By Abby Cohn

Before Fermin Reygadas brought his water disinfection system to 150 families in Baja California Sur, Mexico, chronic intestinal illnesses and malnutrition from contaminated wells and springs were a debilitating but predictable fact of life. Today, residents say, the simple and affordable system has improved health in their pueblos, particularly among children and the elderly.

“Families are stopping us on the road, asking to have water systems installed in their communities,” says Reygadas, a 28-year-old doctoral student in UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group.

The project is just one of 10 water and sanitation efforts supported by the Blum Center for Developing Economies, launched on campus in 2006 with a $15 million gift from San Francisco financier, philanthropist and UC Regent Richard C. Blum. The center is helping researchers like Reygadas turn innovative technologies and ideas into concrete solutions to the staggering problems of global poverty.

“I believe UC Berkeley can have a singular effect in the fight to alleviate human suffering,” says Blum, who has worked for decades on global poverty. He founded the American Himalayan Foundation and the Global Economy and Development Center at the Brookings Institution and has funded projects in Africa with the Carter Center and, closer to home, in his own city of San Francisco.

The new Berkeley center’s teaching, research and service ventures all point to the same goal—to understand and address issues facing the world’s three billion people living in extreme poverty. Its action-oriented agenda focuses on three major initiatives: safe water and sanitation, improved health care, and efficient energy.

Though barely two years old, the center has hit the ground running. Already, multidisciplinary teams of students and faculty from such diverse areas as the College of Engineering, the Energy and Resources Group, the School of Public Health and Haas School of Business have traveled to Mexico, India, Bangladesh, Uganda and elsewhere. They are working on such sustainable projects as low-cost water treatment devices, smart phones for health care workers and light-emitting diode (LED) lighting. A new effort will design fuel-efficient cooking stoves for refugee camps in Darfur.

“There are so many opportunities out there,” says George Scharffenberger, Blum Center executive director. “We’re just starting.”

Nowhere was the excitement about the Blum Center program more evident than in Dwinelle Hall last fall, when a standing room crowd of 600 students turned out for an introductory global poverty class. A new undergraduate minor in Global Poverty and Practice, also introduced last fall, drew 55 students, twice the projected figure. Some prospective students have expressed interest in coming to Cal specifically for the new global poverty emphasis, says Ananya Roy, associate dean for international and area studies and the Blum Center’s curriculum director. 

One priority of the center, Roy says, is to focus on undergraduate education in an effort to mobilize the “next generation of global citizens and the next generation of Americans who could engage with the world in different ways.”

The College of Engineering is one of the Blum Center’s most enthusiastic participants. Dean Shankar Sastry serves as the center’s faculty director, and the late Dean A. Richard Newton was an early proponent of engaging Berkeley students and faculty in adapting their technologies to help developing countries. Engineering faculty like Kara Nelson, an assistant professor of environmental engineering, are involved in the field projects. 

“We have access to incredible resources,” Nelson says. “It’s our responsibility to use these resources to try to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.” The goal is not simply to engineer clever new gadgets, she adds. Researchers also must understand the needs, cultures and economies of the communities being served. “We want to make sure we’re designing technologies that people actually want to use,” Nelson says.

Emily Kumpel, a 23-year-old civil and environmental engineering doctoral student, is part of a team from Berkeley and India studying a crowded Mumbai slum where fresh water is often fouled by sewage. The group is testing a prototype of an inexpensive water purifier built with 20-liter plastic jugs. On a recent visit, the students spotted immediate problems with their device.  

“The water there is so dirty it clogs up the filter really quickly,” Kumpel says. So, the students are back in the lab making modifications. Meanwhile, a Haas business student is exploring how the treatment system might eventually be sold and widely distributed.

“The Blum Center has catalyzed a lot of small individual efforts on campus,” Nelson says. “Now there is an enormous amount of cross-learning going on between projects.”  

Twenty-year-old junior Greg Rulifson jumped at the chance to combine his civil engineering studies with the new global poverty minor. As part of a service learning requirement, he will join architecture students from the University of San Francisco this summer to build a community center in Nicaragua. A Blum Center fellowship is enabling him to make the trip.

Computer sciences professor Eric Brewer believes the time has come for engineers to take a more active role in the developing world. Through one Blum Center initiative, Brewer is designing cell phone software to improve health care services in Uganda.  

“If you look at what’s going to make a difference,” Brewer says, “technology is one of the things that closes the gap.”

For more on the Blum Center, go to http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu.