Silicon Valley Awards Tech-Minded Idealists
Each Year, Five Winners Receive $50,000 Cash Prizes
Not all the laureates work outdoors. 3D for All is a project based and operated out of Hungary that uses specially outfitted 3D blackboards and PCs to help students visualize key concepts of math and science.
The inexpensive technology was once described as a compilation of "straws, Christmas Tree lights and wire." Yet, when the displays are viewed by students wearing special glasses, that technology melange effectively brings objects ranging from molecules to dinosaurs into 3D view, more fully engaging the viewers.
The Portable Light Project, based in Boston, operates in Central and South America as well as South Africa. The project starts with flexible solar nanotechnology, in the form of photovoltaics and solid state lighting. With input from local communities on local sewing and weaving techniques, the panels are "built in" to everyday household products, among them blankets that, when outside in the sun during the day, collect and store power that provides heat and light in the home at night.
In a recently launched experiment, light gathering materials are sewn into harvesting bags, used in the field all day, with hopes that they will provide useful energy inside when the sun goes down.
Finally, Sanoussi Diakite, based in Senegal and operating throughout Africa, is an entrepreneur who created a machine that dramatically reduces the time and effort required to dehusk fonio plants, a high-fiber grain that grows well in arid regions.
The grain, which has been grown in the region for more than 500 years, grows rapidly, requires little water and is nutritious. Unfortunately, it is a rarely served delicacy because it is difficult, time-consuming and painful to extract the small grain from the husk.
Diakite, a high school teacher, designed and built a machine that automates the process and reduces the time to dehusk a kilo of fonio from more than an hour to a few minutes. His machines are now at work in 17 African countries.
Single-handedly, none of these projects is going to save the world, but each and every one of them will save or at least improve tens, hundreds, thousands, or perhaps millions of lives. As happens each year at these awards, Silicon Valley's most successful are humbled and inspired by the astonishing fortitude of these optimistic entrepreneurs, truly using technology to benefit humanity.
Lise Buyer, a longtime Silicon Valley investor, is a principal at the Class V Group, www.classvgroup.com
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