Solar energy project in Lebanon wins GDL Project Incubator funding

H.I.DE.

Kajal Khandewal (UCLA 2029, IDS) delivered a highly organized, articulate presentation of the H.I.D.E. project. Her two teammates on the project, Maria Zhang (UCLA 2029, public affairs and data science) and Jaden Thacker (UCLA 2028, history major, French minor) did not present, but Thacker attended the event.

“[The Haratine] are indigenous West Africans who have experienced centuries of slavery by Arab Berber populations as a result of… the Mauritanian caste system,” said Khandewal. “They have experienced and continue to experience a slew of human rights abuses, including slavery, discrimination and other unjust forms of labor.” H.I.D.E. seeks to create documentation that provides the human rights information and legal evidentiary proof needed to empower this population, she explained.

Among the human rights organizations with which Khandewal has established contact, and in some cases, working relationships, to advance Harratine rights are the global nonprofit, Sudanese Archive; the Minority Rights Group, Uganda; the Mauritanian Network of Human Rights, United States; SOS Esclaves, Mauritania; Anti-Slavery International, London (which supports work in West Africa); Institute for Strategic Litigation Africa, or ISLA, Francophone West Africa; the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa, or IHRDA, in The Gambia; and the Promise Institute for Human Rights (UCLA).

HIDE conducts real-time interviews with Haratine community members, which are stored in its digital archive in public and private versions. The first set of narratives is intended for the general public, with plans to make it broadly accessible through a publication; the second set, which is intended for human rights organizations for purposes of legal advocacy and litigation efforts, is accessible through a password-protected website. At present, interviews are conducted in the local language and then translated into English.

In the question-and-answer period with the judges, Andrew Apter urged Khandewal to have all testimonies translated into French as soon as possible, as Mauritania is a Francophone country. UCLA professor Kevan Harris, meanwhile, encouraged Khandewal to more specifically define the project’s socioeconomic and political goals beyond the creation of mere documentation, which she said was intended to enable strategic human rights interventions with H.I.D.E. partners and to combat the state neglect of the Haratine people.

 Food Link

Luca Angelini (UCLA 2028, business economics) and Lula Panos (UCLA 2028) then presented the Food Link project, which Angelini described as a bridge between UCLA students facing food insecurity and organizations on and off campus that provide free food resources. Panos noted, “I was really motivated to [join] this project because of a year-long seminar I took last year that focused on food and society, which really brought to my attention how widespread inequitable food access is for students across America.”

Citing a large study that surveyed a sample of 10,000 students nationwide, Panos said 41% of four-year college students were food insecure. In 2023, she continued, 66% of University of California students overall were food insecure; some 39% of all UCLA students were food insecure as of 2024 (a finding from a survey conducted by Cal State Fullerton with UCLA). Panos noted that a meta-analysis conducted by the Journal of Nutrition and Dietetics of food insecurity studies published in some 500 journals found that logistical friction, confusion and complexity were the main reasons why food-insecure students fail to access food resources.

Food Link project defines four core consequences of food insecurity: poor mental health caused by high levels of stress and anxiety, impaired academic performance, obesity and chronic illness. “That brings us to our solution,” said Angelini. “We’ve coded an all-in-one app that focuses on three interfaces: there’s a student login portion, a partnership organization login portion and an admin login page.” The Food Link team is currently working with three partners: the Hollywood Food Coalition (off-campus), UCLA Brew and Dine and the UCLA Community programs office. “All three of these partners are really excited and eager to work with us, especially because our app benefits them in a few ways,” added Panos.

In the question-and-answer session with the judges, Adam Moore suggested the application could eventually connect with urban gardens and Annie Goeke added with farmers’ markets to that list, goals Angelini considered excellent possibilities for future development. Kevan Harris pushed the project team to consider whether linking food-insecure students with resources would be solved by information alone, or whether something else was needed. Angelini said Food Link planned a communications and marketing strategy in fall 2026 to get out the word about the app, as well as club activities that would build student participation in resolving food insecurity on campus and place volunteers in partner organizations.

Illuminate UCLA

JD Gomez (UCLA 2029, IDS major, environmental engineering minor) and Feiru Ma (UCLA 2028, political science and economics) presented the Illuminate UCLA project in Beirut, Lebanon. “Both [team members] came to UCLA having worked in the Middle East on projects before and it’s definitely shaped their vision and how this project has become what it is,” said Kathleen Brezoczky in her introduction.

“Illuminate UCLA is a new student group that powers a Lebanese school solar project through art,” said Gomez. “JD and I,” added Ma, “truly believe in the transformative power that lies in the intersection of art, energy and education.” Ma noted that Lebanon is currently experiencing one of the worse economic collapses in history, with 69% of household energy now spent on energy due to continuous electricity outages. “Students can miss up to 274 days of school per year, [which] especially affects the most vulnerable groups, such as those as the Autism Awareness Association [the target of their project].”

“Illuminate is already a club at UCLA,” said Ma as she introduced the club’s four-step model. “Stage One involves collecting the individual stories; Stage Two, creating the art; Stage Three, hosting a fundraising gallery; and finally, Stage Four, [installing] solar energy at the school. We hope that this circular model will empower AAA.” To date, artist volunteers working with Illuminate have created art based on 20 student stories collected by AAA, together with photos of each student holding something dear to them. The club was due to have its first art auction to fundraise for the solar project on June 4, 2026. Additional online fundraisers are planned, as are six grant applications.

Gomez explained that the project’s ultimate goal is to install a four-kilowatt solar system with a 10 kilowatt/hour solar battery in order to generate 5800 kilowatts of energy per year. The three-year project aims to ensure that AAA, which runs a school for special-needs children 4 years and up, can meet its critical energy needs and can sustain the project itself. The technology is a joint design of faculty and students at the UCLA Sameuli School of Engineering, the UC Berkeley College of Data Science and the American University of Beirut. The project itself, continued Gomez, has already secured several backers — some of whom are ready to match any seed funding awarded by Project Incubator.

In the question-and-answer period with the judges, Kevan Harris asked why Illuminate UCLA chose to design a custom solar polar solution rather than simply have the school buy and install cheap solar panels. Ma responded that their goal was not to simply resolve the immediate energy crisis, but to use student stories and art to achieve a major impact on supporters and future supporters to build awareness of the difficult circumstances of neurodivergent children and their education in Lebanon.

Andrew Apter asked if there were plans to create an entire solar grid, with Gomez responding that their initial goal was to establish a working solar power source at the school as a foothold toward a possible build-out of an entire microgrid. Ma also noted that the team was in daily communication with the school to keep track of its other urgent needs, such as storage cabinets for students’ materials, and foresaw the club adding future projects once AAA had achieved energy (and system) sustainability at the end of the current project.

NAVI: A Labor Rights Navigation Platform

Liam Findley (UCLA 2028, global studies and political science), Lucas Francke (UCLA 2027, public affairs) and Yerin Kwon (Korea University 2027; ICLA IDS exchange student, 2025–26) presented the NAVI project, a smartphone applications designed to help low-wage immigrant workers in Koreatown become aware of their rights and locate organizations that can help them overcome violations of those rights. NAVI, noted Kwon, is the word for butterfly in Korean and a symbol of hope in Korean culture.

“LA has the highest level of wage theft in the country, with $1.4 billion stolen from workers each year. The average worker loses about 15% of their annual income, and 80–88% of low-wage workers experience workplace abuses like wage theft, intimidation and illegal retaliation,” said Kwon. Several nonprofit organizations specialize in helping these workers in Koreatown and Los Angeles, among them, the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance, or KIWA; Los Angeles Worker Center Network, or LAWCN; Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, or LAFLA; Bet Tzedek Legal Services and Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA. However, existing resources are fragmented, most available documentation is in English and workers with limited English proficiency find it difficult to determine which organizations can best help them.

“So what’s needed is not more resources, not something that would replace or compete with existing organizations, but rather, would effectively connect workers to already existing organizations by lowering the threshold for accessibility,” added Kwon. NAVI, a multilingual (English, Korean and Spanish) smart-phone application that uses scenario-based, personalized guidance for immigrant workers seeking redress does precisely that.

Findley walked the audience through the application, explaining that it was designed so that workers can input specific information, such as the type of work they are doing, how they are paid and their immigration status, in order to direct them to appropriate resources. He underlined that the application does not record any user information and users can skip any question. “We’ve shared our design with organizations such as the UCLA Labor Center, KIWA and CHRILA, and they all love the idea of connecting workers with their services through an online scenario-based tool like NAVI. We’ve even been invited to pilot test our design with workers from the community at the UCLA Labor Center.” Francke added that one of NAVI’s biggest strengths was that it was digitally based, meaning that it is available 24/7 and capable of supporting a growing number of users online.

In conversation with the judges, Annie Goeke asked if the tool would be promoted in Korean churches in Koreatown. Kwon said the project intended to market the tool not only at churches, but also in salons and other places where immigrant workers congregate. Kevan Harris noted that the project proposal on NAVI did not provide information about the government agencies responsible for enforcing workers’ rights in California. Findley noted that the California Department of Industry Labor Relations was responsible for adjudicating wage claims, but that the process was time-consuming (up to two years) and workers needed help in completing wage claim forms.

The California Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or Cal OSHA, and other government agencies are each responsible for a different set of worker protections, explained Findley. “A lot of worker centers… network directly with the employers so they don’t necessarily have to take the long and expensive route of going through the different [government] departments.”