Change Agent

Timothy Nyongesa compares the light from a kerosene tin lamp with that from an IndiGo solar lamp, hanging in his home. Kenyans can buy the IndiGo solar kits for about $120 paid over 80 installements. Then they no longer need to buy kerosene, which produces harmful fumes when burned inside homes. (Isaiah Esipisu/Thomson Reuters Foundation)

Solar kits bring clean light to Kenya's poor

By Isaiah Esipisu, Thomson Reuters Foundation / 07.04.13

At Sibanga market, 10 kilometers (6 miles) outside the town of Kitale in western Kenya, Timothy Nyongesa walks into the Mibawa Suppliers shop to collect a gadget that he hopes will brighten his children’s studies and his family’s health.

In exchange for an initial payment of 1,000 Kenyan shillings (about $12), Mr. Nyongesa walks out with a kit that will generate solar energy at his home. He jumps on his bicycle and snakes along a footpath to his village of Sinyerere, 6 kilometers farther into the countryside.

Nyongesa’s family is one of more than 3,000 in the Kitale area who since 2011 have switched to solar power instead of using kerosene lamps to light their homes.

“I cannot have my children study using a kerosene tin-lamp when those in the neighborhood are using electricity from the sun,” he says.

The solar kits, which aim to scale up access to solar power for Kenya’s poor, are marketed using an installment plan that puts the 10,000-shilling (about $120) pack within reach of people with modest incomes. After an initial deposit of 1,000 shillings, the user makes weekly payments of 120 shillings ($1.40) for 80 weeks before fully owning the system.

Scratch cards with codes enable purchasers to make their payments securely from home via SMS – using their mobile phone, which also can be kept charged with the solar kit.

The innovative effort, by Azuri Technologies, a British-based company that developed and manufactures the IndiGo solar kits, was recently named a winner of the 2013 Ashden Awards, considered the world’s leading green energy prize. The awards recognize innovations that promote sustainable energy to reduce poverty and tackle climate change.

“It has been tremendous to see the appetite for IndiGo,”says Simon Bransfield-Garth, chief executive officer of Azuri Technologies. “At the same time, we are acutely aware of the scale of problem we are attempting to tackle, and so all our effort is on growing to reach as many customers as possible.”

In a statement at the launch of a new report on markets for renewable energy, Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, said that uptake of renewable energies was continuing to increase globally as countries, companies, and communities saw the opportunities to capitalize on low-carbon economies and the potential for future energy security and sustainable livelihoods.  

Nyongesa’s interest in solar power, however, has as much to do with his children’s health as anything else.

Health experts say kerosene lamps produce fumes that are hazardous to breathe, and Nyongesa says some of his children complain about eye irritation, which he associates with prolonged use of the lamps.

Nyongesa, who has three wives, is coy about exactly how many children he has (“Let’s put it at 15”), but says that 11 of them go to school and use lamps at home for at least two hours a day to study.

Kerosene lamps are also bad for the environment. The British Air Transport Association calculates that each ton of kerosene burned produces 3.15 tons of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that is largely responsible for atmospheric warming, which contributes to climate change.

Nevertheless, a recent study by the US National Institutes of Health estimated that 500 million households globally still rely on kerosene or other liquid fuels for lighting and consume 7.6 billion liters annually.

The new solar-lighting system is the second Nyongesa has bought for his family in three months. He gave the first to his first wife to provide light for studying and other domestic needs.

The IndiGo kit consists of a 3-watt solar panel, a battery, two LED lamps, a phone charging unit, and connection cables.

The device is designed to serve needs of the poor, particularly in Africa. Apart from Kenya, it is also marketed in Malawi, South Sudan, and Zambia.

So far, the Mibawa Suppliers shop in Kitale is the only place in Kenya where the IndiGo kits are sold, says Edward Namasaka, who is the sole supplier in the country.

However, Mr. Namasaka says he has already identified five more traders in other towns in western Kenya and intends to begin supplying the gadgets to them soon.

Although raising the weekly payment may be a challenge for many people who survive on less than 100 shillings ($1.15) a day, many people prefer it to the high cost of purchasing kerosene and charging mobile phones, Namasaka says. The biggest incentive is that once the payments are done, the customer owns the IndiGo kit and can continue to access power without cost.

There are measures in place in case a user defaults on a payment. The battery-charging system contains a microchip that links it to a central server: If a weekly payment is missed, the system can be automatically disabled.

But Namasaka tries to be lenient, giving those who cannot service their loans a window period of up to one month to pay the belated installment.

Emmanual Siboe, one IndiGo user, called the system “a revolution.”

Apart from previously paying nearly 100 shillings a week for kerosene for lighting, he explained, “every time I needed to charge my phone, I had to walk all the way to the shopping center, and pay 20 shillings for the service.”

Mr. Siboe reckons that the cost of charging his phone, along with those of his wife and daughter, used to be 180 shillings ($2.25) a week.

“But with this gadget that harvests energy from the sun, I now charge it free of charge,” he says.

• Isaiah Esipisu is a freelance journalist with a focus on agriculture and environment. He can be reached at esipisus@yahoo.com.

• This article originally appeared at Thomson Reuters Foundation, a source of news, information, and connections for action. It provides programs that trigger change, empower people, and offer concrete solutions.

An aerial photograph shows a tract of Amazon jungle recently cleared by loggers and farmers near Altamira in Para State. Imazon’s program in Para State helped to reduce illegal deforestation by more than 80 percent. (Stian Bergeland/Rainforest Foundation Norway/Reuters/File)

How better-trained farmers slow Brazil's deforestation

By Daniel Jensen, Global Envision / 07.03.13

In Para, Brazil, farmers are turning a profit and the government is on track to slow deforestation thanks to local nonprofit Imazon, which got them to work together.

By 2003, Brazil was on the verge of an environmental catastrophe. As its economy expanded, cattle ranchers needed more land to graze their livestock, and few laws prevented them from burning down thousands of square kilometers of untitled land in the Amazon, causing vast environmental damage.

In the worst regions, like Para, widespread poverty meant that stopping deforestation was at the bottom of the government’s list, despite massive efforts by groups like Greenpeace and Imazon.

A wave of environmental laws passed by the federal government from 2004 to 2008 seemed to complicate things for local governments and economies, even as deforestation rates fell. Many municipal governments couldn’t fully meet government targets under the new regulations but faced economic sanctions if they didn’t. A beef embargo prevented farmers from selling their meat to mainstream supermarket chains like Carrefour and Walmart if their municipality ended up on a blacklist for failing to reduce illegal deforestation to government-mandated levels. The government confiscated herds and sawmills from the law’s offenders.

When Paragominas, a municipality in Para where Imazon worked, was placed on the list, 2,300 jobs and all the municipality’s federal agricultural credits disappeared within a year.

Imazon found itself helping save the local economy. It created a training program for the local government to learn how to use satellite technology to track deforestation. Since most of the affected land wasn’t titled, Imazon also helped farmers formalize their land titles and trained them in improved farming techniques, like rotating crops and limiting overgrazing, to make their land more productive and reduce the need to cut down more rainforest.

It worked. Farmers trained in better methods required less land to turn a profit, so they cut down fewer trees.

In just a few years, Imazon’s program in Paragominas helped to reduce illegal deforestation by more than 80 percent. When farmers in Paragominas implemented Imazon’s training techniques, most saw their incomes increase, even as they stopped clearing additional land.

Inspired by the success of the program, the state government decided to launch its own Green Municipalities Program in 2011, essentially promoting Imazon’s collaborative approach in Paragominas at a state level. Now, more than 94 of Para State's 143 municipalities have signed onto the Green Municipalities Program, and both the state government and Imazon are straining to meet the demand.

However, a new breakthrough came when Imazon attracted the attention of the Investment Innovations Alliance, a new partnership between Mercy Corps, USAID, and the Skoll Foundation. This April at the Skoll World Forum, the partners announced their first grant of $3.4 million, complementing an earlier $2.6 million from Skoll.

The funding will support Imazon to scale the successes in Paragominas across the state of Para. The project has ambitious goals, as the government has promised to reduce deforestation by 80 percent over the next seven years.

By systematizing the training process, the alliance hopes to leave the state government capable of responding to the growing demand from farmers and municipal governments who have seen Imazon’s programs work in Paragominas.

The question is how Imazon can show its methodologies work. Mercy Corps will help Imazon to test its approach in 10 municipalities serving as guinea pigs, drawing from its own network of experts in impact analysis.

But Imazon’s biggest success may be its ability to get locals on board with its ideas. 94 municipalities have already signed on to reducing deforestation through the Green Municipalities Program, and Cameron Peake, Mercy Corps's director of social innovations special initiatives, says she’s impressed at how the nonprofit has persuaded the local farmers and government that environmental sustainability, economic growth, land rights, and good governance can actually go together.

And that achievement, for one, is too valuable to put a number on.

This article originally appeared at Global Envision, a blog published by Mercy Corps.

Jean Gianacaci, center, speaks with a youth at a book fair last summer at a Trenton (N.J.) Housing Authority property. She is joined by volunteer Claire King, left. Christine's Hope for Kids hosted a book fair for residents of the property, offering books, fresh fruit, and healthy snacks. (Courtesy of Christine's Hope for Kids)

Christine's Hope for Kids gives kids a chance to be kids

By David Karas, Contributor / 07.02.13

In January 2010, Christine Gianacaci was visiting Haiti with a team from Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., on a trip to help children and the underprivileged when she – along with five others – were killed in a massive earthquake that rocked that country.

When her parents, John and Jean Gianacaci, took on the unimaginable task of planning their daughter’s funeral, they both agreed that they had to find a way to continue their daughter’s good works. They also wanted to find a way to put the money that could be used for flowers to good use.

“At her funeral we decided, in lieu of flowers, we would start a foundation,” Mrs. Gianacaci says. “We decided to start a foundation to help underprivileged kids and kids with differences.”

Christine’s Hope for Kids was born.

The mission of the organization – helping to give kids a chance to just be kids – is significant in a number of ways to the Gianacaci family.

Christine grew up with learning differences and had been diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome, her mother says.

“She knew what the challenges were for kids like her,” Mrs. Gianacaci says. “She knew what that was like. She had a very big heart for kids that lived with adversity.”

Christine was able to attend college, and her Tourette’s syndrome waned with age, her mother says.

In college  she became involved with Students for the Poor, a branch of the Food for the Poor organization. That’s where the other motivation behind the family’s foundation comes in.

“The kids went to Haiti to make a difference, and do some good, and they lost their lives doing it,” Jean Gianacaci. She says she felt “We have to do something to honor this.”

Gianacaci recalled her daughter’s experience on a similar trip in 2009 to Jamaica, and the changed outlook Christine had when she returned home.

“The things she saw, and the poverty she saw, were overwhelming for her,” Gianacaci says. “When you grow up here, you’re not exposed to poverty at that level.”

But what impacted Christine most, her mother says, were the children she met.

“What touched her heart the most were the kids who lived there,” Gianacaci says. “The kids were happy. They were in such poverty … but yet, they were happy.”

Jean and her husband, John, with the help of a part-time assistant and a score of volunteers, have since taken up Christine’s mission. To date, the foundation has given more than $300,000 in donations and in-kind support to organizations in New Jersey and across the country that work with children.

The family has decided to focus on helping children in the United States.

“Kids need help everywhere, but we wanted to stay here because there is a tremendous need right here in our very own country,” Gianacaci says.

Another benefit is the ability to more easily see the results of donations and support.

“I can see where our money goes,” Gianacaci says, adding that she makes sure donations are put to the right uses on behalf of supporters. “We are very grateful that people are willing – with all the choices they have – to donate to Christine’s Hope for Kids.”

From supporting community organizations such as Big Brothers-Big Sisters to partnering with schools to raise money or assembling pajama bags for disaster victims, Christine’s Hope for Kids has teamed with the wider community.

It also supports individual children, sending some to summer camps and providing equipment for others so that they can participate in athletics.

“Kids are shut out of games and activities because of money issues. It is overwhelming to me,” Gianacaci says. “Where will their memories be if they don’t get a chance to do anything?”

The foundation also helped bring a group of New Jersey kids to the seashore – for the first time.

“We sent kids to the Jersey shore last summer who have never seen the ocean,” she says. “And they live in Jersey.”

Another project supported youngsters taking a photography course in Florida – something Gianacaci hopes will be a positive memory for them whether they take up the hobby or not.

The Gianacaci family also aims to help teach kids how to help other kids. Partnering with schools can be a big part of achieving that goal.

“Everybody needs a little help some time,” Gianacaci says. “Just because you don’t have a brand-new bike doesn’t mean you are less of anything. It just means you don’t have a bike.”

While her formal title with Christine’s Hope for Kids is “president,” Gianacaci prefers to be called something else.

“I really like ‘mom’ the best,” she says.

• For more information on Christine’s Hope for Kids, to volunteer or provide support, visit http://www.christineshope.org.

A toilet is seen in a house destroyed by the January 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. A social enterprise called SOIL is providing clean sanitation facilities for families in their homes. The human waste is then removed and processed for use as fertilizer on sorghum fields. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters/File)

Double win for Haiti: human waste into valuable fertilizer

By Kristie Wang, Ashoka Changemakers / 07.01.13

SOIL is enabling communities in Haiti to transform human waste into a resource for sustainable livelihoods, agriculture, and reforestation. The organization is creating a lasting impact by seeding a new economy based on nutrients—one that a multinational corporation is now pledging to support.

Three years after the devastating earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people in Haiti, many international aid organizations have left behind a dubious legacy. Only a fraction of the $9.3 billion that donor nations pledged actually reached the ground in Haiti, and very little of that money went to efforts to rebuild the nation.

A host of international aid organizations often did more harm than good, according to journalist Jonathan Katz. Haiti is still grappling with the first cholera outbreak ever recorded in the nation, which was brought in by United Nations troops and has killed 8,000 people and sickened 649,000 more.

Today in Port-au-Prince, the capital, 350,000 Haitians still live in tents, and fewer than 25 percent of Haitians in cities have access to adequate sanitation. In lieu of toilets, people must find other ways to dispose of waste—such as plastic bags, abandoned houses, or the ocean.

The 11,000 temporary toilets that were installed by aid groups after the quake are no longer being serviced. That means 11,000 very full reservoirs of human waste that pose a significant health hazard.

Despite the challenges, there are effective solutions at work in Haiti. SOIL, which stands for Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods, is working with communities to install a low-cost sanitation system that also supports local agriculture, the environment, and local economies.

SOIL’s ecological sanitation (EcoSan) toilets now serve more than 24,000 people across Haiti, and are virtually odor free. Unlike many international aid organizations that built toilets and stopped maintaining them when they left, SOIL’s model was grown from within the country and integrates maintenance services that also generate local jobs.

For a low monthly fee, SOIL workers maintain the toilets and collect the waste, delivering it to a composting facility (via SOIL’s Poopmobile), where it composts at high heat for six months. The process kills pathogens and creates a nutrient-rich fertilizer that is being sold to farms and used for tree planting.

Sasha Kramer, co-founder of SOIL, said that the work has gone through three phases since the organization’s launch in 2006—sanitation and toilets, developing composting facilities, and now linking the compost back to the agricultural and food sector. The organization focused first on making toilets accessible to the public, and learned some hard lessons along the way.

“When we first started, we were really interested in reaching the largest number of people possible,” Kramer says. “And we thought that the best way to do that was to build public toilets that were maintained by the community, and that everyone could have access to.

“People had advised us against this, and we were very naïve and didn’t listen. We did this for two or three years before we understood that the tragedy of the commons is very much a reality.

“If you build something that is accessible to everyone, but that no one is paid to maintain, then it won’t be maintained. I think that this lesson could be carried into other sectors as well.

"The initial enthusiasm will carry people through for a few months, but in the end, no one wants to clean up anyone else’s poop for free—and understandably so.”

For SOIL, the lesson learned was that, ultimately, sustainable livelihoods are the most pressing need for people, and the key to lasting change. “That’s why we’ve moved away from public toilets, and into setting up a household sanitation system where people pay a small monthly fee to have their toilet waste collected,” Kramer says.

“That fee then funds the people to do the service and maintenance of the toilets. I’m much more hopeful that this could be a long-term solution that could be picked up and replicated by the private sector, instead of a public toilet solution that was very dependent on ongoing funding from donors.”

Households, schools, clinics, and tourism cooperatives are welcoming the EcoSan toilets. In some parts of Haiti, groups of five families share a semi-private toilet and divide the cost of maintenance.

“The idea of being able to create a resource—fertilizer—here in Haiti, instead of having to import it, has been very appealing to many people,” says Kramer. “One of the real drivers of this appeal is the strong culture of independence and national pride in Haiti.”

Kramer first came to Haiti in 2004 with a group of human rights observers after a coup overthrew the elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. “I came to observe a demonstration, and I was just totally swept away by the courage and amazing resiliency I felt in the people here,” Kramer says.

Kramer, still an ecology graduate student at Stanford University in California, ended up returning 12 times over the course of two years. “I feel I was lucky, because I was able to come to Haiti without already having any preconceived notions,” Kramer says.

“I really had a chance to get to know the country and the very respected leaders in the communities where I was working. Had I not had those two years, it would have been very difficult to start an organization. When I did co-found SOIL, I had a good sense of who I could talk to in the community, and who was really trusted.”

Kramer’s relationships within local communities were instrumental to building SOIL’s founding team, which she credits as one of the organization’s key success factors.

“I feel like everything is learnable, except respect,” said Kramer. “And this is a group of people who are very respectful to their fellow Haitians, and who are also respected by the community. That made a huge difference for SOIL.”

Supporting livelihoods is the final step of the sanitation loop, where compost supports local agriculture and food production. Haiti’s agriculture sector has been struggling with heavily depleted soils and poor yields because of deforestation and environmental degradation.

Today, the nation still imports 50 percent of its food. By turning thousands of gallons of human waste into compost each week, SOIL has the potential to transform this problem dramatically—and now international investors are taking note.

The multinational beer company Heineken, which recently bought the Haitian beer brewery, Prestige, has pledged to invest $40 million in Haiti, and to work with 18,000 sorghum farmers so that it can source its sorghum locally.

[Editor's note: The original version of this blog post gave the wrong number of sorghum farmers who work with Heineken.]

“Heineken has said that they would like to purchase 50,000 gallons of compost this year, which they’ll be providing to sorghum farmers,” Kramer says.

“This is an example of how large international business can really support sustainable nutrient economies—and sustainable development in general—by making this type of investment. This creates a market demand for sustainable sanitation, and this partnership is something that could be replicable globally. It’s really exciting.”

SOIL was recently selected as an early entry prize winner in the Nutrients for All, an Ashoka Changemakers competition that is seeking solutions to ensure the availability of nutrients for healthy, natural ecosystems, farms, food, and people.

• Check out the Nutrients for All campaign page for a three-part podcast with Sasha Kramer, as well as commentary from other global experts that are working to create vitality for people and the planet.

• Ashoka Changemakers® provides the tools and resources to empower everyone to contribute to a better world. Our community's mission is to grow new ideas through transparency and collaboration, a process of Open Growth.

Maize (corn) is grow mixed with desmodium plants, which control an insidious pest that can destroy 30 to 100 percent of crops. Intercropping is a technique that adds a repellent crop to farmers’ fields, such desmodium, and then surrounds the field with a border of attractive plants, such as Napier grass. (Clément Girardot/icipe)

'Push-Pull' strategy helps end hunger and poverty for farmers in sub-Saharan Africa

By Food Tank / 06.28.13

[Editor's note: The United Nations has declared 2014 the International Year of Family Farming (IYFF) to highlight the importance of family and smallholder farmers. Food Tank is partnering with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to commemorate IYFF and will feature weekly posts and other media highlighting the innovations that family farmers are using to alleviate hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation along with the campaigns and policies that support them.]

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reports that a quarter of the world’s hungry live in sub-Saharan Africa. Supporting small-scale farmers will be critical to reducing hunger and poverty in the region. Kenya’s International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) has developed an intercropping strategy, called Push-Pull, that helps farmers increase productivity, strengthen soils, and protect staple foods from pests – all without expensive chemical fertilizers or pesticides.

Push-Pull was originally designed to help farmers deal with crop loss from two especially destructive pests: stemborers and striga weeds. Family farmers in sub-Saharan Africa often lose up to 80 percent of their crop to stemborers, a type of moth that lays its eggs inside the stems of corn, sorghum, and other staple crops.

Perhaps more insidious is striga, a parasitic plant, also known as witchweed, which stunts crop growth and regularly causes farmers to lose 30 to 100 percent of their crop. The combination of these pests often destroys entire harvests and costs an estimated $7 billion every year. Typical pesticides and herbicides that might solve the problem are expensive, environmentally damaging, and largely ineffective once the pests are established. 

Push-Pull offers a different solution, introducing plants that naturally repel and attract stemborers to keep them away from crops. The system adds a repellent crop to farmers’ fields, such desmodium, and then surrounds the field with a border of attractive plants, such as Napier grass.

Stemborers are then simultaneously pushed away from the maize field and pulled toward the border. In addition to protecting fields from stemborers, the intercropped desmodium plants control striga, producing a substance that causes suicidal germination—promoting striga’s initial growth and then stopping it.This eliminates striga plants from these fields, and because desmodium is a perennial plant, it keeps them free of striga between harvest seasons as well.

Desmodium also functions as a cover crop, which can be plowed back into the soil to increase soil health and nutrient content. Napier grass is also useful as a feed crop for animals, and its root system helps prevent erosion.

So far, more than 55,600 farmers in East Africa have implemented icipe’s Push-Pull system, resulting in more than triple the average maize yields achieved under previous practices. Icipe is working to expanding the practice across sub-Saharan Africa, connecting with farmers through radio, print materials, and hands-on training programs.

• Food Tank (www.foodtank.org) is a think tank focused on a feeding the world better. We research and highlight environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable ways of alleviating hunger, obesity, and poverty and create networks of people, organizations, and content to push for food system change.

A woman shops for apples at a farmers market in Union Square in New York City last year. In Nashville, Tenn., a new food hub called Nashville Grown is trying to connect local farmers with outlets for their produce beyond farmers markets, such as grocery stores and schools. (Andrew Burton/Reuters/File)

Food hub links local produce with local buyers

By Kristie Wang, Ashoka Changemakers / 06.27.13

Nashville, Tenn., boasts seven different farmers markets citywide, proving that urban residents have a strong appetite for locally sourced food.

But the mainstream food markets—like grocery stores, hospitals, schools, and restaurants—find it much easier to order from national distributors like Sysco, which trucks in produce from an average of 2,000 miles away.

Without access to larger food buyers, Nashville growers are struggling to succeed—a trend that has resulted in the decline of local food production. Today in Davidson County, only 0.36 percent of the farmland is being used to grow fruits and vegetables.

The good news is that one organization is working to change all that. Nashville Grown is a new food hub that enables large food purchasers to source produce from farms just outside the city—and even from backyard micro-farms within the city itself.

Farmers can become more profitable and focus more time on growing more food when they don’t have to worry about the legwork and infrastructure required to get their products to market.

Why have small farms been excluded from the supply chain?

The problem has to do with scale. Farms in and around urban areas tend to be small and usually can’t produce at the sustained volumes that institutions like schools or grocery chains require.

And without economies of scale, small farms aren’t able to shoulder the cost of delivery, storage, and marketing. On the market side, larger food purchasers require one-stop sourcing and don’t have the capacity to coordinate with multiple local farms.

“We have farms that are right next to the people they’d like to be serving,” says Sarah Johnson, founder and director of Nashville Grown. “But if there isn’t a food system set up to get the produce from small farms to the end consumer, it’s never going to work.”

Nashville Grown aggregates produce from many small farms, making it possible to fulfill the larger volume orders required by bigger food buyers like restaurants.  

Aggregation also means that a small grower can still turn a profit if she specializes in producing a particular crop.

As a food hub, Nashville Grown provides storage, distribution, and marketing. Its online purchasing system posts what farmers have for sale, and buyers can go online and order produce for delivery the next day.

Ms. Johnson launched Nashville Grown last August and began “bootstrapping it,” with just an empty warehouse space and her personal vehicle, equipped with picnic coolers. The organization now helps 15 local farms and market gardens sell to restaurants and catering companies.

However, getting large grocery chains and institutions like schools to carry local produce is proving to be more challenging.

“Right now, our selling platform skews our buyers to higher-end restaurants that can create menu items and specials around what’s available from local farms during a given week,” Johnson says. “They’re flexible if something’s not available. But our current system isn’t as attractive to buyers like schools or other restaurants that may not have that flexibility in their menu planning. We’re trying to work on that.”

Another challenge involved in selling to chain grocery stores and institutions is that they tend to require Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) certification, and adherence to other food safety protocols that are costly and potentially impossible for small, diversified farms to comply with. GAP processes are designed for large, commodity farms, and enabling investigators to track sources of food-borne illness—for example, E-coli bacteria in spinach that has arrived from many large farms and has been mingled at a central processing facility.

“GAP isn’t required by the government,” Johnson says, “but it’s what these larger institutions are used to working with. One solution would be to have an external
party establish specific safety standards for small, local farms, because they have an entirely different set of risks compared to large farms.”

Many large buyers had established processes that simply couldn’t accommodate local food, Johnson also discovered. For example, Nashville Grown approached the Kroger supermarket chain, which expressed an interest in carrying local food.

“But nothing could go directly to the store, because their rules require that everything has to be shipped to their warehouse in Kentucky first,” Johnson says. “But the farm was just a couple miles away! So much of the food system was created without the desire to source food as locally and as freshly as possible. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done.”

Nashville Grown also helps farmers with marketing and promotion by sharing photographs and stories about farmers and their land. The stories appear on the Nashville Grown website, as well as on food packages and labels.

“A lot of the farmland here has an amazing history,” Johnson says. “People really want to know where their food comes from, and any city could have a powerful local brand that inspires consumer loyalty. There’s a huge amount of value that hasn’t yet been realized by restaurants and grocery stores.”

Despite the barriers to reaching larger institutions, the demand from restaurants alone is greater than Nashville Grown is currently able to fill. “My hope is that creating the means for existing farms to become more profitable and competitive will also enable new farmers to start,” Johnson says. “There is so much potential for food to be grown in cities, and so many small vacant plots available for farming in and around urban areas.”

Nashville Grown can serve as a model for other food systems confronting the challenges of making local food accessible beyond the farmers market. This organization was recently selected as an early entry prize winner in the Nutrients for All, an Ashoka Changemakers competition that is seeking solutions that will ensure the availability of nutrients for healthy, natural ecosystems, farms, food, and people.

Check out the Nutrients for All campaign page page for podcasts and commentary from global experts that are working to create vitality for people and the planet.

• Ashoka Changemakers® provides the tools and resources to empower everyone to contribute to a better world. Our community's mission is to grow new ideas through transparency and collaboration, a process of Open Growth.

Students practice at Tiny Toones, a breakdancing outreach program for disadvantaged Cambodian children in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. (Courtesy of Tiny Toones)

In Cambodia, kids breakdance toward better futures

By Elizabeth Barber, Contributor / 06.26.13

Every morning in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, one van and two tuk-tuks ply the broiling streets like American school buses, picking up children and ferrying them through the city’s crush to school.

Except this is no ordinary school. This is breakdancing school.

Tiny Toones, a breakdancing outreach program for Cambodian children, was established in 2007, and its founder, breakdancer Tuy Sobil, is something of a success story himself. At the time Sobil, or KK, was born – in a Thai refugee camp in 1977 – Cambodia had folded into itself as the Khmer Rouge rolled the country back to “Year Zero” in a genocidal campaign that would kill about one-fifth of its population.

KK moved with his family to the Long Beach, Calif., when he was less than a year old, and he grew up performing in California’s breakdancing or "b-boy" groups. But he also joined the Crips gang there, and in 2004 he was convicted of armed robbery and deported to Cambodia under a law that mandates deportation for non-US citizens convicted of felonies. He had never seen Cambodia before. 

In unfamiliar Phnom Penh, KK, a lithe and tattooed man, accidently accumulated around him a group of kids who wanted to be like him, to dance like an American b-boy could. He gave them free breakdancing lessons in his apartment and called them “Tiny Toones,” for the baggy clothes that hung off their little bodies and made them look like cartoon imitations of an American street dancer. He soon had some 70 Cambodian children in his home each afternoon. It was time to create a formal school.

And so with funding from aid groups like Bridges across Borders, KK opened a Phnom Penh school that would teach breakdancing as an alternative to gang-life and drug use, problems that plauge this corridor of the city’s capital, where gangs are appealing options for children who feel that they have no options.

“Tiny Toones means everything to me,” KK says. “It's my life, and I want the kids to succeed.”

Most of the 200 or so children enrolled in Tiny Toones are from southeast Phnom Penh’s Chba Ampov neighborhood, a troubled corridor of the city where children collect recyclables to sell for pocket change. Sometimes they are enrolled in public school, other times not. When they become teenagers, little gets better. Drugs in Cambodia are cheap and often billed not as addictive and destructive but as potent energy supplements. Gangs beckon poor kids into their ranks. And so this becomes a place that no one ever leaves.

That’s where Tiny Toones comes in: as a safe, drug-free environment that its founders hope will introduce its students to all their options.

Tiny Toones, housed in a one-story building decorated with sprawling graffiti, is largely a creative program. Students there, aged 5-24, take breakdancing dance classes, as well as workshops in voice and music video production. But the founders have also incorporated a formal education sector into the program to both supplement the public school program and serve students who have left school. Classes in Khmer, English, and computer skills are now among those that all students take.

Some of the program’s participants go on to become dancers, even local Cambodian stars; nine of the school’s 12 teachers are its former students. In rare cases, students go on to higher education. Five former Tiny Toones dancers are now enrolled in universities in Phnom Penh, funded with Tiny Toones scholarships that rely on some corporate or NGO backing but largely on private donations. 

“When you consider their backgrounds, that’s just really incredible,” says David Hewitt, Tiny Toones’ press coordinator.

Mostly, though, the program’s successes are subtler.

“The main success for me is not necessarily what they do afterward, but that they’ve built their capacity, their confidence,” says Reuth Chhoeung, or Shhort, the general manager of the program. “We want to let them know that there are other options out there for them.”

That knowledge is particularly important for the girls in the program. At first, girls there were few in number; parents were reluctant to send their daughters too far away from home, let alone to a program that taught not traditional, gentle Apsara dance but an imported, aggressive style.

“For girls, it lets them know that they can do what boys can do,” says Shhort. “They can be more than just housewives.”

This year, about half of the program’s participants are young women, in part due to the founder’s efforts to consult with parents, as well as the program’s growing fame. Local media production companies have stepped in to produce music videos for the kids, and last year a group of students traveled as a dance troupe to Australia and New Zealand to perform several nights of shows – in addition to the shows they put on in Cambodia. Tiny Toones is also currently short-listed for a UNICEF Beyond Sport award.

“This is a place where they can just express themselves,” Shhort says. “Otherwise they could just be wasting their lives.”

Protesters hold Bulgarian flags during a demonstration in Sofia, Bulgaria, in June. Bulgaria's president has praised protest rallies against corruption and a lack of transparency. The World Economic Forum's Partnership Against Corruption Initiative works worldwide advocating for transparency and corruption-free business practices. (Stoyan Nenov/Reuters)

Rooting corruption out of the system

By Elaine Dezenski, Thomson Reuters Foundation / 06.25.13

David Cameron, the host of the G8 summit in Northern Ireland [June 17-18], is trapped between a rock and a hard place, when it comes to fighting corruption. He was expected to meet the significant expectations of the public while facing the considerable challenge of ensuring that all his fellow G8 leaders agreed on specific, concrete steps.

The summit’s agenda was ambitious. Cameron pledged to tackle tax evasion in overseas territories under British jurisdiction, strengthen government accountability, and boost trade by breaking down hurdles to the free flow of goods and services. He took the lead initially during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2013, and all three items made it on the agenda of the G8 summit.

Governments and the publics they represent may disagree on whether these objectives were fully met, but I believe this is in itself no small achievement by the host to have inserted transparency into the debate among G8 leaders. First and foremost, people need to see that their desire for transparency is acknowledged at the highest level. It is the first step to more public sector accountability.

Increasing transparency as a way to fight corruption in the public sector, specifically in public procurement processes, is central to what we do at the Forum’s Partnership Against Corruption Initiative (PACI). In fact, with nearly 100 active companies, PACI is one of the strongest cross-industry collaborations in the field of anti-corruption and globally the leading business voice on the issue.

For example, one area that requires urgent action but also looks promising for successful collaboration, is the construction sector.  It is no secret that large construction projects are prone to various forms of corruption, bribery, or facilitation payments. Large amounts of money are invested over a relatively long period of time and distributed among numerous contractors and subcontractors.

It is no secret, in part because the private sector itself has long acknowledged it and openly engaged in a conversation about fixing the problem. The British construction sector has just called on David Cameron to continue his support for the “Construction Sector Transparency Initiative”, which aims to eradicate corruption in publicly funded construction projects. Companies like ABB, Fluor Corporation, or Siemens are driving that conversation inside the PACI community.

In recent months, the Forum has hosted regional meetings in Peru, South Africa, Jordan, and Myanmar. While at first glance these countries do not have much in common, they all share two things: first, a need for sizable investment in infrastructure, such as ports, bridges, roads, or energy grids; and secondly, the will not only to step up pressure on existing corruption but also to design corruption out of the system.

PACI is engaging the private sector in emerging markets like India, Malaysia, and Mongolia. By sharing best practices, putting business leaders, civil servants, and civil society representatives in the same room and forcefully making the business case for corruption-free operations based on the Forum’s extensive data and experience in competitiveness research, we are helping to create a level playing field.

The message sent out at the G8 summit about their commitment to create a corruption-free system is a positive one. To build on this progress, actions must now support these political imperatives.

• This article originally appeared at Thomson Reuters Foundation, a source of news, information, and connections for action. It provides programs that trigger change, empower people, and offer concrete solutions.

Katrell Christie (back, left) and the housemother (back, right) of the student residence in Darjeeling, India, pose with three of the young orphaned women who are attending college thanks to Ms. Christie and her fundraising, which includes selling packets of tea she has labeled The Learning Tea. (Courtesy of Dustin Chambers)

A tea shop in Atlanta sends young women in India to college

By Stell Simonton, Contributor / 06.24.13

Katrell Christie stands behind the counter of her tea and coffee shop in Atlanta. Threadbare oriental carpets cover the marred concrete floor. Bookshelves line the walls, and secondhand tables with ancient lamps are scattered around. Sumptuous cakes and thick cookies are displayed under glass.

In this shop, known as Dr. Bombay's Underwater Tea Party, Ms. Christie launched her dream of making college possible for a group of young women in India. Four years after starting, her project now supports the university education of 11 women, gradually adding students each year. In October, she will double that number.

It's not that hard to help people, she says.  "I sell cupcakes for $3."

It all began in 2009, two years after Ms. Christie opened Dr. Bombay’s. A student from the nearby Georgia Institute of Technology came into the shop and began pestering her to go to India and help with a handicraft project.

At first Ms. Christie said she was too busy running her business, but eventually agreed. Once there, she took a side trip to Darjeeling, India, to look at tea plantations, thinking she’d find a new source of tea for the shop.

There she met three girls from an orphanage. They told her they would be forced to leave their orphanage within a year, since it only serves children up to age 16. Their futures seemed grim. Having no parents and nowhere to go, they could end up living on the street, where sex trafficking is one of the few avenues to making money, and where AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) are a big risk.

“I made a bunch of promises,” Christie says. She told them she’d come back in six months and help. Then she had to figure out a way to make it happen. “I didn’t know what to do.”

Back in Atlanta, she put a jar on the counter, asking for money to help. Her shop was filled with used books solicited from customers and others in the surrounding Candler Park neighborhood. Sold for $1 apiece, the books raised money for the local Mary Lin Elementary School. Ms. Christie redirected the book funds toward India.

In six months, she had several thousand dollars – enough to fly to India, rent an apartment for the girls, pay for their tuition at a college prep high school, and get them school uniforms and immunizations.

“They knew what an amazing opportunity it was,” she says.

Since the landlord in Darjeeling would not rent solely to a young woman, Ms. Christie persuaded her father to co-sign the lease.

To keep the project afloat, Ms. Christie began selling packets of tea from Darjeeling, with a notice that the profit went for tuition. She called it The Learning Tea. Her shop also began sponsoring a four-course Indian dinner once a month to raise money.

Every six months, she went back to India. Her plane ticket was one of the biggest expenses. She was struck by how she was able to “do something for someone with so little.”

Each trip she would hear about another girl who needed shelter and wanted to go to college. She added students and the group moved into a larger space – eventually into a free-standing building that has dormitory-style bedrooms with bunk beds. A housemother now lives with them and the accommodations include a kitchen with a refrigerator. The house also has a computer.

Among the girls who live there is one who had medical problems because of malnutrition. Another lost both her parents to TB. Two were sex-trafficked to Nepal, rescued, and brought back.

Ms. Christie knows that big organizations help a larger number of people. But her project is a specialized one. She focuses on college educations for women.

She believes vocational training helps only one generation, she says. A college education allows a woman to pursue a career and, in turn, provide higher education her own children.

“It is the only way I see that you can stop the vicious cycle of intensive poverty in India,” Christie says.

The project has grown steadily. This fall, she will open a residence in Kolkata (Calcutta), India, and provide scholarships and a home for 12 more young women.

• To learn more visit http://thelearningtea.com and http://www.drbombays.com.