Everybody riseFive crowdfunded innovations that are improving lives

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The crowdfunding revolutionIn less than a decade, crowdfunding has spread quickly across the globe, emerging as an extremely effective way for small and medium-sized ventures to raise capital for projects without engaging traditional financial institutions. Through social media and platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, entrepreneurs can digitally pass the hat among friends, family members and other interested parties.

The results have been tremendous. Kickstarter alone has seen 4.9m backers provide $815m USD in funding to 50,000 projects since 2009, says an InfoDev report, “Crowdfunding’s Potential for the Developing World”.

While crowdfunding is still mainly a developed-world phenomena, the report notes that it has the potential to stimulate economic growth in emerging economies. The following are five crowdfunded innovations that are making a significant impact.

GravityLightWorldwide 1.1bn people don’t have access to electricity. Throughout the developing world, kerosene lamps provide the primary means of illuminating homes. GravityLight provides a safe, clean and inexpensive alternative by creating light from gravity. The device comes with a large, durable bag that can be filled with rocks, earth or sand; the weight of the bag provides the energy to power the light. The initial Indiegogo campaign raised $399,590 USD from 6,219 backers in one month and achieved 727 percent of its funding goal.

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FlameStowerIn remote areas that are off the power grid, smartphones are often the primary or only way that individuals can go online. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, more people have access to a mobile phone than have access to electricity. FlameStower enables individuals to charge their phones with an open flame or camp stove. The foldable, compact device has a small cup that users fill with water and a blade that can be placed over a heat source. It can be used to charge any USB device. The Kickstarter campaign that launched the company raised $60,143 USD from 812 funders.

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Kite PatchHalf the world’s population—roughly 3.2bn people—are at risk for malaria, a life-threatening disease caused by parasites transmitted through mosquito bites. Mosquitoes detect humans through their exhaled breath, but research published in the journal Nature found that certain small molecules can block a mosquito’s CO2 sensory mechanisms. Kite Patch harnesses this insight, enabling individuals to be invisible to mosquitoes via a small patch. The creators of Kite Patch ran an Indiegogo campaign that raised $557,254 USD from 11,254 funders.

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SOCCKETThis energy-harnessing soccer ball was invented in 2008 by then-Harvard student Jessica O. Matthews. As children or adults play with the ball, an internal generator harnesses the ensuing kinetic energy and charges a lithium-ion battery that can power a LED light or USB-accessible device. Matthews’s company, Uncharted Play, now sells an updated version of her original invention, the SOCCKET II, as well as the PULSE, a battery-charging jump rope. The project began with a crowdfunding campaign in which 1,094 pledged $92,296 USD to fund the company’s development.

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The Kisumu Kenya Safe Water Project More than 1.8bn people use a drinking-water source that is contaminated, according to the World Health Organization. Unclean water is linked to the transmission of diseases that include cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid and polio. To address this problem, entrepreneur and electrical engineer Kenneth Puzey created an inexpensive device that boils water using solar energy. The device is comprised of a vacuum tube lined with copper and connected to a curved stainless steel base, which collects the sun’s energy (it works on cloudy days, too). Through Amazon Smile and other parties, the emerging project has thus far raised the funds to provide safe drinking water to 1,700 families for 15 years.

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