sOccket
A portable energy harvesting source in a soccer ball that captures impact energy when the ball is kicked and stores it to charge lights and batteries.
About You
Contact Information
Title
Ms.
First name
Jessica
Last name
Lin
Your job title
University Student
Name of your organization
sOccket
Organization type
Business
Annual budget/currency
n/a
Location
Project Street Address
289 Adams Mail Center
Project City
Cambridge
Project Province/State
MA
Project Postal/Zip Code
02138
Project Country
United States
Your idea
Choose your sport: (check all that apply)
Soccer/Football
If you chose "other" for Sport, please define in 1-2 words below
What approach does your initiative incorporate?
Product
Year the initiative began (yyyy)
2008
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If your project has a website, paste the web address here:
Plot your innovation within the discovery framework:
Barrier
Lack of parity in facilities, equipment and funding
Insight
Embed sports with other activities
This field has not been completed.
Name Your Project
sOccket
Describe Your Idea
A portable energy harvesting source in a soccer ball that captures impact energy when the ball is kicked and stores it to charge lights and batteries.
Innovation
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence?
A portable energy harvesting source in a soccer ball that captures impact energy when the ball is kicked and stores it to charge lights and batteries.
How many people does your innovation serve or plan to serve? Exactly who will benefit?
Young people in developing countries can be empowered to work and study with a soccer ball that generates energy for areas with poor or access to sources of electricity. This supplemental electricity can improve health and environment, as well as promote community building. Moreover, as four young women at university, we especially hope this innovation will inspire and allow girls and young women who have traditionally been excluded from sport and society to "power" their own lives!
Do you have any existing partnerships? If so, please list and describe.
This initiative began as a result of a Harvard University Engineering Sciences course, "The Idea Translation Lab." We have worked with the professor, teaching fellows, and other affiliated mentors. Our patent for this innovation is currently pending. We are also working with local South African organizations that use soccer as a way to promote youth development and health education.
In which sector do these partners work? (Check all that apply)
Citizen sector (non profits, NGOs) .
How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing?
For our pilot study for the summer of 2009, we are working with local established South African organizations that use soccer as a means for youth development and health education to coordinate play with the sOccket. By working directly with these groups, we hope to gain the necessary quantitative and qualitative feedback to have the sOccket be designed for suitable use in harsh conditions, as well as built with local materials found in Africa. Our 2009 summer will also allow us to build the necessary networks with other groups, schools, and teams to work with when we return to South Africa in the summer of 2010 to develop specialized partnering sOccket programs that supports girls' education, training, and play. We hope to utilize much of the energy and support surrounding the 2010 World Cup in South Africa to work with programs and sponsors to develop pricing, payment, and distribution schemes to make the balls affordable and sustainable for all.
Impact
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact
Promote a healthy, fun, team-building life with soccer, and empower people with no electricity to power their own portable electric generators.
What does impact/success look like? Please list any tangible measures of the impact of your innovation
Impact can come in quantitative measures: first, powering a significant number of batteries and other electrical sockets in schools, hospitals, and home, which allow more people (especially those who have traditionally been without power) access to off-grid electricity. Women can cook at night and read to their children. Second, we can also measure the increase in the number of children who choose to stay off the streets and away from drugs, and instead play and enjoy the sOccket, improving their health and lives. Lastly, there is the serious health issue of the countless respiratory diseases associated with unclean forms of energy (such as the burning of“traditional biomass”) for fuel and kerosene lamps, which millions of rural people rely on. We can thus measure the impact of sOccket's use of kinetic energy on health, which is clean and does not pollute the environment.
Is there a chance that your project could change policy (within an institution or government)?
The sOccket has the ability to generate power for the community to rally its residents together to take the initiative and promote team building. The sOccket can thus help bring awareness to the energy problem and push institutions to make the qualitative policy changes necessary. Five hundred million people in Sub-Saharan Africa - in rural areas, slums, and many other places- do not have access to any modern energy source after sundown, lying beyond the reach of power grid connections. This lack of electricity causes developing nations to fall behind in economic development and human welfare because activities like agriculture, industry, and business all require some basic level of electricity in order to be productive. Lack of power sources is endemic amongst the poor, and poverty is directly connected to high infant and maternal mortality, illiteracy, as well as lowered life expectancy and fertility rates. The sOccket will be able to shed light on these interlinked policy issues.
Aside from financial sustainability, how do you plan to grow the initiative or expand your intended impact?
We plan to reach out to developed nations to spread awareness of problems like energy, health, and gender inequality in developing countries. We will also explore local African materials with which to construct the ball, as well as ball designs which will be durable in harsh conditions of dust, rain, and heat. Additionally, we hope to print global health messages and statistics directly on the balls themselves to educate young people and girls, working with large groups to expand our efforts.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)?
We expect our initiative to be financed for the next six months via a grant from the Harvard University Engineering Sciences course, “Idea Translation Lab.” However, we are also seeking a number of external grants and competitions in order to achieve financial independence. We are confident that our current and developing partnerships with Harvard University and others will provide a strong net of connections and guidance to support our project in the long-term. Moreover, we plan to expand the sOccket to developed nations as a high-end tech toy, which will subsidize the price of the sOccket to developing nations.
Financing source
Annual budget
n/a
Annual revenue generated
n/a
Number of staff (full-time, part-time, volunteers)
n/a
What are the main barriers to financing your initiative, and how do you plan to address these barriers?
The main barrier to financing our initiative is that as students, we do not have the monetary stability and savings to finance ourselves. Therefore, we are currently dependent on organizations to provide us with money for our product development, pilot study, and international travel expenses. We plan to overcome these barriers by working with external investment and partnerships to produce the sOccket for developed countries to purchase as a high-tech toy.
What are the major challenges with regards to partnerships?
We anticipate that there might be some difficulties in maintaining lines of communication should we establish a working relationship with partners in desperately rural areas where women are often most maligned. Constant inter-partner dialogue is critical to the success of sOccket's endeavor, so our initial partnerships are with groups in areas blessed with relatively more access to means of communication and infrastructure (phones and internet).
The Story
What stage is your project?
Ongoing project .
What was the motivation or defining moment that led to create this innovation? Tell us the story.
Our team came together Fall 2008 in an engineering course about entrepreneurial innovation. None of the team members knew one another since the group was assigned together by our professor. Though we could not be more different - we are all from different ethnic and social backgrounds - all the team members quickly agreed that idea was going to make a difference. After many changes, we sat down and we outlined on a big whiteboard observations we had made during our travels to Africa and other developing regions. From there, we set out to address the problems and present tangible solutions. Jessica Lin created two lists: one of needs, and one of materials and goods she saw Africans already had in their daily lives, and any type of existing behavior that could be amplified. Was there a way to meld these two together? For further inspiration, she looked through her library of photographs from her three previous summers working in Africa. One of the objects that came to mind was the soccer ball—the simple fixture of a much beloved game in all the countries she visited. The more Jessica Lin thought about it, the more she wondered: could energy be harnessed within a soccer ball? Like a cycle, the stored kinetic energy—clean energy—would in turn generate electricity. With that came the sOccket!
Please tell us about the social innovator behind this initiative
Jessica Lin was happy to discover that her teammates were just as excited about the idea, and the whole group ultimately became a driving force behind the idea. While Jessica Lin came up with the core concept of the sOccket ball, one cannot play soccer without a team. With the full support and diverse talents of Jessica Matthews, Julia Silverman, and Hemali Thakkar, the sOccket idea truly took off. Throughout the of the semester, our group grew to be the close-knit team of friends we are today.
(Optional) To be eligible for an additional prize, please select age range
18 – 22
 | 221 weeks ago Jessica Lin said: Hi Renata, Thanks very much for the invite! We have just joined and look forward to interesting discussion with Women Win ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 222 weeks ago Renata Affonso said: Hi Jessica, I would like to invite you to join the Women Win group at http://sportforchange.changemakers.net/en-us/group/womenwin. ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 223 weeks ago Jessica Lin said: Hi Christiane, Beyond sOccket product development, we definitely need to and plan on working to develop programs that draw out and ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 223 weeks ago Jessica Lin said: Hi Ziba -- what an awesome network! We will definitely be in touch! about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 223 weeks ago Christiane Lara Rosenburg said: Hi Jessica! I found your idea very criative and I would like to ask you some questions: How does trhis idea inspire youg women to ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 223 weeks ago ziba cranmer said: Jessica, Definitely agree, this is very cool! If you are looking for organizations to test with, we can put you in touch with the ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 223 weeks ago Jessica Lin said: Hi Ms. Abzug, Thanks very much for your comment! You're right: as college students, we do have to prioritize certain objectives, ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 223 weeks ago Jessica Lin said: Hi Stephani! Thanks so much for your comment -- we really appreciate your helpful feedback! While we have not yet priced our ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 223 weeks ago Liz Abzug said: Hi Jessica: This is a great idea that encompasses three major issues of our times- energy,global health and gender inequality..it's a ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 223 weeks ago Stephani Kobayashi Stevenson said: Hey Jessica, I LOVE this idea! How amazing - I have so many questions for you but I'll start off with a few... You mention ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
