Invention for Sustainable Development Program

Global

Community-owned, micro-hydropower system in Indonesia developed by Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow Tri Mumpuni's company, IBEKA.

• Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows: The Foundation has partnered with social-entrepreneurship pioneer Ashoka on a $4 million, three-year pilot effort to build a critical mass of 100 inventor-entrepreneurs and catalyze their growth and impact.
• Schwab Foundation: The Foundation has partnered with the Schwab Foundation to establish a “leapfrog fund” to support the transfer of successful innovations between social entrepreneurs in diverse parts of the world.
• The Aquaya Institute, which works to improve health through clean water innovation, is piloting a project to explore the feasibility of a new affordable and flexible water disinfection technology for use by low-income consumers.
• CAMBIA, an Australia-based not-for-profit organization, is developing and disseminating bio-sentinel rice varieties that will empower farmers to effectively detect soil nutrient deficiency or attacks by pests on crops. The organization will share its results with the scientific community through its “open source” BioForge platform.
• Conversion Sound is developing a low-cost, digitally programmable analog hearing aid costing less than $35 to produce.
• The Development Finance Forum is producing a series of case studies that document how combining loans with technical and business development services contributes to the growth of innovative developing-country enterprises.
• Innovations, a journal from MIT Press, studies and disseminates knowledge related to the process of innovation in the arenas of technology, governance and globalization.
• OptiOpia, a company that develops technologies for affordable eyeglasses and eye care, is devising low-cost eye testing and lens making devices for use around the world.
• PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health) is developing an improved women’s condom to be marketed in developing countries as well as in the U.S. The product will give women the power to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy and the risk of HIV and other infections.
• Strawjet, a for-profit company based in Oregon, is developing devices that produce robust, low-cost, and environmentally-friendly building materials.