Author Archives: Young World Inventors

Nairobi:  New Story and New Co-Director!

Elijah & Diane filmed Tom Osborn’s investors’ tour: ten from NYC, Seattle, and Durham, N.C.
First we met the Greenchar team and saw piles of logs made of sugar cane waste, a product called Long Burn.
Then we headed off to Kibera, the biggest slum in Nairobi.

Says Luni Libes, an investor who mentors Tom since May 2015, “There is no
substitute to seeing their businesses first-hand vs. seeing pictures
… while sitting in downtown Seattle at the Impact Hub. “

GreenChar’s Kiosks in Kibera’s informal  community

“[Nothing] can replace physically walking through the Kibera slum, to see the kiosks where GreenChar sells its charcoal briquettes…
Standing in that slum, I finally understood why there is so much philanthropy and so many NGOs here in Africa.  It is so easy to get caught up in the needs, and turn to the simple solution of giving away products and services —
a solution that doesn’t scale” [and is dis-empowering].

GreenChar also trains women in financial literacy, safe cooking and sales skills to raise incomes. Click here to support Tom’s new kiosk model.

Stories like Tom’s show firsthand how hard it is to “change the world,”
working to extend lives, save trees, scale up sales and job creation
and survive as a business in a competitive space.

From Kibera we went to Alliance High School, where Tom, Brian and Ian
first dreamed up  GreenChar.  Alliance boards 1,500 students and  serves 4,500+
meals per day, cooking all that food in giant kettles primarily powered by firewood, testing GreenChar’s industrial logs, Long Burn (results = 5X better).

Tom’s physics teacher told us proudly that Tom has had a huge impact on
the school — he’s not sure if Tom is mostly an artist, a scientist, or a businessman.
Tom senses that more people are expecting more of him now.

Kenya has lost 97% of its natural forest cover, so Alliance planted a forest for cooking fuel! They want to switch over to Long Burn, to save funds and cooking time, but  GreenChar needs equipment to scale up to meet their needs. Tom aims to sign up 20 more schools ASAP.

African Maker Media has a new Co-director!

We are thrilled to have Kenyan Peter Murimi, a friend since 2012, to join African Makers Media as Co-director. He directs and produces diverse documentaries for global broadcasters and for Clover Africa, with Jaime Doran, who has won awards for investigative documentaries aired globally by Frontline/PBS in the U.S., and in the UK for three decades.

For more on Tom’s story and our plans for distribution, contact us at  africanmakersmedia@gmail.com.
Click here to help us edit these serial documentaries,
as we wait to hear from potential funders.
It’s tax deductible! Thanks, Diane Hendrix

Fledge.co began importing African entrepreneurs to Seattle in 2014.
Special thanks to Luni Libes for valuable startup wisdom in person and online,
and for sharing his photos and comments with African Makers Media.

Click the green AMM button to join our list for updates on
“Tom Tries to Change the World” stories.

Here’s to enriched lives, work and community in 2016!
Last fall we launched our African Makers Media initiative to focus on one issue, #cleancookstoves, and test a model for impact.

Our plan for stories, platform features, and outreach appears in the video.

By fall 2016 we aim to produce six stories of #cleancookstoves and fuel makers, and to recruit African social media and tech designers for a new story platform and outreach campaign. Local crews will film in Kenya and Uganda, where the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (GACC) is focusing its work.

Shoot an email to AfricanMakersMedia@gmail.com with leads to story sponsors,awesome African techies who design platforms and successful social media folks: anything!

GreenChar.co.ke needs you too!
Carbon from wood-fuels is the second leading cause of global warming. Three billion cook with open fires. Most do not know how deadly the smoke is. To change this,Tom says: “we need an eco-system and a support structure. We need people for advice, encouragement, resources and connections.”

A McKinsey&Company report says,“capturing and sharing
inspiring stories from the front lines may be the first step [to]
motivate audiences and inspire collaborations that allow good ideas to reach scale.”  

Investors like @randyhaykin look for social entrepreneurs whose startups can
improve tens of millions of lives.  He’s using the video app from OneStory.com
at the SOCAP convention last October attended by 2700+.

ONE STORY Video Tools

Click the green AMM button, then type your email address to
stay updated on the #cleancookstoves story project.

At age 20 Tom thinks everyone should “dare to be different.”
Last July, we edited Jodie Wu’s Solar Powered Rafiki, then we met (online)
Tom Osborn, GreenChar inventor, from Kenya and his COO, Yina Sun.

See what Tom is doing and why in this teaser.

Last May Tom and Yina came to Fledge, a Seattle incubator, to learn more.
Thanks to Fledge founder Luni Libes for video of Tom. We will film Tom’s team at work in Kenya soon.
Now Tom wants to meet Payan, and we’re pumped.

check GreenChar’s site for their news and press.
Share Tom’s story by clicking buttons below.

Here’s the cool cement stove Payan made in Seattle to raise $$ to start
Kenya Stove. Then he made a wood chipper to get rid of pesky
methenge wood,which he planned to sell with the stoves.

Backstory: But that’s what he thought in Seattle!  Being in Kenya changed his plans; getting up and running was hard. It took months to get permits, test his fuel and get the burn rate right.
Payan is meticulous; here’s the story of his first months in Kenya.

Why was Payan “Bored in Seattle?”
Today, Payan’s team of six have a long waiting list for Kenya Stoves. Making 100 stoves/day, they’re up from 20 when we saw them last.

Tom, one of Kenya Stove’s artisans told me he’s never had a job
that invites him be so creative. The team is jazzed.
Coming soon: clips of Payan’s first appearance on national TV!

RWANDA
Robert Kazungu teaches electronics at a technical school in Rwanda, two miles from lovely Lake Kivu.

When Robert was 16, he jammed Rwanda government radio with his FM station. His new invention calls for help when boaters capsize in Lake Kivu.  As we left, Robert begged for business advice!

Read more about Kazungu’s inventions here!

For more stories of our Inventors check out our blog page here.

Click the green website button, type your email address & get all updates from Tom, Payan, Jodie, Bernard, Sam, Cyrus, Henri and more!

Copyright © 2015 Young World Inventors, All rights reserved.
Contact us at:
youngworldinventors@gmail.com
or
Young World Inventors
41 Columbus Avenue
Somerville, MA 02143

Jodie Wu, founder and CEO of Global Cycle Solutions, is creating a new sales “army” in Tanzania. Beyond just selling solar lights, Jodie’s network of seller/entrepreneurs like Upendo Roberts improve life for hundreds of other villagers, while improving their own lives.

Please spread the word and share the Solar Powered Rafiki story with your friends.

For six years Jodie has shared her success, stumbles and strategy with YWI’s cameras, and we are grateful to share her journey. GCS’s challenge now is to survive as a for-profit company with customers who earn less than $3/day.”

Last April and June Diane filmed with Jodie Wu, coming from Arusha, Tanzania to visit family in New York and Georgia, where she grew up. Jodie’s Auntie Susan said that Jodie was a “shark” even at age five.
Susan tells the story in “Flashbacks of a CEO.”

Do you have a tale of persistence to share? 
Why not subscribe and share inventors' stories?

As CEO of Global Cycle Solutions (GCS), Jodie is a Fellow at Echoing Green, where social entrepreneurs share solutions for keeping their businesses alive and growing. Here’s a glimpse of reality in “Startup Blues.”

Subscribe HERE for the next new video, from Jodie's June visit to Boston. It's about painful cuts in staff brought by Allen, Jodie's new 
sales/marketing wizard for GCS. Stay tuned!

To Read our Previous Newsletter follow this link: What Color Is Your Blood

Connect with YWI to see more on innovators from East Africa: Bernard, Sam, Cyrus, Henri and other startup entrepreneurs!

Contact us at:
youngworldinventors@gmail.com
or
Young World Inventors
41 Columbus Avenue
Somerville, MA 02143

Last fall, YWI spent a fantastic three months in East Africa.

Diane came away with new video of six young innovators in Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda, an upcoming feature story on NPR, and an exciting new partner.

See a sneak peak of our upcoming 10-episode webseries about CEO Jodie Wu! We’re editing four years of video about Jodie’s roller coaster ride with Global Cycle Solutions — to prove that her for-profit model will raise incomes and self-sufficiency for Tanzanians.

Please spread the word and share Jodie’s story with your friends.

NPR will feature Payan ole-MoiYoi’s Kenya Stove this spring!

In March, Payan launches his new sales campaign for stove design #6. NPR will be there to document Payan’s rollout of his new affordable stove. Payan returned to Nairobi after studying at Princeton and becoming an engineer. See why at YWI’s website!

Margaret Cosma, Payan’s single-minded sales director, does whatever it takes to make Kenya Stove’s launch succeed.

Media for Development International

YWI is happy to announce our new media partner in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Media for Development International, with a mission to make health and self-sufficiency.

MFDI will help YWI produce and distribute stories on village inventors. With a full production studio in Dar, John Riber’s Swahiliwood YT channel gets ~30,000 hits/day and is dubbing 20 quality international films from BBC Four’s “Storyville” into Swahili.

Tanzanian Simon Titus Malugu

Coming up next trip …

Diane met Simon Malugu, a physics and math whiz, at the UN Sharefair in Nairobi. He won a Land O’Lakes award with his chick incubator for eight bird breeds. Noela Byabachwezi and YWI’s  Bernard Kiwia coached 135 otherLand O’Lakes inventors in making labor saving devices — according to one villager, “opening their minds” (see video).

Connect with YWI to see more on innovators from East Africa: Bernard,Sam, Cyrus, Henri and other startup entrepreneurs!

In March, Payan launches his new sales campaign for stove design #6. NPR will be there to document Payan’s rollout of his new affordable stove. Payan returned to Nairobi after studying at Princeton and becoming an engineer. See why at YWI’s website!

Margaret Cosma, Payan’s single-minded sales director, does whatever it takes to make Kenya Stove’s launch succeed.

YWI is happy to announce our new media partner in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Media for Development International, with a mission to make health and self-sufficiency.

MFDI will help YWI produce and distribute stories on village inventors. With a full production studio in Dar, John Riber’s Swahiliwood YT channel gets ~30,000 hits/day and is dubbing 20 quality international films from BBC Four’s “Storyville” into Swahili.

a note from the air

At 36,000 feet, Africa under clouds seems unknowable.  Flying from Boston to Paris to Nairobi, moving between disparate worlds and staring at the sinking sun, I’m not yet sure what hurdles I will face in tracing stories of twenty-somethings working to change lives.  Soon I’ll be dealing with them, one by one, sometimes three by three, day to day.

DRAMA and CONTRASTS

a note from the ground

Someone in the US asked me last week, “What is the draw in Africa?”  First, Africa is VIVID, much like the original fabrics you’ll see in markets and street corners. Africa is puzzling, much like the American South, where political argument is avoided and where authentic kindness and a desire to help typify a region with the most domestic violence.  Being authentic and outspoken as a foreigner brings authentic responses in return, as people touch your arm upon first meeting to seal a connection and to signal they like you.

A woman named Regina, who sold me a Maasai drinking bowl and earrings, told me I looked 50, like her mother, and she grabbed her breast when I said 70.  She wanted to know about my food and my activity habits.  When I talk to people in Africa, I feel more genuine and compassionate.

The masks I saw today from YWI inventor Bernard capture some of the cultural heritage from ancient wisdom to frivolity, earth mother love and traditional hatreds, relentless tradition and disruptive creation.  I liked especially the calm, undramatic Angola statuettes (male and female) that signify good luck, the happy couple, moving in unison, and lacking in drama.

On the other hand, it’s easy to find drama, too. Hours before I landed in Nairobi, my travel guide and friend Maurice was nearly attacked by a group of ten who appeared from the shadows when he tried to start the wrong car (while searching for his friend’s car) in a parking garage. He says his key opened the door, but not the engine. (Anything will open a car door in Africa, he says.) As he searched for the right car (same model and color), the intervention of two policemen saved him from the vigilante justice crowd, which has become customary and steps in when official justice so often fails.

Maurice could have been bloodied and hospitalized, as I stood stranded at the airport, wondering where he was. Close call, he said.

If you’d like to support these stories through post-production (video and sound editing) and distribution please contribute to our Indiegogo campaign here.

Did you know that lung disease is the second highest cause of death in developing nations, after AIDS?  And that one of the primary causes is the common cookstove? These stoves, which are often just open fires in a kitchen, are “like burning 400 cigarettes an hour,” according to Dr Kirk Smith, a Professor of Global Environmental Health from the University of California at Berkeley. YWI inventor Payan ole-MoiYoi decided to do something about it. His original design for the Kenya Stove aims to save lives, trees, Kenyan shillings and fuel.

Our shooting team caught Payan in his new workshop last February and edited this awesome video with Payan as he and his new team completed a big order. What do you want to know? We’ll ask Payan in September when we shoot another session with him and learn more about what makes Payan tick.  What’s happened in the past six months? Why didn’t he find the challenge he needed in the U.S. after 14 years? What does he do for fun in Nairobi? What is it like to straddle cultures on two continents Despite coming back home to Kenya, Payan admits it’s like walking over hot coals some days. 

To see more videos and info on Payan, click YWI’s innovators page and/or our Medium.com blog post. Stay tuned for our next check in with Payan.