Pitches and Posters: An Evening of Ideas

Published on May 2, 2012 in design. 0 Comments

By guest author Vijay Shilpiekandula, Volunteer for MIT IDEAS

Lights, camera, action! The stage was set and the players – MIT teams, armed with posters showcasing their ideas — thrived in the spotlight. The MIT Stata Center saw a flurry of activity on April 30, 2012 as 37 teams led by MIT students pitched their projects to an expert panel of judges at the Poster and Judging session. This year’s teams spearheaded a wide array of projects involving product design, business innovation, and sustainability, all aimed to meet global community needs.

Grooming Innovators

Building the workhorse of innovation is more of marathon than a sprint. Long hours, late night discussions, and last minute debugging of models and plans were the norm. For some, it started from introductory meetings with others in the MIT and Greater Boston community, through multiple IDEAS Generator dinners organized over last fall and this spring. For others, it started from brainstorming with passion in their dorm rooms and department labs.

Over different phases of the competition, the teams wrote project proposals that went through multiple rounds of review and revision. Meanwhile, the teams made connections with the communities that would directly benefit from the team’s idea.

“It started as a small idea, [but it] grew organically,” said Kevin Kung, one of the participants whose team is composed of MIT graduate and undergraduate students, as well as volunteers, mentors, and community partners.

Passion Shows

“This is great evening… for the commitment you [students] show to the community,” said Professor Amy Smith, who had founded the MIT IDEAS Global Challenge 11 years ago and, more recently, the MIT D-Lab. She continued with advice on pitching to the expert panel of judges, a team of 40 formed from MIT administration, government, industry, and academic professionals from all over the world. “Tell [the judges] your idea,” Smith said, emphasizing the need for teams to voice their experience with their projects, how they toyed with the idea, what worked, what did not, and what lay ahead.

As judges and audiences came by to the posters, each team employed a variety of tools ranging from slideshows and prototypes to business models and lessons learnt from actual field trials in the communities they targeted.

“They [judges] asked me very intriguing questions,” said Srikanth Bolla, a student in MIT Sloan, who spent the last few months honing his team’s proposal, and more than a year laying the groundwork that helped his team tackle the judges’ questions. Along with Bolla’s team, which targeted education, training, and sustainability, the IDEAS teams this year came up with innovative solutions to challenges in fields such as water clean water, healthcare, mobile devices and communication, housing and transportation, disaster relief, finance and entrepreneurship, and agriculture and processing.

The Awards Ceremony: a shout out to Innovation and Public Service

We look forward to celebrating the investments that went into this year’s projects. On Thursday May 3, 6-9pm in the MIT Stata Center 32-123, the IDEAS Global Challenge will be announcing the winners and showcasing the student enthusiasm for the world at large. There will be a lecture by guest speaker Joi Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab, and a special toast to the students!

Bina

MIT IDEAS Global Challenge now on Pinterest

Published on April 22, 2012 in Competition, content, conversation, marketing, socialmedia, teams and Updates. 2 Comments

All IDEAS entrants, if you have visual content you would like to display to generate publicity for your team as public voting goes on, there is now a Pinterest board dedicated to showcasing all teams in the Global Challenge, MIT IDEAS Global Challenge Teams.  E-mail yangbodu@alum.mit.edu with your Pinterest username so that you can be added to the list of collaborators who can post to the IDEAS Board.  If you are not on Pinterest yet, you may request an invite via the site itself or by e-mailing the same address listed prior.  Happy pinning!

Yangbo Du

Place your three votes! The 2012 Community Choice Vote is open

Published on April 19, 2012 in Uncategorized. Closed

37 teams entered the final round of the MIT IDEAS Global Challenge. Teams developing new diagnostics, ways of tackling waste, and new business models and systems. Come meet the teams this year! http://globalchallenge.mit.edu/teams

Here’s how to vote.

kmytty

Trash Into Art

Published on April 4, 2012 in art, conversation, design, Uncategorized and Yunus Challenge. Closed

This week, the Trash Into Art installation is on display in the MIT Stata Center, first floor.

The goal of Trash Into Art is to raise awareness around the value of waste materials such as cardboard, Styrofoam, plastics, metals, and other objects found in a garbage can. A crucial focus is the impact of waste on marginalized people and communities.

This exhibition features student artists who were challenged to collect pieces of waste for a week, and to create a thought-provoking project from materials that would otherwise be thrown away.

The installation is one component of the larger “Waste: Put it to Use” Yunus Challenge, presented by the MIT International Development Initiative in collaboration with MIT D-Lab and the IDEAS Global Challenge.

For more photos, click here.

Bina

‎2 DAYS until the next Initial Scope deadline!

Published on February 29, 2012 in Uncategorized. Closed

All teams entering the IDEAS Global Challenge must submit at least one Initial Scope Statement.

This is the last chance to submit and get feedback from volunteers: March 2 by 11:59PM; details online at http://globalchallenge.mit.edu/competition/how-to-enter

 

Bina

Team Profile: Recovers.Org / Developing a New Solution for Disaster Relief

Published on February 28, 2012 in disaster, innovation, resources and teams. Closed

49 teams are signed up to enter this year’s IDEAS Global Challenge. Nick Holden, helping with his knack for writing and interviewing has created a series of profiles on teams.

Last week, he profiled Team Recovers.org who are working to finesse a tool to harness and deploy the power of people’s help after a disaster. I included a snippet of the profile below. You can read the entire profile through this link.

Q. What’s innovative about the solution you are proposing to make an impact on disaster recovery?

A. There’s this huge spike in interest after a disaster. Fifty percent of all web searches seeking to help occur in the first seven days after a disaster.

An affected town loses the potential resources it could get from the initial spike in interest because it doesn’t have the capacity to accept the physical or financial resources. Without the proper technology in place, towns can’t capitalize on that early interest, and they are left without a platform to build more interest and no money for recovery.

Every single community that is affected by a disaster is affected by this technological black hole. For example, FEMA makes aid distribution based upon data it receives from communities after a disaster. That data includes how many volunteers worked, where they worked, for how many hours they worked, and what heavy machinery they used. In the first two weeks after a disaster, towns don’t even know that data needs to be tracked, and they don’t have tools to track it.

We’re disaster experts now because we’ve done this before. What we can do is structure the inputs with really easy-to-use software. We can make a button that says: “Where are you sending this volunteer?” Then we give coordinators this software that allows them to track volunteers. Now, FEMA gets their data, and the town gets more money because of it.

We started going into disaster areas as part of our development. Chris [Kuryak] and I just got back from Alabama. In the course of three-and-a-half days, we were able to set up an online recovery hub for a city that was ravaged by tornadoes on Jan. 24.

Using our website, the community has already flagged tons of cases of fraud attempts — of people going to multiple distribution centers. They’ve collected a massive database of donation items, especially things that are too large for people to bring in and store, but that are going to be needed six months to five years down the road, like china cabinets for people who are rebuilding their homes. It was pretty phenomenal proof-of-concept.

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Keep reading over at the MIT News site.

(Great profile, Nick!)

kmytty

Embrace and Me: A Follow-Up to ‘Notes “Product Development for the Other 90%”’

Published on February 13, 2012 in design, global health, student and Uncategorized. Closed Tags: .

By guest author: Hamsika Chandrasekar

I read Bina’s Notes on “Product Development for the Other 90%” and felt a spark of interest when I came across her description of Embrace, a social enterprise that has developed an innovative, low-cost infant warmer to help keep low-birth-weight and premature infants warm. Thanks to the combined support of the MIT Public Service Center, Baker Foundation, and Kelly-Douglas Fund, I was able to spend the last month in India, working to launch Embrace’s infant warmer at the Shamlaji Tribal Hospital in Gujarat.

This hospital is located in the small village of Shamlaji, about two hours outside Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s largest city. It is managed by a husband and wife doctor team, Drs. Haren Joshi and Pratima Tolat, who ensure that the free treatment provided at Shamlaji Tribal Hospital is of high quality. Working with Embrace, I selected Shamlaji Tribal Hospital for my service project due to its focus on rural healthcare and its high numbers of low birth weight infants. When I arrived at the hospital, I found two packages, both marked ‘most urgent,’ waiting for me in the hospital office. I opened one quickly and happily held up its contents: the Embrace infant warmer. Looking back now, I still remember that sense of excitement and purpose I felt when I unwrapped the device. I couldn’t believe that after all the emails, the training sessions, the conference calls, and the planning, I was finally at Shamlaji Tribal Hospital, working with an organization I had heard about through a TedTalk and immediately loved.

My first day, unwrapping an Embrace infant warmer

I spent nearly three weeks in Gujarat, conversing with the doctors and nurses and showing them how to operate the infant warmer.

During my time there, nine infants benefited from the Embrace product, absorbing the warmer’s heat and gaining weight during their hospital stay. Together, the nurses and I monitored these babies and collected data on each infant. I was happy to see that the nurses quickly became comfortable with the Embrace product, taking it out whenever a newborn weighed between 1.5 kg and 2.5 kg, the recommended weight range for product use.

A (2.5 kg) infant sleeping peacefully in the Embrace infant warmer

The biggest challenge for me was the language barrier: I spoke no Gujarati and very little Hindi, the two most prominent languages in the region. I worked with the hospital staff via an interpreter, pausing at the end of each sentence and allowing her to translate what I had said. With her help, I also explored some of the other healthcare needs in the area, meeting with the head of Shamlaji Village and traveling out to the Himmatnagar Civil Hospital, to which many patients from Shamlaji Tribal Hospital are referred.

For me, this project served not only as an opportunity to perform hands-on service work but also as a reminder of the realities in impoverished regions and the challenges involved in the improvement of rural healthcare. For every baby born in Shamlaji Tribal Hospital, many more are born at home, never receiving proper care and often dying due to preventable reasons. Parents, desperate to have kids that survive past infancy, pay little attention to established family planning methods. Poor education makes it difficult for villagers to comprehend the dangers associated with at-home deliveries and improper antenatal care. Throughout my time in Gujarat, I was reminded of how much more I – and for that matter, anyone in the world – could do to help.

Hamsika Chandrasekar is currently a junior at MIT and a previous PSC expedition grant recipient. She is double majoring in Computational Biology (Course 6-7) and Neuroscience (Course 9), hopes to enroll in medical school following her undergraduate years, and ultimately wants to pursue a career in global health. 

Bina

Tackling the Global Education Crisis, One Innovation at a Time

Published on February 4, 2012 in Competition, development, enterprise, entrepreneurship, innovation, poverty and Uncategorized. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

Whether it’s helping Mexican university students bridge the gap between industry and academia, or providing Ugandan children with basic health education programs, many teams this year have chosen to tackle the difficult problems facing the global education sector.

In recent years, social innovators have joined the ranks of talented teachers and school administrators in rethinking traditional school models, finding creative ways to improve educational quality and access.

A new policy paper by the McGraw-Hill Research Foundation might be of interest to those pursuing projects related to educational reform.

How Social Entrepreneurship is Helping to Improve Education Worldwide (available online) highlights the distinct contributions of social innovators in helping to improve early childhood education in low-income communities, creating alternate channels for funding, and providing basic skills to at-risk populations across the globe.

Author Rupert Scofield, President and CEO of the Foundation for International Community Assistance, draws from several interesting case studies that illustrate the potential for social enterprise to solve issues ranging from poor educational access to the growing achievement gap. The key to the success of these enterprises, Scofield writes, lies in their ability to effectively utilize business practices emphasizing sustainability and scalability – two important attributes of any winning IDEAS Challenge project! Here are a few examples:

In the Bronx, the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation (WHEDco) not only runs multiple afterschool programs and summer camps, but has also created hundreds of revenue-generating businesses within the community, helping to ensure the continued success and long-term sustainability of its programs.

In India, where harsh inequities prevail and 90 million women remain illiterate, the Mann Deshi Foundation provides vocational training and financial literacy to women in impoverished communities. It also runs the Mann Deshi Business School, which delivers microbusiness courses in mobile classrooms, and the Mann Deshi Mahlia Bank, which provides loans for its business school graduates to start microenterprises.

DonorsChoose.org is a charitable marketplace where teachers can make simple classroom requests, from pencils to microscope slides, for their students. As of August 2011, the website has generated $85 million benefitting more than 5 million schoolchildren in the U.S. The website notably allows individual donors to contribute to its overhead costs (with 76% choosing to do so), and has established diverse funding streams that include multiple corporate sponsors.

We hope that these examples of powerful — and sustainable — social innovations offer a bit of inspiration for those joining the education cause!

LeanneTa

This year’s teams on the field over IAP

Published on January 16, 2012 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , .

Follow the Takachar team (http://globalchallenge.mit.edu/teams/view/234) as they begin research in Nairobi on how improve the sustainability and security of cooking fuel.  http://takachar.blogspot.com/view/classic

Follow Diana Jue from Essmart (http://globalchallenge.mit.edu/teams/view/240) as she tests ideas about technology dissemination. http://mitpsc.mit.edu/blog/?page_id=2219

Follow Greg Tao from ALCAS last year (http://globalchallenge.mit.edu/teams/view/213) as he continues his project: http://mitpsc.mit.edu/blog/?page_id=2229

Bina

IAP Opportunities with IDEAS Global Challenge

Published on January 16, 2012 in Uncategorized. Closed

Check out some helpful events happening over IAP (http://globalchallenge.mit.edu/news/view/206):

Pahoehoe: Do-Gooders Behind the Desk – Thu Jan 19, 12-01:30pm, 1-135

RSVP to hynd@mit.edu


Join us to hear from five MIT staff members who are making a difference in communities near and far. You’ll hear about a rowing program for cancer survivors, cell phone technology for detecting hearing loss in Brazil, athletes who are running to end cancer, and more.

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Answers to your Intellectual Property Questions

January 25 – 2:00pm – 3:30pm, 4-153

Starting a new company? Working on a new technology? Looking to learn more about intellectual property? Come join intellectual property attorney Peter Gordon, founder of Patent GC LLC, for an open question and answer session. RSVP to globalchallenge-rsvp@mit.edu with IP in the subject

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Starting Up Your Startup
Thu Jan 26, 03-04:00pm, 3-270

Do you have a brilliant idea but no clue on how to take it to the next level? Our panel discussion of Start-Upswill have speakers at various stages in the Start-Up process from sloppy beginnings to smooth runnings. Preregistration requested through CareerBridge.
Web: http://www.myinterfase.com/mit/student

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(Public) Service Smorgasbord: Eats and Opportunities

Tuesday, January 31 – noon – 1:30pm, W20-491

RSVP to http://bit.ly/ti9Bhx

What type of service do you want to do? Maybe you want to tutor high school students in Cambridge, be paid for public service work with a great organization whoneeds your help, work with a community partner somewhere else in the world, or develop a new solution to deliver impact. We’ll have an open conversation over a smorgasbord of food to share with you the best way to get started on public service or to try something new.

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Design to Scale – Developing Technologies for Global Impact

Thursday, February 2; 3:30 – 5:00pm, at MIT in building 56-114

Working to scale a technology designed for the bottom of the pyramid? Come join for the first of a series of events as we lay the foundation for what to consider when designing for global impact.  RSVP to http://bit.ly/vth7Id

Sponsored by D-Lab, IDEAS Global Challenge, International Development Initiative, Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program, Public Service Center, SEID.

Bina