One of the reasons I’m passionate about entrepreneurs is they — including you — help change the world.
Most of us change the world in small but critically important ways: We create good jobs, develop products or services people need, and the dollars we generate support our economy (a more critical task for small-businesspeople than ever, since the big guys on Wall Street certainly don’t seem to manage the task).
But some entrepreneurs change the world in a big way. One of them, Jane Chen, needs your help, and you don’t even need to leave your computer. With just one click, you can help Chen save premature babies throughout the world.
Chen and her colleagues are finalists in the American Express Members Project contest to fund socially important programs. Their project, Embrace, is an innovative low-cost, low-tech incubator they invented that can help save premature babies in developing countries. The top five finalists will share $2.5 million, with the winner receiving $1.5 million. That would be enough for Embrace to become a self-sustaining enterprise.
Embracing Innovation
Embrace was the result of an innovative entrepreneurship class at Stanford University — Design for Extreme Affordability. Business school and engineering students are given a task to devise an “extremely affordable” solution to a significant societal problem. Chen’s team was challenged to create an incubator that cost less than 1 percent of a traditional incubator, around $20,000.
“We did research in Nepal and India,” Chen said. They discovered that the most important issue in the survival of low-birth weight premature babies was maintaining body temperature.
“We realized that the majority of deaths were in places that had no access to electricity. They needed something extremely affordable, easy enough for a mother to operate with no training that could be used in a home or clinic setting, since most births in these areas are in (the) home.”
They came up with a device that looks like a very small sleeping bag, in which the mother inserts a pouch containing a type of wax that, when heated in boiling water for only 15 minutes, can maintain a constant 37 degree Celsius temperature for about four hours. A mother in even the most remote village could use it properly and safely. They named it “Embrace” because it also enables a mother to hold her infant close to her body, unlike incubators in Western hospitals.
Simple And Easy
Something so simple, so easy and so smart that solves an important problem. It costs less than $25 and can be used again. For more about Embrace, go to Embraceglobal.org.
I originally met Chen because she was the recipient of a scholarship at Stanford endowed by my good friends John and Barbara Packard. They invited me to a small gathering to see the work she and her teammates had come up with. Chen’s colleagues are equally impressive. Rahul Panicker, Embrace’s chief technical officer, has a doctorate in electrical engineering. Naganand Murty has a master’s degree in engineering and management.
With credentials like these from Stanford, these three could be going off to high-paying corporate jobs. Instead, they are going to India, where they’ll be living on a pittance, but making a real difference.
“This isn’t just about infant mortality,” Chen said, “but also alleviating the pain and grief of the parents when they lose a child.”
If you have an American Express card, I urge you to take a minute and go to Membersproject.com.
The deadline is Sept. 29 — so please hurry. Together, we can help change the world.
Rhonda Abrams is the author of “Six-Week Start-Up” and “What Business Should I Start?”
