April 2012 Blog Posts (251)

In my search for a social innovator, i came across a man named Gyanesh Pandey, whose idea to provide power plants for rural India using discarded rice husk as power source, made these peoples life's a lot easier and helped them save money.

Growing up in a village himself, Gyanesh Pandey knew only too well the poverty and the bad living conditions of these people.

He felt himself obliged to do something about the prevalent hopelessness in Indian villages.

Together with his…

I chose to write about Jill Farrant. She is a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of Cape Town. I read a lot of stories about interesting projects and people. I chose Jill Farrant because with her research she is trying to solve one of the biggest plant problems in Africa - and therefore combining her profession with an approach to improve the biological situation.…

My favorite secret is "think like a child". As children have no limit to their thinking they won't stop developing an idea that comes to their mind because it may not be possible to realize this idea in the real world. For me as an entrepreneur this secret is one of the most important things to keep in mind. There are often situations when I or one of my associates in our company has a brilliant idea but soon comes to the conclusion that it may be to…

As I stated in my LEARN2 post, there is much land open in New Territories (a large area in Hong Kong). The project I have designed in called "New Territories Agriculture Gardens".

Explanation of project:

The government should take the empty land in New Territories, and transform the land into an agriculture friendly area. Where would the money come from? Many projects already exist in Hong Kong that are working to reclaim land (create land where water is currently located). If…

The company "Renewit" creates many different versions of their solar panel technology to power different object such as cell phones, lights, computers, etc. These technologies are open to everyone, but the company strives to distribute it to places like sub-saharan Africa that don't usually have any power. These are very unique technologies because they are small, therefore very easy to use and convenient to transport. The photo below is one example of the products made by Renewit:…

I have chosen Rana Dajani as my social innovator hero. She works with children in Jordan to establish literacy and reading in their lives. In 2006, Rana started by holding weekly storytelling sessions with children ages 4-10 at a community mosque to get them excited about the prospect of reading from a young age. After each storytelling session, Rana allows children to check out books that they then take home to read with their parents. Since starting this program, a lot of young readers…

It is very hard to say which secret could change the world. I think all of the 33 secrets are in his own way right.

As a social innovator, I like “ Provide skills, not just finished technologies” most. In ancient China, there was a motto ‘it is always better to teach a person who are hungry to fish than to give him some fish’. If I am a social innovator, I will not offer complete technology but provide half-finished or almost finished ones. People will never know how to solve the…

I think that all the 33 secrets are important in their own way, so it's hard for me to decide for one of them. But two points I find particularly important and would like to combine them, because I think they complement each other:

"Understand by observing the environment, infrastructure, culture and lives of people by being there."

and

"talk to the people who have the problem - and LISTEN to what they have to say."

To be able to…

2020 is only 8 years far from now, so i fear that the worlds main problems will not have changed too much till then. I hope to be healthy in 2020, having a job that is fun. I could imagine having kids and living at the sea. If i had enough money, i would try to donate some of it for good purposes, hoping to make the world a little bit better with it.

In ten years I hope that I have a nice family and a cordial house with a big garden.
In my garden I'm planting vegetables, herbs and fruit trees whereby I can sustain my family.

Furthermore I hope that I have a job near my home which answers my expectations and let me make good money.

But my main dream for 2020 is that me and my family are healthy and we are allowed to live in a unpolluted and balanced world.

What you have matters more than what you lack (If you’ve got a bicycle, consider what you can build based on that, rather than worrying about not having a car, a truck, a metal shop.)

Spontaneously I thought about one of my favourite bands called Rise Against. They are politically committed, which appears in many of their songs. They fight for animal rights and support organizations like PETA or Sea Shepherd. Via social networks like facebook, they organize projects like poster contests, which are supposed to make the people think about social problems. I think it is a very good way to solve problems by using your famousness, because you have very high coverage of people…

My favourite secret is Ethan Zuckerman's advice not to fight culture. Culture is very important for market mechanisms and therefore we should respect it. We can improve other people's lives through respecting their culture and use the mechanisms of the social market economy to bring products to them that could help to provide better living circ**stances.

I think that there can be differnt because people dont think that it was not a serouse thing in the world becaus it could be good and bad because the people work on farms they could have a drought in a way

When Alchemy calls me in 2020 I want to be satisfied with my life.

I would love to have a work which meet the needs of other people. I don't know exactly what it should be, but I want to help people.Helpin them to survive as well as only live a better life - I don't want to do something for only making money, buy a big house and drink champagne.

I also will live in a house with a lot of plants around. And also my neighbours will have huge garden with trees, flowers and all kinds…

This is a pretty interesting task for I believe that everyone has thought about it at least once. As for me my future self has often come across my mind. I have two future selfs though, depending on how successful one of them is. The second future self only exists if the first one has achieved the set goals.

First future self: After graduating from college I work at different places until I finally find the job I truly like. I try to work as hard as I can and maybe get…

My girlfriend lives in an apartment but misses being able to garden with her parents. I helped her acquire a topsy turvy to hang from her porch with tomatoes and strawberries plants.

The hero I chose is called Arvind Gupta. A brief overview of his work can be found on this site. I must admit I wasn't too impressed when I first read of his idea of making toys out of trash. Don't children often use any kind of material in order to invent something they can play with? I remember doing that a lot when I was younger.

I went to his site to take a look at the toys he created…

I am continuing to teach kids. I am making a difference in someone's life. Believe it or not, I am using this site to teach these concepts......

2020...I will be watching my daughter walk across a stage at graduation, knowing there was a time not long ago that I wondered if she would. More importantly, I'm teaching my own kids to be involved in the community and to give back. I just finished helping at the church food bank and making sure my own kids do the same.