South & East Asia | SDG Impact Stories

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Problem

In Singapore, low-wage migrant workers make up 15% of the population. Some flee to escape conflicts or climate change, others flee from poor working conditions, economic instability, lack of access to quality education, and much more. However, moving to a new country as a migrant comes with numerous cultural, legal, and self-development barriers.

Solution

Meet SDI Academy, a social enterprise that empowers migrant workers to contribute to society by thriving in their workplace through high-level classes in communication, computer literacy, and entrepreneurship. Students are trained to efficiently operate specific softwares, build business plans from scratch, and pitch their ideas.

Impact

Founded in 2013, the academy has trained over 8.5k students in person, delivering over 250k hours of lessons, across Singapore, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Germany. They trained an additional 10k students online. SDI continues to work with partners such as the Ministry of Manpower of Singapore and Migrant Workers' Centre to scale this up quickly.

GARV Toilets

Problem

In India, there's approximately one toilet for every 15k individuals, with 450 million people lacking access to adequate sanitation. The few existing facilities are usually filthy, non-hygienic, and easily vandalised. As a result, many people practice open defecation on a regular basis.

Solution

GARV Toilets is developing affordable sanitation centres in low-income urban communities, which notably include portable toilets, water ATMs, laundry machines, and a kiosk for sanitation products. Each toilet is equipped with solar-powered LED lights, a sensor flush, and bio-digesters, which turn sanitation waste into organic fertiliser.

Impact

As of June 2022, GARV has installed over 2k toilets across India, Bhutan, Ghana, and Nigeria, in collaboration with the government. Over 60k litres of water are recycled and about 850Kg of CO2 emissions are saved daily. GARV notably earned the Unilever Young Entrepreneurs Award in 2018.

Impaakt

Interview

Problem

Efficiently monitoring and measuring businesses' overall impact on people and the planet is essential to accelerate change, but it’s complicated. Which metrics to use ? Should we rely on data from the companies themselves or do we make our own assessments? How do we avoid green washing and measure the real impact of a company ?

Solution

In 2018, Impaakt launched a peer-review platform to measure the true level of sustainability of major companies worldwide. Thanks to ratings and analyses made by the +20’000 certified community members, they’re building company scores with the goal to create the ultimate resource of objective, quality impact information for investors and consumers.

Impact

Since 2018, 40’000 people joined the Impaakt community. 400k ratings have been made covering the impact of over 1500 companies.

Saathi

Problem

In India, only 36% of women have access to sanitary pads. Girls are missing out on school, women are missing out on work. Existing sanitary products are expensive, difficult to access, and usually made of plastic or wood pulp, which causes skin irritation. The 12 billion pads produced annually in the country, generate over 100k tons of non-biodegradable waste.

Solution

Saathi has developed the first-ever 100% biodegradable and compostable sanitary pads, using bamboo and banana tree fibre waste. They've set up extractions stations in farms all around the country, allowing farmers to extract fibers from their own crop waste, sell it, and earn extra income.

Impact

Since 2015, Saathi sold more than 1 mio products, positively impacting over 200k women and over 18k farmers. From 2019 to 2022, the company has saved 25 Mt of plastic waste, 30 Mt of CO2 emissions and created over 2k jobs. Saathi received multiple awards, including a feature in Forbes’s Top 100 inventions in 2019.

Kyther Tek

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Problem

In Pakistan, 1/3 of the natural gas produced is either wasted or lost. Currently, the efficiency of hot water heaters (also called geysers) reaches an alarming 25-30% in the country. As of today, it costs around 1.75 USD a month for gas, which is arguably too cheap to encourage efficiency.

Solution

Kyther Tech is developing tech-enabled thermostats for home geysers, helping consumers save up on gas bills through reduced wastage and automation, while allowing Pakistan to preserve its natural gas resources. Their app makes it easy to schedule, monitor, and optimize gas consumption.

Impact

KytherTech products contribute to reducing domestic gas bills by up to 60%, and domestic gas wastage by up to 30%. Their goal is to deploy 100k units by 2028, saving customers 100 cubic meters of unnecessary gas consumption per month. KytherTech solutions are expected to help Pakistan reduce its gas imports by at least 2 Billion USD, every year.

Orbit Ed

Problem

Never-ending lectures and memory-based learning can make traditional education quite boring and unproductive.

Theoretical learning has its limits, as students can easily forget what they learn if it’s not coupled with practical learning. The thing is, school systems have observed little innovation over the past decades, and current educational tools remain limited.

Solution

Meet Orbid-Ed, a female-led Pakistani start-up redefining K-12 education and corporate training by using Augmented Reality to provide real-life immersive experiences. Orbit has developed an interactive tool transforming the learning experience for students and employees, making it more fun, practical, and easy to understand complex concepts.

Impact

Since 2018, Orbit has reached over 7.5k students across 12 schools and around 3k employees across 5 companies, in the US and Pakistan. On average, 78% of students showed more engagement, 86% have better grades and 98% have shown an increase in curiosity.

Mediq Smart Healthcare