Learn how Lucky Iron Fish, MiniHero, Social ImpaKt and Ecosia solve complex problems with simple solutions.

Lucky Iron Fish: Little Fish. Big Impact.

Why we love Lucky Iron Fish:

Their solution is simple:

One Lucky Iron Fish provides a family with a significant proportion of their daily recommended iron intake for up to 5 years. All you have to do is cook with it. It’s a simple, affordable, and effective solution anyone can use.

Great team:

The team is doing a great job in accomplishing their vision: “a world without iron deficiency”.

Gavin Armstrong, CEO of Lucky Iron Fish, is often invited to give talks and inteviews about their solution by major enterprises like TED & Ernst & Young and Lydia Summerlee, the Impact and Partnership Specialist at Lucky Iron Fish, is doing a great job at increasing the reach of their campaigns.

Short intro video about Lucky Iron Fish:

Learn more about Lucky Iron Fish

MiniHero: Supercharge your karma with minute acts of heroism.

Why we love MiniHero:

Simplifying they way people volunteer.

As Damir Kotorić‏, founder MiniHero, puts it: “Today, it takes a few taps to hire someone to pick up groceries for you, to book accommodation on the other side of the world, or to order a product with next day delivery, if not sooner.

Yet, there’s no killer app for people wanting to help one another and do good for their own community.”

With MiniHero, Damir aims to make volunteering faster, less daunting and less bureaucratic. He wants to make volunteering as easy as calling an Uber.

Open Source approach

At GlobalOwls, we of course love it when organizations call upon communities to help solve global issues. That’s exactly what Damir is doing. MiniHero is hosted on Github. The APGL-3.0 license means anyone can use the code freely as long as their work is also open source.

Learn more about MiniHero

Social ImpaKt: Affordable Water Filtration Technology for Rural Indonesia.

Why we love Social ImpaKt:

Simple solution, big impact

In short: Social ImpaKt uses a smart filter to make clean water out of not so clean water. This solution is much more affordable and eco-friendly than boiling water or buying water bottles and of course much healthier than drinking not so clean water without filtering it.

Experienced founder for making this solution a big success

Solving complex problems, require people with experience. About Jeroen van Overbeek, founder Social ImpaKt:

Back in 2010, Jeroen was Vice-President for Europe, Middle-East and Africa for an international corporation. Based in Dublin, he was managing 800 employees spread over 9 countries in charge of a 260 million US $ business, traveling always more. Suddenly, in 2011, he experienced a shift. He realized that he was helping companies make money, but he was not helping people. He was not aligned with his values anymore. He wanted to give new meaning to his life and focus on humanist values. He realized there was a better way to use his business skills.

Get involved

Jeroen would like to invite you to help Social ImpaKt help even more people. Their website and Social Media accounts need improvement and we can help by donating our knowledge.

Simply go to their project page and give advice.

Dozens of other professionals already donated their knowledge. Collectively, we can help Social ImpaKt provide water filter to thousands of people

Learn more about Social ImpaKt

Ecosia: Plant trees while you search the web.

Why we love Ecosia:

Simple and highly scalable solution

Simply use Ecosia instead of your usual search engine and with every (approximately) 45 searches, you help plant one tree. I’ve been using it for just a few days and already helped plant four trees.

I do find that Google’s search engine is doing a better job in fetching the best search results. But whenever I do an in depth search (sometimes just once a day), I just type in “Google” in Ecosia. So it only takes one more click to use your usual search engine. Throughout the rest of they day, you help plant trees. 80% of Ecosia’s revenue goes to planting trees.

Massive impact

When this article was written, September 17- 2017, they’ve already planted more than 13.5 million trees and they’re on an ambitious journey to plant one billion trees by 2020. I’m honored to say that I will be a part of their journey.

Learn more about Ecosia

In summary: What we can learn from these great organizations.

Simplicity is key. When a product can be integrated seamlessly into the lives of many people, you have yourself a winning product.

Keep looking for user feedback on how to improve simplicity. I remember the time that people didn’t use the Lucky Iron Fish they way it was supposed to be used. At first, Lucky Iron Fish wasn’t shaped like a fish. It was flat. People used it to keep their doors open, make their tables stable and other silly things. Because of Lucky Iron Fish’s pro-active approach, they learned how people were using the product and improved upon it.

At GlobalOwls, we’re happy that we’ve implemented user feedback into our product. It’s our core. On our project page, we receive tons of valuable user feedback to keep improving our product.

Main lesson:

Be pro-active. Look for user feedback and simplify your product or service.

Originally published at globalowls.com.