Johns Hopkins has named the 10 members of its Social Innovation Lab cohort focused on various entrepreneurial initiatives, from setting up a network for families of hospitalized children in Baltimore to helping orphaned children in Tanzania.
Each fall, Hopkins accepts a new members to its Social Innovation Lab program, which supports ventures with a social mission through funding, mentorship, office space and workshops. The lab received 84 applications this time around, up from 53 last year.
Former notable cohort members include Shantell Roberts, who won $25,000 earlier this year to help fund her "baby box" startup concept. Her venture focuses on distributing Portable Alternative Cribs, which encourage safe sleep for infants and help prevent sudden infant death syndrome.
Eight of this session's ventures will have a Baltimore impact, and two are focused on international social issues — in Tanzania and Trinidad and Tobago. Five of the ventures will be led by current and former Johns Hopkins University students.
This year's Social Innovation Lab members are:
Distribution Health: Focused on developing a local health care services distribution workforce.
Mera Kitchen Collective: A worker-owned food cooperative to be operated by newly resettled refugees and immigrants in Baltimore.
PIVOT: A workforce development training program aiming to educate, empower and equip women re-entering society after serving prison sentences.
The Growing Minds Initiative: Focused on creating sustainable poultry and green vegetable farms to fund education and health care for the Orphaned and Vulnerable Children program in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Neighbour, Neighbour: Aimed at helping people to make more informed personal security decisions in Trinidad and Tobago, a country with one of the highest homicide rates in the world.
BeeMore Cooperative: A community beekeeping cooperative which seeks to educate community members and create new urban beekeepers in Baltimore.
ClearMask: A first full-face transparent face mask that aims to reduce medical errors due to miscommunication, and increase patient satisfaction among the hard of hearing, children, older people, etc.
Active Bed Sore Prevention System: A medical device, in the form of a patient bed cover with embedded pressure sensors, that can monitor areas of high pressure and use a feedback mechanism to alleviate pressure at targeted locations via inflation, to reduce the occurrence of bed sores.
Hosts for Humanity: A system that helps connect families of sick children with local "hosts" who can provide a place for them to stay during hospital treatments.
HostHome: A donor-powered Airbnb-like system for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community members.