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Stories of Impact and Change
At the Blum Center for Developing Economies, we are driven by a shared mission: to innovate, inspire, and empower solutions that tackle global poverty. Explore our latest stories, ground-breaking research, and impactful programs that bridge the gap between theory and action.
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Development Engineering
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Ekta Raghuwanshi and Maria Denna, her MDevEng classmate, worked at A Better Education Club as part of an internship pilot program that DevEng and ABE Club look to expand in the coming years. The organization, based in Kenya's southwestern region of Kasigau, supports youth education and women’s empowerment by focusing on health, food security, hygiene, and farming practices.
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At the Blum Center, Ann Mei Chang, former Chief Innovation Officer at USAID and author of Lean Impact: How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good, shared strategies for maximizing social benefit. Drawing on examples like NexLeaf Analytics and Copia Global, Chang urged change-makers to set audacious goals, embrace iterative experimentation, and focus on solving problems, not clinging to solutions.
Big Ideas
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Since its founding in 2005 at UC Berkeley, Big Ideas has grown into one of the nation's largest and most diverse student innovation competitions. Supporting early-stage social entrepreneurship, the contest offers mentorship, training, and resources. In 2017, Big Ideas launched the Innovation Ambassador program to expand accessibility across all ten UC campuses.
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Siddharth Kara’s Tainted Garments: The Exploitation of Women and Girls in India’s Home-based Garment Sector provides the most thorough investigation to date into the conditions faced by women and girls working in India's home-based garment sector. The report reveals that 85% of these workers, who predominantly serve U.S. and EU supply chains, earn just $0.15 per hour and belong to historically oppressed communities. Kara aims to inspire coordinated efforts among governments, companies, and nonprofits to address this pervasive exploitation.
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On February 26, 2018, Maria Artunduaga had a breakthrough while discussing her wearable prototype for COPD patients with UCSF Professor Mehrdad Arjomandi. Hearing his frustration with costly, time-intensive testing methods for COPD, the third leading cause of U.S. deaths, she realized her innovation could revolutionize patient monitoring and care.
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UC Berkeley's Global Poverty & Practice minor and Development Engineering program exemplify Chancellor Christ's strategic goals by fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and addressing societal challenges. Projects like STEM workshops with the Pinoleville Pomo Nation and cervical cancer screening in Ghana showcase innovative solutions, mentorship, and experiential learning to advance equity and impactful global change.
Big Ideas
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UC Berkeley Bioengineering Professor Dan Fletcher is advancing neglected tropical disease (NTD) treatment with the LoaScope, a smartphone-based microscope. The device enables rapid, low-cost diagnosis in remote areas, crucial for treating River Blindness safely in Loa loa-endemic regions. Scaling and funding remain the main challenges to broader implementation and impact.
