Service can start small, global social entrepreneurs say

PROVO — Whether it's with used vegetable oil, wind turbines, termite mounds or microloans, social entrepreneurs are working to make a difference one village, latrine or student at a time.

During the 12th annual Economic Self-Reliance Conference on Thursday and Friday at BYU, student Matthew Blank shared how a summer trip to Mozambique to improve sanitation taught him lifelong lessons about making a difference.

"As we got out there, it stopped being associated with school and (became) something we were excited about," Blank said of his BYU capstone course. "We realized that with a simple idea and clear objectives, we could go into a village halfway across the world and make a substantial change in their well-being."

While Blank helped make bricks from the clay-rich termite mounds to line latrines, Devin Athey, a student in the Global Projects in Engineering and Technology class, was brainstorming ways to attach windmills to the all-reed houses on the floating islands of Lake Titicaca on the borders of Peru and Bolivia.

The villagers use solar panels for electricity, but purchasing them requires five-year loans for families making around $30 a month. The team's goal was to develop a wind-to-light system for under $500.

"It's not as simple as saying, 'This worked up in our laboratory, so we're going to implement it and call it good,' " Athey said.

The locals would often follow the students' designs, he said, but adapt them to their own materials and situations.

Turning oils into fuel — whether from a coconut in Tonga or the deep fryers in the Cougareat food court — began as another Global Projects study and is now coordinated by mechanical engineering graduate student Lauren Eberly.

By combining the oils with a few chemicals, the students produced an environmentally friendly biodiesel for the Tongans and are now experimenting with fueling some BYU-owned vehicles.

All of those ideas come as the result of education, an enabling power that should be available for everyone, said Kushal Chakrabarti, a former Amazon.com engineer who led a team in improving the Amazon.com recommendations engine.

Chakrabarti, 26, co-founded Vittana, a nonprofit group that works with local microfinancers to coordinate microcredit loans for education in emerging countries.

"We can build all the student loan programs we want, but we have no money," he told the group of social entrepreneurs and college students who were attending the conference from across the country. "Ultimately the loans come from you. Outside of these loans, there's no way for these students to get funded."

Individuals can visit www.vittana.org, read about a student's goals and chosen field and donate money toward their loan. When that student graduates, their loan is repaid with reasonable interest to the microfinancer who pays Vittana, who then pays back the original lender.

Although only 1 1/2 years old, the program is already flourishing in Nicaragua, Peru, Paraguay and Mongolia, Chakrabarti said.

"The power of what we as individuals, we as a community can do is really amazing," he said. "I worked at Amazon and made them a lot of money. That was great. But I wanted to do something more. This is the biggest thing I'll ever work on."

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