Jumo: Now in Beta

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes's online platform, Jumo, is now up and running in beta. 

I blogged about Jumo back in September, when it got a $750,000 grant from Omidyar Network -- it hadn't launched at the time. Now, the new site is open for testing. 

You can sign up using your Facebook username and password -- the site in fact looks like  a facsimile of Facebook, making it very easy/familiar to use, while also capitalizing on existing social connections. When I logged in for instance, after being prompted to pick topics I would be interested in following--health, education, human rights etc., I am then taken to organizations that work in these areas and allowed to follow them.

Barefoot College Trains Low-Income Villagers to be Solar Engineers

A Rajasthan based organization called Barefoot College that trains low-income men and women to be 'solar engineers'  in rural remote and non-electrified villages is making its mark across India, and around the world. 

The  organization, which has been operative in India since 1972, recently trained 6 grandmothers from rural, north western Zambia to assemble and build circuits and solar lanterns, solar lamps, charge controllers, choke coils and transformers, and learn to correctly connect modules, batteries, lamps and charge controllers. Solar engineers at Barefoot College are also trained to install, test, repair and maintain fixed solar lighting units and solar lanterns for a period of at least five years. A rural electrification workshop is also set up, which houses the components and equipment needed for the repair and installation of solar units. 

Philanthropists that Bankroll Social Enterprises

Pierre Omidyar/Wikimedia

On Saturday, Barron's released its list of 'The 25 Best Givers' -- high impact philanthropists who are changing the world through their donations. Many of these consisted of grants to help further educational, health or human rights issues in developing countries. Some of them consisted of funding for social enterprises -- ventures that once lifted off the ground, would be self sustaining.

Here's a look at some notable social enterprises being funded by the men and women who made the list:

Skoll Foundation (Jeff Skoll)

APOPO -- trains rats to detect landmines and tuberculosis. 

Kiva -- online platform for peer to peer microlending

Kickstart -- develops irrigation pumps suitable for steeply sloping land -- they push water uphill as well as pulling it from the source

IDEI-  affordable irrigation products that provide water one drop at a time

Obliterating Hunger: Groasis Waterboxx Grows Plants in the Desert

Pieter Hoff, a tulip grower from Holland, has developed a spectacularly interesting social innovation called the Groasis Waterboxx, which aims to address the difficulties associated with growing trees and plants in arid areas by capturing condensation and rainwater, and transferring this to the plant over a period of time without requiring any groundwater or electricity.

In a presentation he made at PopTech, Hoff describes how the problems of world hunger and global warming can be mitigated through harnessing stretches of desert. “One of six billion people on earth don’t get enough to eat,” he says. “There is a possibility to feed these people.”

After devising his invention in Holland, over a period of 4 years, Hoff tested it in the Sahara desert -- 88 percent of the trees he tried it on lasted. He then decided to market his invention for commercial use – the beginning of his company AquaPro Holland.

The box has a wide double opening, mimics a plants capillary action, by planting two seeds in a box on top of (rather than in a hole in) the soil. The box captures condensation and rain water, and distributes to this to the plant over a much longer period of time – one day or 4 inches of rain can be distributed over a period of one year. By this time, Hoff says, the plant or tree is far more established and is far more likely to be able to take care of itself thereon.

Giant Sniffer Rats Detect Landmines and TB

Image: APOPO

Rats have never been my favorite creatures, but an organization called APOPO that is successfully putting these furry rodents to work on rather noble causes, takes them up a notch or two in my books.

The Belgian-Tanzanian social enterprise trains giant African pouched rats to sniff out landmines and tuberculosis. According to the organizations website, the rats are far more efficient than humans – they can search 100 square metres of suspected land in 20 minutes, and can screen 70 human sputum samples for the TB agent Mycobacterium Tuberculosis, in 20 minutes – both activities that would take deminers and lab technicians two full days. 

The African giant pouched rat is particularly good at detection, as it is light enough to not set off a mine, cheaper than a sniffer dog, easily conditioned and has a heightened sense of smell.

The rats have an impressive track record: they have assessed 38.5 kms of highway in South Mozambique and have detected over a hundred landmines, explosive devices and ammunition. APOPO says the rats have an 87 percent overall accuracy in detecting TB (37 percent for microscopy), and have diagnosed 577 patients missed by microscopy. 

New MicroChip to Allow Paralysed to Move

EPSRC

British engineers have developed a new microchip muscle stimulator implant that will allow paralysed people to exercise their leg muscles.

A project of The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), research is being led by Professor Andreas Demosthenous from University College London. The new chip is expected to work where others have failed, due to its small size – the same as a child’s fingernail. It can be implanted into the spinal canal and incorporates the electrodes and muscle stimulator in one unit.

"The work has the potential to stimulate more muscle groups than is currently possible with existing technology because a number of these devices can be implanted into the spinal canal", said Professor Andreas Demosthenous in a written statement. "Stimulation of more muscle groups means users can perform enough movement to carry out controlled exercise such as cycling or rowing."

Named the Active Book, due to its shape, the device will be available for pilot studies sometime next year. It could also be used to stimulate nerve endings, helping with bowel capacity and incontinence. 

Are Skyscrapers the Farmlands of the Future?

Design by Olive Foster

Massive skyscrapers are more commonly associated with exacerbating, rather than mitigating, global warming. But if Dr. Dickson Despommier--author of The Vertical Farm, and professor of environmental sciences and microbiology at Columbia University--has any say in the matter, skyscrapers could play a big role in not just helping the environment, but also alleviating hunger. 

The main idea behind vertical farming is that fruit and crops will be grown hydroponically—nutrient rich water replaces the need for soil—in high-rise buildings. Planting, monitoring growth and harvesting would all take place within the building, and the cultivation process would employ what Despommier calls “close-loop agricultural technologies”: all water and nutrients are recycled substantially reducing runoff. 

According to Despommier, the benefits of vertical farming are manifold. Transportation and energy costs would reduce dramatically, since consumers would be located near by. Large tracts of land taken over for cultivation could be returned to their natural state, reducing carbon dioxide levels. Ancillary industries would burgeon around skyscrapers that specialized in one crop. Growing crops in a controlled environment would facilitate healthier, organic produce. Hunger would reduce: a 30-storey tower could feed upto 50,000 people.

“The biggest social benefit is that everybody gets fed healthy, clean food,” says Despommier. “The world would be a much better place if we had vertical farms.”