Find all the teams of this Challenge Humanitech 2010!

Leaf Supply - sustainable development:

4 students in  industrial design and business school  have designed a cardboard bed for emergency situations.
 The use of cardboard, beyond the reduction of costs and twaste, allows local prodution since the board is a used material universally available. 

Interview of Julien Sylvain, team « Leaf Supply », winner of Challenge Humanitech 2010.

How did you get the idea of Leaf Supply? Why did you decide to develop this project and to create your business?

In the beginning, there was Help Me Darwin, a student project from NOCC designers I work with,Juan Pablo and Jean-Christophe. They worked on modular carton paper furniture that enabled to transform a wall into a bed or a table. I met Juan Pablo and Jean-Christophe in an entrepreneurship course at ESCP Europe. We realised that the use of carton paper products in the humanitarian world actually made sense. In fact, carton paper can be produced everywhere, it is not expensive and it is recyclable and biodegradable.

How did you develop this project?

We began by trying to seize the needs of NGOs in terms of equipment and to understand their functioning. The objective was to develop a modular object, easily producible and 100% in carton paper. After several months, we achieved to develop a patentable product. We received financial support from the Centre Francilien d’Innovation to help us get the patent. Once the product protected, we solicited the expertise in conception and production of the carton paper industry leading firm, Smurfit Kappa. They were seduced by the project, and their design lab in Roubaix helped us considerably with the development from prototype to final product, functional and producible. In order to benefit from this expertise on the long term, we sealed a partnership with Smurfit Kappa.

What did you learn from Challenge Humanitech? How did it help you in your studies and your professional project?

A key richness of Challenge Humanitech is the diversity of the candidates. Winning the challenge has helped us a lot for three reasons: first it constitutes an important acknowledgement of our achievement, especially in this kind of projects, which can be laborious to develop; then, the 5 000 euro prize as well as the communication around Challenge Humanitech are non negligible assets; finally, thanks to Challenge Humanitech, we met experts of the Red Helmets foundation and other backgrounds.

What are the next steps of your project?

The next step is to test the concept, which means testing several hundreds of beds in real, on the ground. This will probably happen within the next months in Haiti.  

Les grains de sable - sustainable development:

5 students studying home automation propose to teach a school in Mali to pump water from wells to create a garden and light a school. 

Humanimap - web:

4 students of ENSCI-Les ateliers (industrial design) have imagined a plateform that, in case of disasters, would  unit  various streams (Twitter, Facebook, text...) around a real-time mapping, geolocalize these data, enabling to defer, submit and alert. 

L'O de l'R - sustainable development:

4 ingenieering students  of ESIEE Paris propose a project of air water extraction by humidity condensation.

4apak - sustainable development:

4 students of the Strasbourg School of Architecture have thought of using Tetrapak boxes as construction material. 

Good Solutions  - telecommunications & networks:

5 students from Delft University of Technology, Netherland (System, Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management) propose a web based serious game that specially enables fast communication between all sort of organizations that are involved in an emergency situation.

GeoMesh - telecommunications & networks:

4 students at  Télécom Bretagne (ingenieering) have devised a selfdependent and nominative blaze  provided to each field humanitarian in time of crisis. Each blaze includes a GPS tracking system and a medium range wireless transmission.

Action Humanitaire - sustainable development:

6 students from ENSIETA (ingeneering) want to electrify a well in Africa.  

Send'n'Save - web :

4 ingeneering students from ISEN Toulon  devised a plateform of information exchange to evaluate the progress of malaria. A simulation tool based on algorithms that allow scientists to measure this progress will be integrated in a visual tool. The aim is to give donations and support to associations.

SEEnergie - sustainable development:

5 students at EM Grenoble (business school) propose to fight energy poverty in low-income households in the Grenoble area thanks to social inclusion.