Summer 2009 Seed Grants

2009 Legatum Center Summer Seed Grant Recipients

Teams of students from across MIT submitted proposals for innovative projects on renewable energy, health, water, biotechnology, mobile services, and a host of other enterprise solutions to development challenges in low-income countries. From the highly competitive pool of over twenty proposals, eight grantees, with projects in China, Guyana, India, Kenya, Pakistan, Peru, and Tanzania, were selected by the Legatum Center to receive funding. Teams will use these grants to fund market research, project scoping, and pilot studies during MIT’s 2009 summer break. "MIT students are passionate and creative problem-solvers, and through these grants, they can advance projects that have as their aim the creation of a sustainable enterprise in a low-income country,” said Iqbal Z. Quadir, founder and director of the Legatum Center.

Javier Hernandez and Neeharika Bhartiya, team members of IDC-India, will use their seed grant funding to travel to Mumbai, India to work with the NGO Ratna Nidhi Charitable Trust to help handicapped individuals, of which there are over 20 million in India, to start their own mobile businesses. Javier writes, “IDC-India is thrilled to be selected as a 2009 Legatum Seed Grant recipient! Using the seed grant we plan on manufacturing business specific wheelchairs and tricycles in India that will then be used by the handicapped to start their own entrepreneurial businesses to become financially independent.”

Fellow summer seed grant recipient, Jessica Mazonson, will use her seed grant award to help take her Peruvian women’s knitting cooperative, Creaciones Norteñas, into its next stage of growth. She explains, “Ultimately our goal is for Creaciones Norteñas to be a viable, sustainable, for-profit business that provides security for mothers and families while inspiring all of the local community to dream beyond the predictable poverty trap. I am grateful to Legatum for the opportunity to continue to be a part of this inspiring organization.”

"These seed grants enable the Legatum Center to reach entrepreneurial students at the undergraduate and graduate level who exemplify MIT’s credo of Mens et Manus (mind and hand) by using their creativity and training to do something practical that will empower ordinary citizens in the developing world," said Michael F. Maltese, managing director of the Legatum Center.

The Legatum Center’s seed grants have been made possible through the generous support of MIT alumnus Jack Hennessy, who was previously a board member of the MIT Corporation, the Chairman and CEO of Credit Suisse First Boston, and Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Treasury.

Recipients of the Legatum Center 2009 Summer Seed Grants:

Team: BLISS (Business and Life Skills School)
Team Members: Saba Gul, Elani Orphanides
Geographic Focus: Attcok, Pakistan

Project: A customized “life skills” curriculum for Afghan refugees in Pakistan will encourage school attendance and cultivate useful real-world skills, including business skills garnered through mentorship by local MBA students. In a supplementary after school program with a for-profit aim, Afghan school girls will use their skills to produce and market hand-embroidered bags for sale in Pakistan’s urban centers. Implementation of the project will begin this summer.

Team: Creaciones Nortenas del Peru
Team Members: Jessica Mazonson
Geographic Focus: Piura and Lima, Peru

Project: By scaling up its operations, this fair trade handicrafts cooperative will raise its profitability, and thus further improve the livelihoods of its exclusively female craftspeople. Developing strategic partnerships will increase market access for Creaciones Nortenas, generate a steadier flow of business, and lead to greater economic viability of the venture. This summer’s strategic consulting project will leave Creaciones Nortenas and its leadership team with the necessary plan to fuel and sustain future growth.

Team: EGG-tech
Team Members: Jukka Valimaki, Blandine Antoine, Rhonda Jordan, Mark Yen, Alla Jezmir, Benjamin Lambert and Emmanuel Cassimatis
Geographic Focus: Tanzania

Project: This battery swap business will serve low-income Tanzanians who lack access to electricity by allowing them to buy and recharge, at local sites, batteries that can power households for up to three days. By collecting customer fees each time they swap an empty battery for a recharged one, the venture will be financially viable. Summer 2009 work will include further market research and construction of the first of four pilot operating sites in Tanzania.

Team: Global Citizen Water Initiative
Team Members: Scot Frank, Catlin Powers, Drogar Jyid, Chiyang Zhorma, Dagmo Tar
Geographic Focus: Qinghai Province, China

Project: Results from water quality tests performed with affordable and accessible kits will be compiled in a searchable database for access by policy makers and researchers. Financial sustainability will be achieved by selling test kits online and through regional distributors, and by commissions earned from connecting communities to local water treatment providers. This summer, the team will evaluate water test kit prototypes in a series of demonstrations for potential clients in Western China.

Team: Global Cycle Solutions
Team Members: Lisa Tacoronte, Jodie Z. Wu, Caroline Hane-Weijman, Javier Lozano, Alex Shih, and Semyon Dukach
Geographic Focus: Arusha, Tanzania

Project: Through the development of interfaces that allow any rotary device to be attached to a bicycle, Global Cycle Solutions is leveraging the bicycle as a vehicle of innovation. Profits from the sale of bicycle-powered devices will sustain Global Cycle Solutions; strategic partnerships with local entrepreneurs and dealers will enhance such sales. During summer 2009, the team will focus on the development and distribution of a bicycle-powered corn sheller for use by Tanzanian farmers.

Team: IDC India
Team Members: Javier Hernandez, Amritaa Ganguly, Neeharika Bhartiya, Wendy Wen, Sameer Hirji, Tish Scolnik, Lauren Vegter, Arjun Metha
Geographic Focus: Mumbai, India

Project: Engineering modifications to wheelchairs will enable handicapped people in India to operate small, mobile businesses—such as adaptive mobile tea carts—from their wheelchairs; the development of an accompanying microfinance model will allow these handicapped entrepreneurs, who are among the over 20 million handicapped people in India, to invest in a modified wheelchair. Venture-sustaining profits will be generated from wheelchair sales. During summer 2009, the team will visit Indian wheelchair manufactures and interview handicapped people in Mumbai to assess their skill sets and needs.

Team: Mama Mboga Project
Team Members: Carrie Kimeria, Brenda Were, Patricia Lubwama, Krasimira Alexandrova
Geographic Focus: Nairobi, Kenya

Project: Providing microloans to low-income, urban Kenyan women who earn their livelihoods from door-to-door sales of vegetables will give these women (“mama mbogas”) the necessary capital to purchase their vegetables in bulk, thus assuring higher profit margins for them. The project’s sustainability will stem from reinvestment of the microloan returns. This summer, the team will give microloans and training to a pilot group of 8-10 mama mbogas, while concurrently performing studies of payback time, loan life cycle, and new profit margins.

Team: Phi Wave
Team Members: Renaldo Webb, Eric Beecher, Nicholas Pennycooke, Nicholas Hong, and Jose Villalobos
Geographic Focus: Iwokrama, Guyana

Project: Phi Wave turbines will use river and tidal energy to power the car batteries on which off-grid Guyanan communities rely for electricity. To insure Phi Wave’s profitability and promote entrepreneurship, Phi Wave will sell its cost-effective generators to local entrepreneurs who will then charge energy customers for the generator’s output. This summer, the team will construct a prototype and two additional turbines for villages in Guyana.

Locations of 2008-2009 Seed Grant Projects

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