Transcriber: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Mile Živković
(Portuguese) What's up, TEDx Rio+20?
(Cheers) (Applause)
We're going to start with a quick video. That was all the Portuguese I know.
(Video)
[Soccer is the world's most popular sport]
[1 out of 5 people live without electricity]
[30 minutes of play generates 3 hours of light]
Bill Clinton: It's an off-grid solution thay gives us a way
to bring power and improve quality of life,
working capacity, learning capacity.
(Video ends)
Jessica Mathews: OK.
(Cheers) (Applause)
(Portuguese) Hi, everyone. Right.
So -
(Portuguese) I am Jessica Matthews.
And I am the co-founder and CEO,
or the "presidente", as you would say here,
of Uncharted Play.
I am also the co-inventor of the ball you saw on that video,
called the Soccket.
And I'm really excited to be here, speaking to all of you today,
at the beginning of the TEDx Rio+20,
or rather, the beginning of the Rio+20 period,
because we're still so hopeful about what could be possible, you know,
of what could be possible if we can come together,
the public and private sector,
and harness the ideas that can, hopefully, lead to a more sustainable future.
And I can't promise at all what's going to happen,
but what I would hope for each of you to do
is to remember one simple, critical truth, as you go through this time:
sustainability can be fun.
Let me say this again: sustainability can be fun.
In Portuguese now: (Portuguese) sustainability can be fun.
(Portuguese) Yes? Yes? Good?
Alright.
(Cheers) (Applause)
In fact, dare I say, sustainability, it not just can be fun,
it should be fun,
because: one, when things are fun, people accept them more;
and two, when things are fun, people are more likely to do it in the future
and continue doing it.
Fortunately, fun isn't a hard thing to find, if you're really looking for it.
In my company, Uncharted Play, we essentially spend every single day
thinking about how we can harness fun through play
to address real world issues. Why play?
Again, that's a pretty easy one too:
play is universal.
Regardless of age, gender, creed, political leaning,
everyone plays.
The beauty of play is that it's not defined by any specific action,
but rather a feeling, a feeling of liberation, of enlightenment
an opportunity to engage with the world,
unshackled from the difficulties of the day, if only for a few hours.
Play can be found anywhere,
whether you're in South Africa, in the rural townships,
or in the Salgueiro favela, in Rio,
or even in war-torn Iraq,
where this boy here is still taking the time to do a pass-fake
while he's playing football
against the British soldier holding a semi-automatic.
And don't get me wrong:
it's not just football that represents play around the world.
For example, these kids here in India
are having a great time just spinning around a stick.
And this guy here in the US, because we're weird,
is obviously, you know, experiencing some sort of joy
playing chess with his dog.
So again, play is universal.
But my point isn't just that play is universal,
but rather that, because play is universal,
it's an amazing platform for change.
In my opinion, play is not just at the core of all growth;
it's the catalyst for it.
(Portuguese) The motivation, the cause;
an impetus that can be used to achieve real, tangible, sustainable solutions.
You might ask, "How can we use play as a platform for change
at Rio+20 and beyond?"
(Portuguese) Embrace and amplify.
Rather than focus on the problems, fighting negativity with negativity,
take a few steps back and embrace the culture of the people,
embrace the full story of the people experiencing these issues,
embrace the full existence of these people,
including how they engage with themselves, others and their environment.
And what you'll find 100% of the time
is, while these communities, these people, are experiencing serious issues,
they're doing a few things right, if not a lot of things right.
And more times than not, at least one of those things is play.
You know, it's funny:
once you then take these few steps back, and you see what's going on,
and you realize that there's good and bad and you're understanding the full story,
then, instead of wanting to focus on the negative,
you're going to be drawn to positive,
you'll focus on what makes sense, what these people are doing right,
and you're going to build from that, you're going to amplify that,
and you're going to use that to address the issue.
Let me provide some context here.
So, I'll start with our flagship product at Uncharted Play, the Soccket,
and the big issue that we felt needed to be addressed.
(Portuguese) Electricity,
or rather, access to electricity.
1.6 billion people on Earth either have poor or no access to electricity.
And this is not a social-economic issue alone;
this is an infrastructural issue.
Though I was born in New York, I'm 100% Nigerian,
and I can tell you first-hand, each time I go to Nigeria,
whether I'm at my father's huge home in Abuja,
or my grandfather's small cottage in the village,
there's never a day that goes by
when I don't have to worry about reliable access to power.
It' a real problem that we have to deal with.
To make matters worse,
what people tend to use as a solution
is kerosene lamps, diesel generators,
essentially anything that burns fossil fuels.
The problem, of course, is what this does for the environment
and what it does to yourself.
190 million tons of CO2 are released from fossil fuel burning lamps annually.
That's equivalent to what's released annually by 30 million cars.
For people living inside homes, small homes,
with these fossil fuel burning lamps, like kerosene lamps,
it's like living with a smoker,
or rather smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, for a year.
So, now we have this problem -
bringing it back to the embrace and amplify methodology -
we have this problem, and we realize that it's not just a problem in Nigeria,
it's not just a problem in Africa.
This is a worldwide problem, reliable access to power, in a safe way.
So, instead of focusing on that issue, though,
we take a few steps back, and you realize,
"What do all these communities have in common?"
They all love football.
In fact, they don't just love football; they'll do anything to play football.
They'll play whenever they can,
several times a week, if not every single day,
with whatever they can find.
If it's not a football, then it'll be bundled up garbage bags,
a plastic bottle, a condom, bottle caps,
anything they can find.
So, why can't we build on that?
Why can't we amplify this passion and harness this love
to address a real issue?
Our answer to that question was this: the Soccket.
It's a symbol of empowerment, showing people, specifically children,
that what you put into something can actually make a difference,
can actually affect the status quo,
it's an educational tool,
and that we're able to use it as an example and a learning tool,
as we attempt to engage with very difficult issues,
whether it's HIV prevention, poverty eradication
or even just general science, trying to teach kids that.
But I guess, most importantly,
it's an eco-friendly portable generator in the form of a football.
Can I see the ball? Yeah?
Let me see if I can explain this in Portuguese.
(Portuguese) It's a ball that generates electricity
when you play with it,
harnessing kinetic energy which is generated during the game.
Good?
(Cheers) (Applause)
So, you're probably wondering how it works, actually.
The mechanism?
(Portuguese) Sorry.
So, luckily for you, guys -
Oh, actually, I should say this:
neither me, nor my co-inventor Julia Silverman
had any background in engineering or the hard sciences.
We're social scientists. OK?
(Cheers) (Applause)
I studied social psychology and economics, for example.
And we were juniors and undergraduate in college, university,
when we first came up with this idea.
We went to engineers and said, "We have this idea."
And they said, "It's impossible."
We chose to not take their advice.
We went online and we taught ourselves what we need to know,
so that we could be able to create these prototypes.
So, I guess two points there: one, thank God for Google and Wikipedia -
(Laughter)
and two, for all of you out here thinking,
"I could never invent something like this, I could never do something like this,"
I was 19 or 20 years old when this idea came out.
I stand here as proof that there's nothing stopping you.
There's nothing stopping you. I don't want to hear any excuses.
So, please, hopefully -
(Cheers) (Applause)
So again, to go back a little bit about how it works,
this is the mechanism inside of the ball.
I don't know if you can hear it. Maybe a little bit.
So, inside of this, there's a simple gyroscope.
As the ball rolls,
the mechanism also rolls inside of the plastic case in here.
The more the ball rolls, the more electrical power is generated
and stored inside of the ball.
And then, when you're done playing,
you just plug in the appliance.
And to give you an idea, actually, I'm very excited to say -
you fast-forward four years from when I was 20 -
this version that you see here
is our newest version that will be available in the fall,
for mass production, so we're very excited.
In 2012, we're going get this out to everyone in the world.
This is what was in the old ball. This is what's in the new ball.
So, we've really come some way.
So, I'm sure you're also wondering, though,
"What can this thing do? How does it work?
Tell me, how does it not break, fall apart?"
Some really cool features: one, it's water-resistant.
It means that, if you're having some torrential rain pour,
like we just had a couple of days ago,
or if the kid just throws the ball into the ocean "for fun",
it's still OK, it's still going to work.
It's lightweight.
It's about 75 grams heavier than a normal soccer ball.
It's durable.
The ball doesn't need to be inflated.
It doesn't deflate even if it's punctured.
Again, it's about giving people a lasting technology,
something that they can keep in their homes for years.
(Applause)
Yeah!
OK, it's off.
As I said, up to a three-year lifespan, and the ball is 95% recyclable.
So, if it does break, if it does get old,
we can actually take the majority of the materials
used to create that first ball and create another ball,
continuing the cycle and trying to decrease our footprint
as much as we possibly can.
And finally, it's cost-effective.
Actually, it costs about less than one-fifth
of what the average Rwandan family will spend to maintain
one kerosene lamp over a year.
So, this is something that can realistically make a difference
in the lives of people across the globe.
So if you're wondering, "What can it power other than a lamp?", for example,
well, anything that normally takes four AA batteries or less
is what the Soccket can power.
So, imagine what's possible.
Kick a ball, turn on a light.
Thirty minutes of play with the Soccket can power an LED lamp
for over three hours.
Kick a ball, turn on a fan.
We have some fans that can go for over five hours
after just thirty minutes of play.
Kick a ball, play some music. You know, that would be fun on the beach.
This seems like a very Brazil thing to do.
But better yet, actually:
kick a ball, charge your cell phone.
A fully charged Soccket can charge an iPhone,
and after just a few hours of play, simple cell phones, like the Nokia phones,
that are basically ubiquitous now across Africa, Asia and the Americas,
can also be powered.
If you guys can see there, it's a pretty exciting thing.
(Cheers) (Applause)
Awesome.
And if you're wondering how it plays,
I'm not very good at football, I'm going to be honest,
even though I'm Nigerian. It's embarrassing.
But we do have some friends, some freestyle footballers,
that came to New York to play with their Socckets. Check it out.
(Video)
(Video ends)
Not bad, huh?
(Applause)
I think they were Brazilian, from what I remember.
You know, so it's been fun.
So far, we've been to so many countries,
bringing the Soccket passion as fast as we can;
countries like India, Mexico, South Africa.
And we have several thousand more balls scheduled for distribution, this year,
in places Haiti, Benin,
El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras.
We're even working here in Brazil with a great organization called Promundo.
So, we're doing work in the favelas, I believe, for gender inequality issues.
The Soccket can be used for anything.
And speaking of partners,
I have to say thank you to everyone we work with,
in the public and private sector.
We wouldn't have been able to come this far without them.
And I'm pretty excited to see that I think there are some future partners
out here in this audience right now,
and I want to kind of let it be known too
that, if you're interested in including Soccket in your sustainable action,
or just talking about how you can make your action more fun, more happy,
please feel free to find me or one of my colleagues after this talk.
I'm tall, so I'm easy to find.
I'm very friendly, I promise.
I laugh a lot. You'll be good to go.
But seriously, though,
I want to finish, again by saying we all know that change isn't easy,
and sustainable change is even harder.
We do have an uphill battle to deal with over the next two weeks here at Rio+20,
and even over the next several years,
after we really start to think about how we can come together
to create a brighter future,
but that doesn't mean that we can't be happy.
It doesn't mean we can't enjoy the journey.
Remember: sustainability can be fun.
(Portuguese) Thank you.
(Cheers) (Applause)