The SmartWoman Project hopes that text messages can be a medium for knowledge, health, and financial empowerment.
When women connect, the world changes.
Two recent examples, Rachel Sklar’s for-profit startup TheLi.st and Sheryl Sandberg’s nonprofit network of Lean In circles, both aim to connect and empower women to achieve their goals and aspire to leadership. But these circles are largely limited to those who are already comparatively wealthy and powerful.
The SmartWoman Project is different. It is a mobile social network to be announced at a conference at the UN on June 21 on mobile for social change, and will debut in the iTunes store in September. Versions for college-aged women and girls are coming soon.
The idea is for relatively affluent women to download the SmartWoman app and pay a monthly fee of $5. This gets them access to each other through networking and forums, as well as custom content from celebrities (like Shakira) and other "global ambassadors" on topics like health, lifestyle, and relationships.
The $5 fee is used to pay for mobile access for women in the developing world, initially in Kenya, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Mexico. They will get "learning" messages daily on matters like health and entrepreneurship. SMS has been the format for previous successful education campaigns, enough so for mlearning and mhealth to become shorthand for an entire development approach. The SmartWoman Project is powered by Change-Corp, a for-profit company dedicated to producing educational content for "mobile-only" users in the developing world.
It’s yet to be seen whether using the app will feel more like chatting at a global kaffeeklastch or guiltily sticking cash in a panhandler’s palm. There seems to be a clear divide between how women will interact with the app depending on whether they’re on the paying or receiving end.
Paying users can view profiles of developing-country women, participate in action and advocacy campaigns, donate $100 to buy them mobile phones, or buy their goods on a mobile fair-trade marketplace. The women in the Southern Hemisphere, however, will largely be on the receiving end of text messages in their native languages. And the whole project has an unavoidable commercial aspect. The SmartWoman Project website notes a 22% gap between men and women globally in ownership of mobile phones, and translates that to "$13 billion in lost revenue for telecom operators and consumer brands."
Still, the SmartWoman Project seeks to connect women across barriers of race, class, and nationality. It deserves notice for expanding the idea of what "networking" and sisterhood really mean.
Scaling up solar energy collection means addressing a critical problem. While additions like anti-reflective coatings can boost efficiency on solar panels, the more solar energy a collector gathers, the hotter it gets--and if temperatures rise too high the heat could damage the device.
A group at IBM Research - Zurich is addressing this problem and announced on Earth Day 2013 that they are developing a High Concentration PhotoVoltaic Thermal (HCPVT) system. IBM says the collector will be able to generate significantly more electrical power from the sun’s rays than comparable systems while staying cool enough to function.
According to IBM, the proposed HCPVT system’s dish contains hundreds of photovoltaic chips, and the rate at which it can generate electrical power is about 25kW. With the help of a microchannel water cooling system, the system is capable of concentrating the power of 2,000 suns, on average, and converting 80 percent of the radiation collected.
In a video, a research scientist at Zurich explains the solar radiation concentration methods that will be used in the proposed system.
The design offers other efficiency boosts: the hot water produced in the microchannels can be used for air conditioning or filtered for drinking. More electrical power and a useful hot water byproduct aren’t the only boons; as with many systems designed to increase efficiency, it promises to be more cost effective as well. Although IBM’s press release on the proposed system doesn’t mention any market plans, it does claim that the design is suitable for mass production. If they do go beyond prototype stages, IBM states these systems could be built at a cost three times lower than comparable systems, and may help deliver electricity, fresh water, and cool air to remote locations.
SkinVision is a unique mobile app that uses your smartphone’s camera to detect skin cancer and keep track of the health of your skin. The app takes into account skin type and your local UV index, and it allows users to send pictures of blemishes and moles in for instant analysis. The app was recently named a finalist in the prestigious 2013 INDEX Awards.
Are you an eco-conscious architect, designer or lighting professional looking to stay up to date on the latest innovations coming off the energy-efficient lighting front? We’ve teamed up with Elemental LED to provide designers with the ultimate resource for all things LED by creating the Elemental LED Design Center, a one-stop destination for green lighting carefully curated by leading industry professionals. Here you can learn about everything from how to choose an LED vendor to retrofitting or creating new constructions with energy efficient LED lights and systems. You’ll even find plenty of inventive ideas that showcase new and unexpected ways to use LEDs to interior spaces. Check out the Elemental LED Design Center today and start creating your own new and beautiful LED lighting designs!
Today is the age of pollution and global warming. Thus, utmost care should be taken in each and every industrial field as well human life. Fashion is a very important part of civilized human life. It includes the dresses, accessories, ornaments and shoes worn by men and women of all ages, across the world. The fabrics and materials of fashion designing must be used from natural resources like cotton plants, bamboo fibers, cellulose, plant fiber, jute, Rammy, Soy, Pineapple, etc. Animals should not be killed rapidly in order to get leather dress materials from their skin. Instead, the jackets and other attires should be made of resin material. The dress and shoe materials must be biodegradable in order to prevent environmental and ecological pollution. There are four top eco-friendly fashion designers in the world who are as follows.
Regarding Stella McCartney
Stella McCartney is one of the most famous eco-friendly fashion designers of the world. She works in a renowned fashion company which is well-known for gorgeous fashion clothing as well as utmost eco-friendly fashion designing. In the year 2013 they are offering the summer and the spring shoe collections which have fully biodegradable soles. The lingerie dresses produced by them are all made of organic cotton and different types of recycled materials.
Carrie Parry
She is one of the most well-known New York based fashion designers. Her fashion designing company has received an award in 2011 for her excellent works in eco-friendly fashion designing. The company applies all the eco-friendly methods and advanced technologies for fashion designing. They use only the recycled materials for the fabrics and never use animal leather or fur for the dresses, shoes and accessories.
Loomstate
It is one of the biggest eco-friendly fashion designing firms of the world. The firm uses sustainable materials like tencel fabrics and other materials. The dress manufacturing techniques of the firm is such that it prevents wastage to a very large extent. The environmentalists are highly satisfied with the contribution of this fashion designing company towards global eco-friendliness and pollution control.
100% NY
The New York City of the USA is one of the biggest centers of world fashion designing. 100% NY (New York) is a very renowned fashion designing firm in the city. It is famous for the best eco-friendly fashion designing and fabrics. The company always makes the use of the natural dyes and never wastes the products. The dresses made of recycled fabrics are very comfortable in wearing and easy to wash. These are also highly durable and cost-effective.
News: Scandinavian firm C. F. Møller has revealed proposals that could see the world's tallest timber-framed building constructed in Stockholm. (more...)
Finnish artist Kaarina Kaikkonen makes a ship out of clothing worn by workers in a Max Mara textile factory.
Kaarina Kaikkonen says her most recent installation, Are We Still Going On?, is “about all of us as human beings.” Which is an ambitious place to begin. More specifically: “We are all in the same boat, and the boat is our environment. So if we do not take care of it, we cannot go on. Or can we go on consuming? What about our economical situation--can we go on like this?”
Kaikkonen’s installations evoke, among other themes, environmental concern. Her very materials--recycled fabrics and materials, and in this case, second-hand shirts that “do not destroy nature”--express this. For her newest piece at Collezione Maramotti, in Reggio Emilia, Italy, she has sculpted a large metaphorical boat out of hanging fabrics. That the installation lives inside the old Max Mara fashion company’s factory adds irony to the site-specific work--most of the clothes used to construct the boat belonged to workers at the textile factory. The hanging shirts are suspended in air, like a massive choir of ghosts. They are relics of a bygone landmark that contributed to the area’s economy.
Unlike some of Kaikkonen’s other well-known works, Are We Still Going On? is immersive and interactive. For the Helsinki-based artist’s Way installation, she covered the steps to the Helsinki Cathedral in a gradient of used men’s jackets. Viewers could stand alongside the work or move back for a panoramic view. But Are We Still Going On? lets spectators shuffle around between the fabrics, which mimics the way they might if they were on the deck of a swaying ship.
The decline in bee populations has been all the buzz lately, which led Whole Foods Market to team up with the Xerces Society to show us what a world—or at least, produce section—without bees would look like. The University Heights, Rhode Island store removed all foods that are reliant upon the important pollinators, and it leaves a pretty slim selection; 52% of the produce department’s offerings would be pulled from shelves without bees around to help.
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-06-27 12:44:41 UTC
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S.Cafe worked on an idea that no one has ever come up with before, that is, to use the coffee grounds odor control ability in a fabric. They started ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-06-11 19:36:20 UTC
I thought there are only cones and rods in the eye to make us see but we also have something called a “third” class of ocular photoreceptors, photosensitive ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-06-10 09:01:09 UTC
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Reestore tries to avoid traditional eco materials in favour of contemporary finishes, fabrics and above all style. Managing Director Max McMurdo is ...
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