Brandeis Innovation

Brandeis Team A.W.E.S. Presents at Earth Night - An Annual Celebration of Community and Sustainability

You are a consumer. You use single-use straws, to-go bags, and maybe even plastic grocery bags. You try to do your part: you bike instead of drive, you use your Nalgene instead of buying a bottled water. But the thought that you are still not doing enough haunts you, and you wish you could do more to help protect the ecosystem and its resources. Just a few miles away, a busy researcher pores over their work, creating the next breakthrough in composting or methods of encouraging stable bee populations. This researcher, though she’s created something revolutionary, needs a way to connect with consumers like you. Not to mention meet investors, build connections into the right partners, and build the network that can take her discovery from prototype to viable business. Enter: Venture Café’s Earth Night.

For the past four years, Venture Café's Earth Night has been connecting startups, researchers and innovators in the Boston area. It serves as a bridge to allow conversation between the creator and the consumer, encouraging a symbiotic relationship of critiques and encouragement. With a common goal of a healthier community (and world), their Earth Night event has the potential to help Boston become a “green” model for the rest of the country.

The event began at 3:00 on April 19, just a few days before the official date of Earth Day. By 5:30, the venue was almost at its capacity, and you couldn’t help but bump into others. Everywhere you looked were people having intriguing discussions about their project or their ideas for sustainability. A few times during the night, the organizers to announced the arrival of pizza or to applaud everyone for using reusable mugs for drinks. Struggling to get people to take a pause in their in-depth conversations, they had to bang their gong a few times, which goes to show just how successful the night was going!

One such success was Brandeis’ very own African Women for Energy Solutions (AWES). Just a couple of months ago, AWES came in second place at SparkTank 2018, earning $9,000 towards their project. What is their project, you ask? Founded by three African students, Enet Mukurazita from Zimbabwe, Priscilla Rwandrugali from Uganda and Gbenga Oni from Nigeria, as well as the more recent addition of Weiwei Jiang from China, the start-up addresses the issue that nearly 625 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa face: no access to energy, whether or not it’s renewable. Because of this, it’s nearly impossible to do schoolwork after dark, unless students manage to do so under candlelight. AWES’ plan is to utilize a biodigester to transform organic material  into a biogas stream and waste stream.

The biogas stream is what will be used as renewable energy, while the waste stream can be sold as fertilizer, therefore creating a way for women to earn money for themselves. When speaking to the founders, each one stressed that community is a vital element of their startup. With this said, the biodigester will be used by a whole community so that everyone can use the energy it creates and work towards earning money for themselves, as well as paying back AWES for its investment.

Let’s say, for example, that you arrived at the Earth Night event without knowing anything about AWES and its noteworthy plans. Even without speaking to the founders, you could tell they were onto something big simply by the fact that they were speaking to interested attendees the entire night. Towards the end of the event, both Weiwei and Priscilla were tired but simultaneously energized that they were able to speak to so many people. It’s outcomes like this that are the reason why VentureCafé has continued this event each year, and why it’s already serving as a model of sustainability and greater inclusivity. Not only that, but it shows that our Boston community truly cares about our ecosystem and wants to take steps to take care of it. Brandeis Innovation is proud to be part of this vibrant ecosystem.