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.

All Articles

All Articles

President Carter
News
We celebrate the life of Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States, and send condolences to his family and friends. As President, he advanced solutions to global conflicts, championed human rights, and promoted development. After the White House, he continued serving the world through the Carter Center’s impactful initiatives.
Blum Center
1 min
Development Engineering
News
Mingxi Tang, inspired by UC Berkeley's Master of Development Engineering (MDevEng) program, shifted her career path from finance to social impact. Now part of the 2025 cohort, she aims to use AI and machine learning to improve the lives of people with disabilities.
Alexa Vazquez
6 mins
Daven Northroup-Kuder (courtesy photo)
Climate Action Fellowship
Development Engineering
News
Kevin Kung, co-founder of Takachar, began his climate innovation journey at UC Berkeley’s Blum Center through the 2015 Big Ideas Contest. Now hosting California Climate Action Fellows, Takachar helps transform agricultural waste into bioproducts, emphasizing a human-centered approach that addresses environmental challenges and supports underserved communities.
Sam Goldman
7 mins
A group of 14 diverse students stands on a staircase, posing for a graduation photo. The students are smiling and wearing graduation stoles with "BERKELEY" and "CLASS OF 2024" written on them. The group includes individuals in various styles of formal attire, with some wearing leis. The background shows an outdoor setting with trees and a building with large windows.
Global Poverty & Practice
News
Last month, the Global Poverty and Practice minor’s Class of 2024 celebrated a hard-earned and well-deserved commencement with an intimate ceremony in Sutardja Dai Hall’s Banatao Auditorium.
Sam Goldman
4 mins
A classroom setting with students seated at wooden desks, facing the front of the room. Three students in white uniforms with black lanyards stand at the front near a green chalkboard, giving a presentation. The classroom has yellow walls with portraits and a calendar on display. Light streams in through an open door on the right, illuminating the room.
Digital Workforce Development
News
USAID Digital Workforce Development program, which launched in 2022, has strengthened the information and technology (ICT) skills of Cambodian faculty, developed career centers at their universities, overseen skills training for students, and provided scholarships in the digital and ICT fields, particularly for rural, female students.
Blum Center
4 mins
A group of 13 people including Soliver Ché Fusi.
Development Engineering
News
Soliver Ché Fusi is an environmental engineering PhD candidate at UC Berkeley. She hurries online to speak with me late in the Kenyan evening about her work at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. She’s telling me how the technology she’s working on hits on all these target issues — and it’s simple: sustainable agricultural fertilizer.
Adrian White
11 mins
ChenTalk: Berkeley and UCSF Professor Irene Chen speaks to students in class white pointing at presentation during DevEng 203 and DevEng 210.
Development Engineering
Digital Transformation of Development
News
Under a new NSF-funded research program housed at the Blum Center, the Digital Transformation of Development (DToD) Traineeship, students are using their research skills to apply digital tools, such as machine learning and AI, to the issues and challenges of poverty alleviation, disaster relief, and more — in pursuit of digital and technological justice, equity, and empowerment.
Alisha Dalvi & Sam Goldman
8 mins
Students and instructors of Fall 2023's DevEng C200 class all posing for a class photo
Development Engineering
News
“FireTools,” developed in DevEng C200, “Design, Evaluate, and Scale Development Technologies," brings a wide array of resources under one umbrella for local decision-makers to use to improve disaster preparedness, response, recovery, and resilience — with a particular emphasis on doubly vulnerable communities.
Sam Goldman
5 mins
Five members of the MDevEng community sport SHE 4 Change colorful clothing with bold patterns.
Alumni
Development Engineering
News
SHE uses sustainable fashion design to empower talented rural women to break free from generational cycles of poverty while promoting rich African heritages to the world. The project helps women with years of skilled seamstressing experience who find themselves disregarded or deemed incapable due to the rural environment and a male-dominated society.
Alisha Dalvi
7 mins
A large group of graduates poses for a photo on stage. They are all dressed in black graduation gowns and caps.
Development Engineering
News
Yordanos Degu Zewdu’s journey to becoming a changemaker began as a child in Addis Ababa, inspired by a moment of compassion from her mother. At UC Berkeley’s Development Engineering graduation, she urged classmates to embrace resilience and unpredictability, fueling hope for a more just, equitable world.
Sam Goldman
4 mins
A young boy is walking along a dirt path in a rural area, carrying a bundle of plants. He is dressed in a casual outfit, including a blue jacket, beige shorts, and barefoot. The path is uneven and dusty, with a wooden pole and some makeshift wiring overhead.
Development Engineering
News
DevEng Photo Contest Winners Highlight Both the Promise and Fragility of Technological Interventions
Sam Goldman
3 mins
Joyce Kisiagani, with the help of another person, holds up their prototype of blue water filtration device (an affordable chlorination device that allows under-resourced communities to disinfect water at the point of collection) while giving a presenattion.
Development Engineering
Faculty
News
Water, sanitation, and hygiene are crucial pillars of public health initiatives and in the fight against poverty. Issues like inadequate water access and poor sanitation disproportionately affect under-resourced communities, leading to waterborne diseases and socioeconomic impacts within vulnerable populations. Solutions are interdisciplinary, blending research findings and policy interventions in pursuit of infrastructure development, with communities’ contexts and needs at the core of WASH efforts.
Alisha Dalvi
4 mins
A lively networking event where people are engaged in conversations.
Big Ideas
News
Innovators@Cal — UC Berkeley’s annual flagship entrepreneurship event, which brought together aspiring student innovators, students curious about joining early-stage ventures, and an inspirational keynote speaker tackling the “world’s dumbest problem.” 
Sam Goldman
6 mins
A community outreach event focused on empowering girls and women in Africa. A woman in a pink shirt addresses girls in white uniforms, while another woman with a microphone engages them in discussion. The event promotes education and aims to end poverty for girls and women in Africa.
Development Engineering
Global Poverty & Practice
News
October 17 marked the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, a UN observance to uplift the voices of those in poverty. Aligned with this mission, UC Berkeley’s Blum Center offers programs like the Global Poverty & Practice minor, Master of Development Engineering, Big Ideas Contest, and Health Tech CoLab, giving students hands-on experience in addressing poverty's root causes globally.
Alisha Dalvi
5 mins
Pun Praphanphoj
Development Engineering
News
Passion has led Praphanphoj to join the Master of Development Engineering program at UC Berkeley, where he focuses on sustainable design innovations. In his third and final semester now, he says he has enjoyed learning global development history and issues.
Mengyuan Dong
6 mins
A group of eight individuals, wearing green and blue work jackets, proudly display sheets of recycled material. They are standing outside a recycling facility, with bags of sorted plastic bottles visible in the background. The diverse group, consisting of both men and women, smiles at the camera.
Big Ideas
News
Paige Balcom, the co-founder, co-CEO and CTO of Takataka Plastics, is changing Uganda — one plastic bottle at a time.
K.J. Bannan
2 mins
The Master of Development Engineering’s Class of 2024 gathered outside the Blum Center for Developing Economies. They are standing on and around a staircase, posing for a group photo. The participants are diverse, with a mix of ages and backgrounds, smiling and appearing enthusiastic.
Development Engineering
News
On Aug. 22, the third cohort of the Master of Development Engineering program convened at Blum Hall for their orientation and the start of the first of three semesters of an interdisciplinary curriculum that revolves around developing technology interventions in accordance with and for individuals living in low-resource settings. The Class of 2024 — 34 students in total — hails from 12 countries across four continents, but many arrived last week for breakfast and headshots already on friendly terms.
Sam Goldman
3 mins
Map of the world with Mexico, Ukraine and Philippines highlighted and their respective landscape changes shown next to them.
Big Ideas
Development Engineering
Digital Transformation of Development
News
Yet even before AI took center stage this past year, students and alumni of the Blum Center for Developing Economies were embracing the emerging technologies' potential, specifically for social good. From detecting “deepfake” videos to analyzing agriculture changes and building understanding across communities, Blum Center folks share their experiences, inspirations, and the impact of their AI-driven projects and ventures. 
Mengyuan Dong
9 mins
Ingrid Xhafa and Greg Berger in Rwanda posing near the white off-grid solar-power system
Development Engineering
News
Xhafa has worked in the development sector for a decade and graduated from the Master of Development Engineering program last December with a focus on energy and environment. The intersection of healthcare and energy was also the focus of another recent MDevEng graduate, Greg Berger. Together, Berger and Xhafa, both in the program’s Energy, Water, and the Environment track, examined the energy needs of healthcare clinics in one sub-Saharan country, Rwanda, as their MDevEng capstone project. 
Alisha Dalvi
6 mins
A collage depicting various 2022-23 year activities. Graduation Ceremony: A group of graduates in caps and gowns, smiling and celebrating their accomplishment. Award Presentation: Two individuals holding a framed certificate for "High Tide" as the Big Ideas Grand Prize winner of 2023, standing in front of a "Big Ideas" backdrop. Group Photo: A diverse group of students wearing sashes that read "BERKELEY Class of 2023," joyfully posing together. Book Cover: The cover of a book titled "Introduction to Development Engineering: A Framework with Applications from the Field," featuring a smiling young woman engaged in a task.
Big Ideas
Development Engineering
Faculty
Global Poverty & Practice
News
The past year also witnessed momentous firsts in our Development Engineering community and some impressive triumphs by students well on their ways to making tangible impacts on real-world problems.
Sam Goldman
6 mins
Ariel Ho, Midori Pierce, and Tiffany Luo next to the poster and prototype of their project Hebee.
Health Tech CoLab
News
Hebee is one of two Berkeley student teams that developed their innovations over the past year through the Health Tech CoLab, an ecosystem to support students developing medical devices, diagnostic tools, and digital health tools that increase access to healthcare. The CoLab’s Health Access Cohort also included Diaita, which offers personalized diet and exercise plans as well as cognitive behavior therapy to ward off Type 2 diabetes and its associated illnesses. 
Sam Goldman
5 mins

Host and Fellow Responsibilities

Host Organizations

  • Identify staff supervisor to manage I&E Climate Action Fellow
  • Submit fellowship description and tasks
  • Engage in the matching process
  • Mentor and advise students
  • Communicate with Berkeley program director and give feedback on the program.

Berkeley Program Director​

  • Communicate with host organizations, students, and other university departments to ensure smooth program operations

Student Fellows

  • Complete application and cohort activities
  • Communicate with staff and host organizations
  • Successfully complete assignments from host organization during summer practicum
  • Summarize and report summer experience activities post-fellowship