We're thrilled to be invited to write a post about Evaptainers work for the empowering people.Network blog supported by Siemens Stiftung! The Network has been a tremendous supporter of our innovation and we love working with them and seeing them when they come to Boston!
We have fantastic news! Evaptainers has been selected as one of the 25 nominees for the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge 2017. This is one of the world’s largest annual competitions for sustainable entrepreneurship. We’re in the running to win €500,000 to further develop our product in order to accelerate production and distribution of our latest electricity-free refrigerator. The organisation will also award a runner-up prize of €200,000.
August 15 we will hear whether Evaptainers is one of the 5 finalists competing in Amsterdam for the grand prize during the finale. So stay tuned! For more information visit http://www.greenchallenge.info/info/nominees/2017/evaptainers.
We could not be more pleased to have been named as one of the three overall winners at the 2017 USA ASME ISHOW Finals in Washington DC on June 22nd!
It was a very strong group of hardware innovators and to have been selected as a winner from such a cohort was quite the honor.
Happy to announce that we're a low-tech solution in high-tech company in this month's issue of RAC magazine! Check out the full issue here or see below for the screenshot!
We could not be more excited to have been featured in TechCrunch!! Check out the article Evaptainers decouples refrigeration from electricity to help rural farms and families!
We're so excited to have been interviewed by Lucia Maffei and featured on BostInno, one of the premier Boston start-up and innovation news sites! Check out the article here.
Milan, Italy
We were thrilled to accept an Overall award for an Innovative Idea and Technology on Agribusiness as part of the Special Conference – Inspire Power: Food Security for Developing Countries, within Seeds&Chips 2017.
Serena Hollmeyer Taylor, CSO of Evaptainers, accepting the Overall Award from Marco Gualtieri, Founder and Chairman of Seeds&Chips; and DIana Bataggia, Director of UNIDO ITPO Italy.
We were supported by Ahold Delhaize and UNIDO in our travel and had the opportunity to meet innovators, leaders, students, and supporters of food innovation from all over the world. We've discovered a new cohort of partners with whom we look forward to working on the endemic problem of post-harvest spoilage.
On Tuesday the conference welcomed the keynote speaker, Former President of the United States Barack Obama. His speech highlighted the links between food, health, climate, and joy. Speaking with Sam Kass, former White House Chef and Senior Policy Advisor for Nutrition, President Obama talked about his wife Michelle Obama's work on food policy and said that she had inspired him in her successes. When asked why he thought she was so successful he answered that he thought that it was because she approached the issue from a parent's perspective, not just a policymaker's. This made our team think long and hard about how to best enable parents to make the best nutritional choices for their children and we look forward to ensuring that our post-harvest spoilage solution can empower those choices. It was an honor to see President Obama speak and we look forward to hearing more from him about food, nutrition, and climate.
Needless to say, we also had an incredible time exploring Milano, the delightful tradition of the aperitivo, and the canals of Navigli.
Serena Hollmeyer Taylor, CSO, presenting at the Special Conference: Inspire Power: Food Security for the Developing Countries.
One of the things that makes what we do so rewarding is how many people connect with the our mission and the impact alternative refrigeration can have on the livelihoods of vulnerable populations. It is that shared connection that what makes our receiving the People's Choice Award at FoodBytes SF all the sweeter.
The more people who identify with our mission and our company the further we can take our technology.
Thank you,
The Evaptainers Team
The Evaptaners team could not be more proud to have won gold at this year's Food + City Prize. The cohort of 18 finalists was top notch and we made incredibly valuable connections that we will be able to take advantage of as we move forward with the next phase of our rollout. At the confrence, we also unveiled the new EV8 unit. This will be coming soon to the website so keep an eye out for updates.
Thank you to the whole Food City team for a truly wonderful event!
The whole Evaptainers team is honored to have been featured on Smithsonian.com in an article titled Could This Cooler Help Combat Global Hunger? It is recognition like this that keeps our team going as we work towards the production version of our device. We would like to thank the team at Smithsonian Magazine for their interest and support.
This week we were featured in the MIT Technology Review in an article by Catherine Caruso. She highlighted our tech and potential to create large-scale change and we are grateful for the opportunity to share our most recent developments! Click here to read the article.
We will be traveling to Berlin to participate in the conference and vetting process for the award and could not be more pleased. Before then we need your help, As part of the event there is a community voting component. Here is a link to our voting page, as always we would so appreciate your support. Stay tuned for updates as we ramp up to Berlin!
Evaptainers est très enchanté et remercie l'hebdomadaire Jeune Afrique de nous avoir donné l'honneur d'être startup de la semaine.
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Evaptainers is proud to announce that we have won a Stage 1 grant from the US Agency for International Development through their Development Innovation Ventures Lab (USAID-DIV). The Stage 1 seed-funding grants allow organizations, universities, and individuals to refine and improve their ideas.
USAID DIV grants are the gold standard in development funding and we could not be more proud to be a recipient of this prestigious grant. The grant will fund our upcoming large-scale partner field trial that we will conduct in Morocco in the 2016 growing season and give us a runway to commercial launch.
The entire Evaptainers team wants to thank USAID and the DIV program for this huge validation and support in bringing our innovative technology to market.
- The Evaptainers Team
Our team is proud to announce finishing 2nd place internationally for the Future Ago Challenge at Medellin Colombia! Below is a blog post from Yassine Maghnouj, our Director of Marketing, who represented our team in Colombia:
Although I spent less than a week in Medellin Colombia for the 2016 Global Entrepreneur Summit, it was an amazing experience for me. Arriving in Colombia, I had a quick night of rest before events started on Monday 12th. When the conference started the next morning, I quickly got settled and got the chance to meet the other challengers in Future Agro Challenge. I was very happy that Evaptainers interested a lot of startups, some of whom even offered to do pilot tests for us (Sudan, Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Russia, Chili, Colombia, Saudi Arabia). The FAC startups shared a lot of great ideas and began preparing together for the pitching event. We also had one-to-one mentoring sessions, where I got the chance to meet 4 mentors who gave me great feedback on our product and business plan.
Tuesday was the big day. The morning started with a networking and conference event where I heard speeches from people like Larry Alder from Google, who gave us a vision of what the future holds for technologies and entrepreneurship. In the afternoon, we all went through the pre-pitch preparation, learning about the new “Get in The Ring” competition format where startups face each other one-on-one to try to convince judges they were the best startup. After spending the afternoon rehearsing, it was finally show time. I first faced the team in Kyrgyzstan and eventually went to compete against CropX from Israel on stage. With the support of everybody, we prevailed and made it to the final battle of the Future Agro Challenge. For the Final battle, we were led into another room that was packed with conference attendees, bright lights, cameras, people cheering and a big ring in the middle for the pitch. I was definitely really stressed during the pitch, but ultimately we finished second place overall. I was happy that Nicolas (Vacuch) won the grand prize - they deserved it. We headed to a party after that where I got a lot of cheering and encouragement and collected many business cards and I had a good time with the FAC organizes and other startups from around the world. Some even proposed to help Evaptainers further and planned to invite us to coming events.
That experience was really a great challenge for me and I’m happy to have reached 2nd and improved my pitching skills. The rest of the time, I visited Medellin and discovered a very beautiful city with interesting experiences on how to raise the living standards by linking people with transportation and access to culture and entrepreneurship. I also went to Guatape, a beautiful village nearby with amazing view and traditional restaurants. Heading back to Morocco, I felt that I learned a lot and made a lot of wonderful friends and contacts.
The Evaptainers team is excited to announce that we have been named by National Geographic as a Great Energy Challenge grant winner!
The Challenge, seeks to “hasten the growth of promising, global energy solutions as a response to climate change, energy resource constraints and environmental limitations.” National Geographic provides support to Evaptainers and the other Energy Innovators as we work to provide sustainable solutions to some of the world’s greatest problems. For Evaptainers the grant will help us continue our ongoing field tests in rural Morocco and support the development of our next-generation prototype. One of the greatest parts of being awarded this grant is learning more about the other awardees work, check it out here.
We are thrilled to be supported by such a wide-reaching and impactful organization and look forward to working closely with the National Geographic team as we move into the next phase of development. Find out more about us and the Challenge here.
To download a press release about the award please click here.
We here at Evaptainers have been waiting for this moment for a long time - two years in fact. Last week we started receiving our first feedback from rural users in Morocco. Our Moroccan team visited one family who have been using an Evaptainer in their home for over a month to get their reactions.
The family lives in a rural area without electricity outside of Ifrane in northern Morocco. During our visit were happy to learn that they are proudly keeping the Evaptainer in their kitchen and are using it to extend the life of the tomatoes, cauliflower and herbs they buy at their local souk (open air market). They confirmed for us that produce lasts much longer when stored in the Evaptainer - for example, tomatoes that would have lasted 6 days previously, now last 10. Not only are they spending less money on food but one of the unexpected benefits has been that the family is also saving money by reducing the number of trips to the souk. Because of the less frequent trips Hamid has more time to tend his crops and take care of his livestock. Hamid estimated that the Evaptainer had saved his family, on average, 40-50 DHS (US$4-5) per week. This is significant when you think that their income is around $100 USD per week.
Seeing the hours spent prototyping, puzzling through problems, and conducting thermal tests to finally have a real-world effect on a rural household is an incredible feeling. We’re thrilled that our device has been able to help Hamid and his family reduce their food spoilage, allowing them to save more money, improve their productivity and quality of life. This is the first family of so many that we plan to positively impact with the Evaptainer.
Evaptainers is proud to have been featured by Earth911 on their fantastic clearing house for all things green. Every time people connect with our mission and the potential our technology can have it is a huge boost to our team as we continue to work to bring this product to market.
We have fantastic news! Evaptainers has been selected as one of the 25 nominees for the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge 2015. This is the biggest annual international competition in the field of sustainability innovation. The winner receives €500,000 to further develop their product or service in order to bring it more quickly to market. The organization will also award a runner-up prize of €200,000.
On 17 August we will hear whether Evaptainers is one of the 5 successful finalists competing in Amsterdam for the grand prize of €500,000 during the finale of the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge 2015. For more information visit check out the Postcode Lottery Website! Stay tuned for updates.
-The Evaptainer team
Needless to say we are very pleased to have been included by Daily Banter in their article titled 22 of the Most Fascinating Social Good Startups Changing the World. As we work to bring our technology to market it is great to see that our mission resonates with people.
Back to work!
-The Evaptainers Team
