Social Enterprise @ Lehigh University

Lisa Boyd, Lehigh University, '10, is founder of "Jamiiwater: Improving Access to Sustainable Water in Rural Tanzania." The mission of the non-profit organization is to improve and sustain clean water systems. She hopes to educate people on how community involvement can leave a positive impact on Africa.

From an interview with Lisa Boyd, published in Lehigh's newspaper Brown & White:

It all started from an International Relations class with Professor Bruce Moon, who teaches International Relations 322, on all aspects of poverty and development in Tanzania . In my class group, we focused on what we thought was the biggest problem and ways to solve it. Over the past two years, I have done extensive research on water access in rural central Tanzania, specifically focusing on the sustainability of water systems.

During my grant research at the end of my junior year semester abroad in Tanzania, I biked to 23 different rural villages around the central area, slept in the villages, ate what people fed me and really got a sense of the communities. Living there and meeting these people really inspired me to keep going. It wasn't until I was actually there that I knew I wanted to continue the project after graduation.

(Read more about Lisa's research here.)

Jamii means "community" in Kiswahili, which is the local language in Tanzania. I am in the process of starting a formal non-profit organization called JamiiWater, which will work to repair clean water systems and provide the intensive community with the development to make their systems sustainable in the long run. Community involvement, interest and commitment are the most important factors in sustainable development. In rural Tanzania, two years after a water system installation, which usually costs about $80,000, already a quarter of water points were no longer working due to lack of parts, money or organization.

In the fall of 2008, I proposed to the Lehigh Eureka! Social Venture Creation Competition a plan to do research on these issues following my semester abroad in Tanzania. I won grand prize in the competition and received $5,000 of funding for a month of research last summer, with help from Jason Kramer, '10. I also applied for the Davis Projects for Peace grant and earned $10,000. These grants total $15,000 and should enable me to repair four to five broken water systems, as well as hire a full-time staff member to work with me.

I was excited to learn that Lisa presented at the 2010 Unite for Sight, Global Health & Innovation conference, held at Yale University, which I previously blogged about here. Lisa presented during the 5 minute Social Enterprise Pitch session.

Lisa and her sister are competing in a contest to win an Olympus camera and $5,000 ... check out their video submission here, and then go here to vote for them. (You'll need to log into your free YouTube account to vote.)




More social enterprise at Lehigh ... I stumbled upon this news in a Lehigh Field Hockey press release, too:

After graduating from Lehigh in 2006, Long Island native Melissa Fricke, who double majored in International Relations and French, and played in 55+ games for Lehigh's field hockey team, spent four months in Gganda, a village outside Kampala, Uganda’s capital. She volunteered in a children’s home for 24 children, and taught at the local primary school.

“During my senior year I took a strong interest in development and poverty issues and the severity of it in Africa,” said Fricke. “It was an international relations course on Ethical Dilemmas in World Politics that brought it all to light for me. The class discussions on poverty issues had me captivated with the debates what could and should be done. That is how I ended up in Africa a few months after graduation. What I intended to be learning experience quickly evolved into what it is today.”

After returning to the USA, she founded BULA - Better Understanding of Life in Africa. Through community supports and various fundraising efforts nearly $45,000 was raised prior to Fricke’s return to Uganda in December 2007. Upon her return she met Andrea Procopio, who arrived in Uganda in September, taking on many of Melissa’s responsibilities, and would eventually become Vice-President of the organization. Several other key volunteers emerged, and Fricke also encountered Tom Harrison, an architect from London who managed the construction project. On January 14, 2008 ground was broken for the reconstruction of St. Kizito Primary School.

Among the features of the new school building were eight cheerful, brightly-painted classrooms, spanning Nursery School to grade Primary 7, two teacher offices and a staff room, a water tank, solar lighting, windows and doors, toilet facilities, quality roofing and flooring, desks and chalk boards. Architects utilized several innovative building tactics, including the use of a foundation pad, and the use of Interlocking Stabilized Soil Blocks, the bricks that were used to build the school walls, which also become one of eight examples used in a case study for the United Nations.

“The ISSBs are an innovative technology that creates each block through the use of a machine that compacts a mixture of soil, cement and water,” Fricke explained. “Making the bricks on site with this technology allowed us to put to use the soil excavated for the tank and the pit latrines. These bricks are not only aesthetically pleasing and structurally superior, but they have tremendous environmental appeal.”

Five months later, St. Kizito Primary School re-opened its doors to the children of Gganda. BULA’s work was far from complete however. Fricke and Procopio returned to Uganda in January 2009 to supervise additions to the school, which included a kitchen, water tanks, water filters, shutters and textbooks. In addition, late in 2008, BULA developed a youth art exchange, titled Connecting Classrooms through Creativity, where American students are creating artwork to be displayed in BULA Schools and artwork by African students has in turn been displayed in American schools.

Additionally, Fricke spearheaded BULA’s second project, the improvement of a poorly run children’s home in Gganda. More recently, a fellowship program was created, allowing a recent college graduate to live at the children’s home and teach at St. Kizito Primary School.

As for the future, Fricke and her organization will look to continue doing what they can to help the children in Africa. BULA has selected its next school project, and is focused on branches out to the villages that neighbor Gganda to try and enhance the educational experience of those children. “The vision is to continue to build schools for those that are struggling,” Fricke said.


Also stumbled upon this:

Colin Sloand '09 spoke at Lehigh University's Expanding Financial Access in Africa conference on April 19, 2010. The first president of Lehigh's microfinance club, he launched his career in South Africa working for Mecene Investments studying the burgeoning African microfinance sector.



When Colin was at Lehigh, the Microfinance Club started a Lehigh Microcredit Fund, giving the university community the opportunity to make charitable donations to help the people of western Kenya. Donors received periodic updates on what their loans were being used for, repayment rates, and financial snapshots of the recipients and their communities.

The fund was developed through a partnership with Reach the Children, Inc., a non-profit organization operating in over a dozen countries throughout Africa. The group is seeking to alleviate poverty across the continent by focusing on such things as AIDS prevention, education, microenterprise, orphan care, and water and agriculture.


Another partnership at Lehigh ... saw this in a Lehigh alumni e-newsletter:

Lehigh and Caring for Cambodia, a nonprofit headquartered in Siem Reap, Cambodia (the gateway to Angkor Wat) have announced a 3 year partnership.

Caring for Cambodia gives Siem Reap children an opportunity to learn in seven safe, well-equipped schools. Using UNICEF’s “Child Friendly” school concept, children not only earn a quality education, but life skills as well. They serve 66,500 Food for Thought lunches monthly, have handed out 15,000 toothbrushes to encourage personal hygiene, and have purchased more than 1,250 bicycles to help their students get to school.

The partnership with Lehigh will give the students of Lehigh's College of Education's Comparative and International Education program the opportunity to conduct ongoing field work in Siem Reap, where they will work with the NGO on teacher training, curriculum development, and community outreach initiatives.

And though the new three-year program is tied to the College of Education, there likely will be cross-disciplinary opportunities for Iveta Silova, the Frank Hook Assistant Professor, and her team to partner with other programs across Lehigh to assist with local economic assessments, job market surveys, micro-finance opportunities, and other initiatives.

Lehigh will hire a professor of practice to manage the relationship. The College of Education has already hired a new graduate assistant, Harry Morra, to help with the transition.