Inspiring Solutions
Simple, replicable
How to help starving children ? No more dropouts
Providing rabbits (or substitutes) to families in need
The Challenge: A schoolmaster at Nakuru school, Kenya found out that children did not come to school because they were starving at home.
The Solution: Along the vegetables garden, he built a rabbit nursery, taught children how to take care of the rabbits and gave a couple of rabbits to 100 families making sure that they will give back 2 rabbits after 2 months.
Green Walls - how to grow food in urban environment or around your house ?
Green walls
Much material regarding green walls has been developed during the Connectedness and Leadership Course. Here is a work of one of the certified participant
How to teach children to purify water ?
Biosand filter
JOEL OMINO SECONDARY SCHOOL, KISUMU , KENYA
The challenge
Students were suffering from water born diseases caused by drinking unsafe water in the school and at home. This affected their learning in school and regular duties as well as faced with huge medical bills.The Solutions
Students were trained on how to make and maintain Biosand Water Filter. They were able to pass this knowledge and skill to the community.
Results
Students and members of the community are now able to attend school and their regular duties with less or no disruption caused by water born diseases and at the same time access safe drinking water at a cheaper cost and less or zero medical bill.
Visit of the President of Kenya
President of Kenya H.E. Uhuru Kenyatta listens to the students explaining how the Filter works and even tastes the water.
How to help children refugees coming from conflicted areas
Nurturing the spirit of childhood in conflict and war striken areas
The Challenge: children who have been traumatized by war and conflict
The Solution: A pre-school teacher from Switzerland developed a way of working with (more)
What does it take to build a sustainable civilization with modern comforts?
Open Source is not just software
Open Source Ecology is a network of farmers, engineers, and supporters that for the last two years has been creating the Global Village Construction Set, an open source, low-cost, high performance technological platform that allows for the easy, DIY fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a sustainable civilization with modern comforts.
The GVCS lowers the barriers to entry into farming, building, and manufacturing and can be seen as a life-size lego-like set of modular tools that can create entire economies, whether in rural Missouri, where the project was founded, in urban redevelopment, or in the developing world.
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How to lighten houses that are dark even during daytime?
Build a solar bottle bulb
The communities who benefit from this idea live in areas where the houses hardly have windows and live in darkness even during daytime. Their solution up until this innovation was to turn on the light bulb and use electricity.
Alfredo Moser, the inventor of the lamp says:
It's a divine light. God gave the sun to everyone, and light is for everyone. Whoever wants it saves money. You can't get an electric shock from it, and it doesn't cost a penny.
How to power a family's home ?
Building a windmill
At age 14, in poverty and famine, a Malawian boy built a windmill to power his family's home. Now at 22, William Kamkwamba, who speaks at TED, here, for the second time, shares in his own words the moving tale of invention that changed his life.
To power his family's home, young William Kamkwamba built an electricity-producing windmill from spare parts and scrap -- starting him on a journey detailed in the book "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind" and the new film, "William and the Windmill." (more in Ted)
How to protect the cattle from lion attacks ?
Solar-powered solution invented by 13-year-old Richard Turere
Richard Turere, 13, doesn't like lions. "I grew up hating lions very much," says Turere, who is from Kitengela, just south of the capital Nairobi, Kenya. "They used to come at night and feed on our cattle when we were sleeping."
At the age of 11, Richard decided it was time to find a solution for protecting the family's cows, goats and sheep from being eaten by lions.
"One day, when I was walking around," he says, "I discovered that the lions were scared of the moving light."
He started to work on a system and despite the fact that had never received any training in electronics or engineering, he came up with a simple and low-cost system to scare the predators away. He arranged a series of flashing LED bulbs wired to switches and a car battery powered by a solar panel. It worked, since then his family has not lost any livestock.
"One thing that's unique about Richard is that if you give him a problem, he'll keep working at it until he can fix it," says leading Kenyan conservationist Paula Kahumbu. "He doesn't give up; he doesn't find things too difficult; he's not afraid of being unable to do something and I think this is why he is such a good innovator."
How to face drugs, alcohol, violence and child labor in a slum ?
Musical instruments made from trash
In the barrios of Paraguay, a humble garbage picker uses his ingenuity to craft instruments out of recycled materials - and a youth orchestra is born. Music arises and children find new dreams.
A heartfelt & moving story of how instruments made from recycled trash bring hope to children whose future is otherwise spiritless.
How to heat a room for little money
Pots
Using 2 or more clay pots of different sizes, a metal cake pan or bricks and small candles.
This awesome idea works on convection, which is accomplished by the air moving around between the two clay pots. This helps create a forced air effect which pushes the hot air around the room.
Honeybees and the bio-dynamic way to save them
TOP expert: Yossi Aud
This growing method is substantially friendlier towards the bees in comparison to industrial beekeeping. This method allows the bees to live sustainably, consume their own products and to stay healthier. Another aim of these centers is to encourage and promote growing bees on the city’s rooftops. In this way the centers aid in the re-establishment of honey bees to the city and the environment in general.
Founding Members:
YARD, RODI, SHOPHAR, ELIMU TV, SCOPE & KWENTOP Kenya Founding Members are 6 NGOs and companies that have gone through Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) training and wish to continue their efforts. They provide solutions to challenges such as hunger, water, violence, prisoners' reinsertion, microfinancing and more. Here is a very short sample of their activities and below more details.
- RODI (Resource Oriented Development Initiative): works with schools and prisons: prisoners grow their own food, and become permaculture specialists, They become leaders in their community when they leave prison,
- YARD: works with young girls at risk / prostitutes and teaches them to work in cosmetic salons/hairdressers.
- SHOPHAR: a former headmaster whose school and water purification system was visited by the President of Kenya. James Otieno presented ESD at the UN in 2016.
- ELIMU TV: broadcasts educational content to children who can't afford to go to school
- SCOPE: a network of 18 NGOs introducing permaculture in schools
- KWEN: a network of 4000 women entrepreneurs with table banking and micro financing in Bomet area
Elimu TV
Nairobi, Kenya
TOP Kenya Founding Member
Enabling Education for All Children and Youth through ICT/Media
Contact: Jane Muthiga
Email:elimudm@gmail.com
KWEN, Konyon Wenditai Empowerment Network
Bomet Kenya
TOP Kenya Founding Member
The leading National Women Network in Women Empowerment in Kenya
Mission:
To holistically empower the community
Our vision:
We envision an empowered and productive society
Contact: Angela Lesan, Lily Cronoh Koech
Email: alesan@kwen.org, lilyronoh@kwen.org
SHOPHAR KENYA
Kisumu Kenya
TOP Kenya Founding Member
The word “Shophar” is Hebrew word meaning horn or trumpet (Britannica Encyclopedia) To the Hebrew mind horns were potent symbols (Bill Bratt) and horns were blown:
on joyful occasions
to confuse enemies
at the beginning of every month
to call sacred assembly
as the sound of war
Shophar Kenya, metaphorically shall make a breakthrough for ESD within the SDG’s remaining period for communities to embrace change for sustainable development as we “blow” the Shophar during implementation. The Shophar shall be “blown” to break “walls” that prevent sustainable social, economic, environmental and cultural development of our society like the walls of biblical Jericho that fell down when the Shophar was blown (Joshua 6:1ff) – and the enemies fled away.
Contact:
Kisumu City, Nyamasaria, opposite Nyamasaria Pr. School.
P.O. Box 2038 Kisumu 40100
Tel: +254 722 589003, +254 733 980229
E-mail:
shophar2015@gmail.com
YARD
YOUTH ACTION for RURAL DEVELOPMENTMuranga Kenya
TOP Kenya Founding Member
Existing solutions:
Water, Health, Education
Water:
The community should be encouraged to harvest rain water to cater for their daily use.
Health:
In terms of Health the community has been able to learn how to wash their hands after visiting the toilets and before eating.
Education:
Children should be taught on practical Skills at a tender age.
Contact: Sebastian Maina
Email: mainaseb@yahoo.com
RODI-Kenya
Resources Oriented Development InitiativesKiambu Kenya
TOP Kenya Founding Member
Resources Oriented Development Initiatives (RODI Kenya) is a kenyan development organization with a primary focus on restorative prisoner rehabilitation, crime prevention and administration of justice.
RODI Kenya has a mission of promoting human dignity among communities in Kenya and Eastern Africa countries through enhanced food security, health and crime prevention.
Contact:Eliud Ngunjiri
Email: eliud.ngunjiri @yahoo.com
SCOPE
Schools and Colleges Permaculture ProgrammeThika Kenya
TOP Kenya Founding Member
SCOPE Kenya, which is a network of 18 civil society organizations, work with schools and communities in 11 counties. We promote an integrated and holistic approach to land use for food production, income generation and environmental conservation, something that our school curriculum lack.
Contact : John Macharia – SCOPE
Email: scope@scopekenya.net or scopekenya7@gmail.comChallenges
Gathering life challenges - first list
Water
Water is the driving force of all nature.
– Leonardo da VinciHow to:
- Purify polluted water
- Provide water
Health & Well-being
How to:
- Improve the health of learners
- Improve the economic status of parents
- Improve children's diets
- Supplement lunch programs supported by parents
- Understand why girls absent themselves from school for some days each month
- Understand what causes fainting in school
Energy
Toward renewable energy sources
How to:- Brighten houses that are dark even during daytime
- Heat a room for little money
- Charge a cellular phone
- Upcycle plastic: turn used plastic into diesel
Education
"Education is the only way we can make our world a better place."
– Yanush Korczak
How to:
- Empower people with disabilities
- Change negative attitudes
- Clean up the environment
- Deal with an education system that fails to equip young people with relevant knowledge and practical skills
Tuning into the future
How to:
- Train people in PermaTech: Permaculture+HiTech
- Build a green wall and provide food
- Govern by Value thanks to DEMS
- Make the most of open source software & hardware: e.g a Raspberry PI sub-computer
- Maker's room
- TOP coins as an alternate currency
