1. William Kamkwamba: Harnessing the Wind
William Kamkwamba was 14 when he built a windmill from scrap parts in order to provide enough electricity to power 4 lightbulbs and 2 radios in his home in his tiny village in Malawi.
2. Jason McElwain: Autistic Basketball Player
Autistic basketball player Jason McElwain spent most of his high school career cheering his team on from the bench as team manager — until the final 4 minutes of his final game as a senior. McElwain didn’t waste any of his opportunity to get in the game, pouring in 7 shots and finishing the game as high scorer.
3. Cat Lainé: Empowering Local Communities
Cat Lainé, who is the Deputy Director at the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, talked at the BIF-4 conference last year about how she and her colleagues empower communities in developing nations to change from within. Lainé believes in using human capital already within local economies to solve problems and develop solutions that work locally.
4. Blake Mycoski: Creating Sustainable Charity
Blake Mycoski didn’t just want to start a charity to put shoes on the feet of children who needed them — he wanted to do something more sustainable, something that didn’t rely on asking for donations. So Mycoski started TOMS Shoes, a for-profit company that gives one pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair they sell.
5. Geoffrey Canada: Closing the Achievement Gap
According to Geoffrey Canada the American school system is broken when it comes to teaching children in inner-city schools, and most people wouldn’t disagree with him. But Canada’s inspiring approach to fixing the problem is something that no one before him had tried — a complete overhaul of the social infrastructure. Canada created a “conveyor belt” in a Harlem neighborhood that touches the lives of children and their families from birth through college.
Geoffrey Canada at Gel 2006 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.
6. Ben Underwood: Seeing While Blind
Ben Underwood was blind, but while he was alive, he got around almost as well as people who can see, and even played video games with his friends. That’s because he had done something that’s very unusual: Ben Underwood taught himself how to echolocate. Underwood trained his ears to listen for the echoes that tongue-clicking sounds that he produced made as they bounced back off of objects. He then processed that information to figure out where physical objects lie around him.
7. Lewis Gordon Pugh: Utilizing Extremes
Lewis Gordon Pugh has swum in every ocean in the world, and was the first person to swim at the North Pole, where the waters are below zero degrees centigrade (which is the freezing point for fresh water). Pugh uses his extreme swimming feats to shed light on issues of worldwide importance such as global warming.