| December 17, 2003—Innovation is about creating new unusual uses from the already available resources. This quality is at the core of the Development Marketplace, differentiating this competition’s finalists from the rest. What inspires these inventive entrepreneurs? How do they come up with these original solutions to tackle long-standing challenges in their local communities? The answer seems to be an auspicious combination of personal interests, a vision and a social consciousness, as several finalists indicated at the Marketplace showcase last week. As a child I used to breed rodents. They were my pets," says Bart Weetjens, who has put his boyhood fascination to use by thinking up ways how to take advantage of African giant pouched rats and their sharp sense of smell for various development purposes. At the Marketplace competition, Weetjens, who once an adult studied engineering and became a product development designer focusing on landmine removal, proposed using rats to detect tuberculosis (TB) in humans. As unusual as it sounds, rats are a sound option. They are abundant, cheap, easy to train, and have a sharp sense of smell. The saliva of a TB infected person smells differently than the saliva of a healthy person, Weetjens explains. Trained rats can differentiate between the two. "In a period of time that takes a skilled technician to test some 20 samples using traditional lab methods, a rat can sniff out some 200 samples," he says. It takes half an hour a day for three to six months to train a rat, which has a life span of five years. For poor countries in Africa where medical resources are expensive and may not always be available, rats are an ingenious solution. This isn’t Weetjens’ first experience with rats. Some eight years ago, he started training them to sniff out landmines left in combat fields in Mozambique. "At first, everybody though I was crazy. But after four, five years of research, people slowly started to come around," he said. "Today, the landmine removal project is being financed by several European donors." Building on the rats’ success with landmine detection, there has been a lot of interest in Tanzania to apply rats for other uses, detecting tuberculosis among them. At the Development Marketplace the idea concept received two awards: It was among the 47 winners eligible for funding. It also got a people’s choice award, as one of visitors’ three favorite projects. Dress for Success Halfway around the world, another project that received both a people’s choice award as well as seed money. Dress for Success is the brain child of a Bolivian high-fashion devotee outraged by the high prices that well-made clothing sold for in the United States, her adopted home. Dora Talavera opted to have her clothes sewn by local seamstresses during her visits home to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. "These seamstresses are very skilled and adept at reproducing styles I would show them in magazines," Talavera says. "They can easily saw clothes based solely on measurements, without having to see the person for whom the clothes are intended." Talavera began to co-opt her friends and colleagues to start ordering tailor-made clothes from these Bolivian seamstresses. The seamstresses taught Talavera how to take measurements, and Talavera taught them how to use computers, the email and the internet. Eventually, they even started their own website. As their Marketplace idea, the seamstresses proposed to start a cooperative that would create a space and resources for women. Many of these skilled seamstresses lack access to sewing machines and materials, not to mention potential customers or markets. Since many are single mothers with several children, the cooperative will also provide a safe place where children can play while women work. "This is also a good, safe skill that women can pass on to their daughters," one of the seamstresses said at the Marketplace. Magic Bus In India, Magic Bus, grew out of a young professional’s aspiration to help Indian street children get back on their feet. "I had approached organizations working with at-risk children, but was repeatedly told I had no skills they could use, that I wasn’t qualified for anything," said Matthew Spacie. He decided to round up some kids on his own to play sports. Today, two years later, Spacie works fulltime for Magic Bus, an organization that employs 45 people and reaches out to some 3,500 kids. "Magic Bus," Spacie explains, "is a mentorship program that takes kids out of their environments into something else and relies on experiential learning to build livelihood skills.". The organization partners with 15 orphanages and shelters for street kids. They pick up the kids from each location, and take them on a different field trip each day. "Although the project is relatively young, it is been rather successful because these kids continue coming to us even when they stop going to their shelter," Spacie says. Magic Bus was also among the 47 winners. |
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