preparatory research and little follow-up to devise the most sustainable solutions. To counter such well intentioned by uninformed development work, Kornbluth founded the D-Lab at the University of California, Davis, with support from the Blum Center for Developing Economies.

D-Lab stands for Development through Dialogue, Design and  Dissemination and aims to improve living standards of  low-income households by creating and implementing appropriate, sustainable low-cost technologies. Inventor and educator Amy Smith launched the first D-Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). During the developmental stages of the initiative in 2005 Kornbluth, then a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at UC Davis, assisted her Smith during the developmental stages of the initiative in 2005. Since then, MIT’s program has successfully grown to offer sixteen different courses, exploring development, design and social entrepreneurship. Following the success of MIT’s D-Lab, Kornbluth wanted to bring the program to UC Davis; after finishing completed his graduate work and then embarked upon a mission to establish his own D-Lab at UC Davis.

Focusing on issues such as off-grid power, post harvest crop preservation, irrigation, and renewable energy, the D-Lab at UC Davis offers two hands-on courses for graduate and undergraduate students at the intersection of energy and international development. The first course gives an overview of development work around energy, while the second provides students with a platform to design for the energy market. As part of the class, D-Lab students are directly coupled with clients who face a specific problem. They spend ten to twenty weeks working with these clients in different parts of the world—from Zambia and Nigeria to Bangladesh, India and Nicaragua—to offer concrete solutions.

“Students at the D-Lab always work with real problems and real people,” Kornbluth explained in an interview. The students’ designs don’t remain in academia but directly impact people in the field. Clients get answers—students gain real-life experience.

Throughout the process— rainstorming and narrowing ideas and transforming feasible solutions into real pilot projects—sustainability is the number one priority. All projects must take into account what Kornbluth calls the “four lenses of sustainability:” environmental, economic, social, and technical. In two project-review sessions per quarter, practitioners, academics and peers provide students constructive, often hard-edged feedback. Most D- lab students are graduate students from different fields and disciplines, including engineering, economics, international development. This diversity allows students to learn from each other as much as from the process of designing a sustainable energy solution.

While it is crucial to carve out a concrete and substantial project within the time period of the course, some of the more successful solutions have stayed with students beyond their D-Lab experience. One D-Lab graduate used the “SMART light” prototype he had developed in D-Lab as part of his portfolio when applying to a job after graduation. Another student recently received $40,000 from “Start up Chile,” a government- sponsored program designed to draw start-up technology companies to the country, to further his efforts in bringing safe water to Chile.

Despite the successes, Kornbluth humbly admits that, as in any field, not all projects work out great. “In D-lab Maybe 25% are a total flop, 25% will be mediocre and about 50% are really good,” Kornbluth said.

But those innovators who are successful create real impact—especially when they get together. The UC Davis D-Lab is part of the International Development Design Summit (IDDS) network. Once a year, 60 to 80 practitioners from around the world assemble for a different kind of academic conference. Under the banner of co-creation, students, teachers, professors, economists, engineers, mechanics, doctors, farmers and community organizers present technology and enterprise prototypes instead of academic papers. Meeting in Kumasi, Ghana, and Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2012, IDDS leaders intend to launch additional locally organized summits in 2013. The goal is to turn these meetings into regular, university-based innovation hubs to exchange technology ideas.

Feasible, applicable and replicable solutions reach far, but networks are also of great importance. Since the beginning, UC Davis and MIT have been collaborating in developing the D-Lab curriculum, and they are looking for other universities to adopt the D-Lab model. “D-Lab is really about new technologies, and working with them in context. But it’s also about curriculum and it’s about networks,” Kornbluth explained.

In a university consortium with MIT, the D-Lab has just become part of a greater, brand-new network: the USAID Higher Education Solutions Network that was launched on November 9th 2012. In this 5-year partnership with seven top U.S. and foreign universities (among them, UC Berkeley), this initiative will harness the best ideas to fight poverty through development laboratories similar to the D-Lab. If this new generation of development professionals learns how to research, design, test and scale up effective development technologies, there is reason to hope that there will be no more fishing without water in international development.

Curious about the Higher Education Solutions Network and the new partnership between USAID and UC Berkeley? Read “Big Ideas In a Box” by Luis Flores for more information.

Gram Power

Author:
Kate Lyons

Gram Power, a company incorporated in 2012 by campus graduates Yashraj Khaitan and Jacob Dickinson, is expanding its reach with help from the Blum Center and United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The company’s mission is to provide affordable electricity to thousands of individuals who have restricted access to power in rural India.

Areas with little access electricity rely on kerosene — a dangerous and unhealthy power source. Gram Power offers communities “pay as you go” electricity. It is a system of micro-payments based on the successful model of prepaid cellular phones connections by Indian telecommunications companies. This “pay as you go” system is designed for low-income workers who earn a daily wage, providing them with access to green energy without a large up-front investment.

Yashraj Khaitan graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) from UC Berkley in 2011. During his time as an  ndergraduate, Khaitan was involved with solar cell research at Lawrence NationalLabs and helped found the UC Berkeley chapter of Engineers  without Borders.

Jacob Dickinson, also a graduate of the EECS department, is the head of Gram Power’s technical development. As an undergraduate, Dickinson led the UC Berkeley’s Solar Car Team’s electrical division.

The two first met at a training session for UC Berkeley’s Solar Car team in early 2010, where they discussed Khaitan’s experience participating in grassroots projects with villagers in rural Rajasthan; a large desert state located West of New Delhi. It was from this experience that Khaitan’s idea to develop a sustainable electricity project arose. Upon hearing the pitch, Dickinson’s interests were enlivened, and he became immediately involved with the project, developing technology and seeking product validation.

“I first understood their needs, evaluated current solutions, decided on a price point that would be affordable and then started concept design,” Khaitan said.

Gram Power’s smart stackable battery, called an MPower, is a portable storage system made up of a battery and “smart power” conditioning circuitry. Small and lightweight, MPower fulfills Gram Power’s two main objectives – creating a power source that is flexible (can be used for powering more than lighting) and energy efficient. By reducing power consumption with efficient green technology, Gram Power enhances the individual’s investment and contributes to a cleaner environment.

The MPowers can be charged from a conventional power grid, a micro grid, solar panels or a bicycle dynamo. A fully charged MPower can charge a cell phone and provide power for lamps and fans; a fully charged stacked battery can power a television or computer. Gram Power believes its energy solution will impact communities’ light and communication capability, resulting in more education, work productivity and higher earning potential. The power is renewable and clean, providing environmental and health benefits, while Gram Power’s business model encourages local economic growth by employing individuals from each community as Area Sales Managers.

“Our main concern was affordability and utility. We wanted to design something that provided high utility at the right price,” Khaitan said.

Development and funding of the project began at UC Berkeley. After discussing his ideas with professor of Computer Science Dr. Eric Brewer in 2010, Khaitan began working with Dr. Brewer and the UC Berkeley research group TIER (Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions). TIER designs and deploys new technology that helps addresses a particular region’s environmental, political and/or economic concerns with innovative hardware and software infrastructure.

In 2011, Khaitan and Dickinson decided to enter Gram Power into Big Ideas @ Berkeley, an annual, campuswide prize competition that provides funding, support and encouragement to interdisciplinary teams with innovative ideas. Dr. Arthur H. Rosenfeld, former Professor Emeritus of Physics at UC Berkeley and Chairman of the California Energy Commission judged the competition, and selected Gram Power for First Place in the Energy Efficient Technologies category. Gram Power was provided seed funding from the Arthur H. Rosenfeld Fund for Global Sustainable Development and the UC Berkeley Blum Center for Developing Economies.

“Apart from providing significant financial support to deploy our systems in the field in India, Big Ideas helped us think through our business model thoroughly,” Khaitan said. “The feedback and advice repeatedly made us aware that technology is not the most important thing – creating affordable and sustainable access is.”

With the support and advice of the Blum Center and the Arthur H. Rosenfeld Fund, Gram Power emerged in Rajasthan, India. To continue growth, Gram Power entered and won the LAUNCH: Energy Challenge, an initiative founded by USAID and its partners in 2011. The LAUNCH program identifies groundbreaking innovations in sustainable and accessible energy solutions and provides them with financial resources and project guidance.

“LAUNCH helped us launch!” Khaitan exclaimed. “It got us our first round of angel funding, helped us expand our network of advisors to leading figures in this sector from around the world… they worked very closely with us for 6 months after the event to help create access to the people and resources we needed to achieve our long and short term goals.”

Gram Power is now focusing on smart microgrids– localized electricity production centers that are smaller and more efficient. In May 2012, Gram Power launched India’s first smart microgrid in Rajasthan with great success, and are currently planning with the local Rajasthan government and the Central Government of India to increase microgrid deployments. They are simultaneously working with the Blum Center, USAID, the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), and TIER to rehabilitate 80 existing solar microgrids in Rajasthan. During the microgrid restoration, Gram Power and TIER will conduct extensive research evaluating different technologies and business models, in pursuit of a refined, sustainable method to provide reliable power to rural communities.

By the end of 2012, Gram Power plans to expand MPower units and microgrids to other states in India such as Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Bihar.

Gram Power’s current projects are successfully providing reliable and affordable electricity for thousands of people, and Khaitan hopes to reach millions in the future. “We’re looking to continue deploying our smart grid system on existing microgrids,” Khaitan said. “Eventually tackling the existing Photo Credit: Gram Power national grid in India.”

Viewer Response: “Can We Shop To End Poverty?”

Speak up! Thoughts, reactions, reflections and constructive criticism are always welcome in response to our vids. (The snarkier, the better.) Here’s some recent viewer feedback worth highlighting:

Love it. Argument and form reminiscent of the Zizek RSAnimate video, and this is a good thing. In some ways the video is more rigorous, demonstrating to audiences certain truths about how global commodity markets relate otherwise disparate individuals in a way that is important (we desperately need more public education like this). However, I am worried that the video can be used in the same manner as the checkout stand donation or the fair trade label; if we claim “accountability” as consumers, but do not alter our consumption behaviors (let alone the very matrix in which consumption and production occur), we can have warm feelings of having paid proper penance, as well as being admitted to some special realm of knowledge (meditate on the sordid provenance of this iPad? Check. Now play Bejeweled Blitz). Knowing the relations of dependence and dominance that make possible espresso and iPhones is crucial, but not sufficient. Continue reading “Viewer Response: “Can We Shop To End Poverty?””

Behind The Scenes: “Can We Shop To End Poverty?”

Prof. Roy micro-lectured into a micro-phone. Abby tried to brew tea in cold water. And Tara painstakingly cut some denim pockets with an X-ACTO knife. The following vid resulted. Take a behind-the-scenes look into the making of #GlobalPOV’s “Can We Shop To End Poverty?” video.

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Continue reading “Behind The Scenes: “Can We Shop To End Poverty?””

Microclinics International

pathway-microclinics

The Challenge

In impoverished and war-torn areas, regional instability leads to ineffective health care infrastructure unable to adequately treat ailments such as diabetes and HIV/AIDS.

The Technology Approach

Through community-based workshops, micro-clinics leverage social networks to spread “contagious health” best practices, providing information dissemination and training in conjunction with local partners.

2013 Updates

The NGO MicroClinics International will expand and support the 1,500 established micro-clinics spanning four continents through evaluation and policy advocacy. The group also recently launched a diabetes micro-clinic project domestically in Kentucky.

Principal Investigator

Prof. Eva Harris, School of Public Health

Lead Researcher

Daniel Zoughbie, Principal Investigator, CEO Microclinic International

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