PopTech Videos: PopCasts

2009 PopTech Fellow Nigel Waller launched Movirtu to provide virtual mobile phone services for people earning less than two dollars a day. As Movirtu expands across Africa and Asia, even the poorest individuals can send text messages and make mobile payments as well as find work and access healthcare.

2009 PopTech Fellows Taylor Stuckert and Mark Rembert co-founded Energize Clinton County after the departure of a major employer threatened the Wilmington, Ohio region. The grassroots movement transformed the crisis into an opportunity for the region to become the country’s first Green Enterprise Zone.

2009 PopTech Fellow Hayat Sindi co-founded Diagnostics For All to offer point-of-care diagnostic tools micro-fabricated in paper. These technologies allow healthcare workers to monitor the treatment of the 60% of people living beyond the reach of medical infrastructures. Sindi is also an advocate for science education and careers for women in the Middle East.

2009 PopTech Fellow Emily Pilloton founded Project H Design to mobilize innovative product design for social good. In its first year, the organization built a community of more than 300 designers and launched more than 20 projects in 6 countries. These initiatives include water transport solutions and designs for foster care therapy.

2009 PopTech Fellow James O’Brien assembled a staff of like-minded educators to create BCAM – Brooklyn Community Arts & Media High School. The fledgling educational-innovation tank combines performance-based academics and professional training in media and arts to prepare teenagers for success in the 21st century.

2009 PopTech Fellow Josh Nesbit co-founded Medic Mobile to bring the innovative use of mobile phones for healthcare to the developing world. A central clinic laptop runs FrontlineSMS software, enabling community health workers to use text messages to coordinate patient care, offer mobile diagnostics, and map health services.

2009 PopTech Fellow Derek Lomas is director of the Playpower Foundation, a global network of developers, designers, academics, NGOs and businesses. Playpower leverages the availability of ultra-low-cost computers to create and distribute affordable, effective, and fun learning games for under-privileged children worldwide.

2009 PopTech Fellow Deb Levine founded YTH – youth+tech+health (formerly ISIS) – in 2001 to advance youth health and wellness through technology. Using the web, mobile phones and other media, YTH gives people private and convenient access to information on critical health issues like HIV prevention and unplanned pregnancies.

As executive director of WildlifeDirect, 2009 PopTech Fellow Paula Kahumbu is building a global wildlife conservation community that connects conservationists and their supporters through blogs and direct funding. The goal: a movement powerful enough to reverse catastrophic species loss in Africa and around the world.

Ecovative Design founder, 2009 PopTech Fellow Eben Bayer, on this initiative that transforms low-value agricultural byproducts into strong biological composites that can be used as biodegradable alternatives to conventional plastics, foams, and packaging materials.

2009 PopTech Fellow Jason Aramburu launched re:char in 2005 to develop low-cost technologies that fight climate change while improving the quality of degraded soils. re:char’s systems convert agricultural waste into renewable fuel and into biochar, sequestering atmospheric carbon and improving soil quality.

2009 PopTech Fellows Aviva Presser Aiden and Hugo Van Vuuren co-founded Lebônê Solutions in 2007 to help meet the need for off-grid energy and lighting in the developing world. Fuel cells sold by local entrepreneurs generate electricity from soil microbes to power LED lights, cell phones, and other devices.

Champion of the Earth honoree and biomimicry pioneer Janine Benyus has transformed the way we think about innovation and design. Benyus challenges us to study nature’s best ideas, then imitate its designs and processes to solve some of our greatest human challenges.

What makes us happy? Societies flourish and people are most content when they are faced with fewer choices and more constraints argues psychologist Barry Schwartz. We are tortured by the idea of having it all – “Impossible!”, he says.

Environmental journalist Mark Lynas reports from his global tour of climate change hotspots – documenting the dramatic effects that even one degree of global warming may have around the world.