Each Friday this month we’re featuring a series of articles focused on innovators and how they came to do what they do. Some are inventors, others humanitarian workers, but all have a passion for taking problems and turning them on their heads.
Education is the fundamental right of every child and key to combating cyclical poverty. But, in most emergency relief environments, limited financial resources and shortages of qualified teachers make the provision of quality education incredibly difficult. This challenge is especially acute in Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp located 100 kilometres from the Somali border in eastern Kenya. Here, over half of the population is under the age of 18 and school enrollment rates remain alarmingly low.
Solar Roadways is developing an interlocking, solar paneled, LED-lit replacement for concrete that may just change the way we think about travel. The project has the potential to generate three times the entire power consumption of the US with no emissions.
Bringing mobile phone access to the world’s most remote communities is a two-fold challenge. These areas lack basic infrastructure and developing it is costly. Major telecoms are reticent to invest in these communities because the low number of customers means they are unlikely to make a profit. Range Networks, a company based in San Francisco, uses open source software and …
