Inspired by Max Loessl, founder Agrilution @GEW 2013, part 1

As we have previously promised you, we would like to bring in front of you some of the projects presented during the conference Global Entrepreneurship Week held last week in Maastricht, The Netherlands. There were so many great ideas and so many innovative projects discussed and we do believe they are worth sharing and we hope they will inspire you or at least motivate you to start thinking out-of-the-box .
One of the projects that made a great impact on us concerns Vertical Farming. Perhaps, you are not very familiar with this concept but Max Loessl, a 24 year old student from Germany who is currently studying at the HAS University of Applied Science in the Netherlands has built a company called Agrilution which develops this concept to a whole new level.

Vertical Farming is basically a new way of producing nutritional food using a limited surface by stacking greenhouses on top of the other which are connected as a recycling system. There are several advantages such as year-round production independent of the climate, fertility of the land, temperature or even droughts, floods and other natural disasters which jeopardise today traditional farming. Moreover, it reduces the use of water up to 99% and also the use of nutrients and there is no need to use pesticides or herbicides.

Before we go further into the subject we would like to highlight the inspiration behind this start-up. When Max was asked by the audience WHY he invests his time in vertical farming he answered: "I saw a problem in limited food resources and I wanted to find a solution. I read a book called "Vertical farming" by Dr Dickson and I knew this could be a solution to develop and produce nutritional food. And so I just got started. " This is perhaps the best advice that someone could give: "Get started and you will find the answers along the way". 

Max Loessl had an awesome idea and he started to implement it with the help and support of fellow students and professors from the university HAS in The Netherlands. He founded Agrilution in order to create awareness around Vertical Farming, to support those who believe in this innovative project as a solution for producing sustainable and healthy food and ultimately to develop technology for Vertical Farming. Now Agrilution is developing their own incubator called "Agrilution One" which shall be available soon.

Max Loessl dreams to a world with fully implemented Vertical Farming and we believe in his dream and we know he will make it happen because he has the determination to make a change in the world.

We hope you enjoyed his story, feel free to check his website Agrilution and his page on Facebook for news and updates.

Many thanks once again to Ana from Maastricht Centre for Entrepreneurship for bringing together such amazing people at the conference. Have a great successful week and DREAM BIG!

Love,
Laura &Elena

Inspired by Emily Chu, artist for Kollidescopic Creations

We wanted to write about inspiring people and now we are more determined than ever to do so since we had the chance to meet incredible people along the way. We have many surprises for you this fall so stay tuned :)

Today we will introduce you an amazing young girl, that made a great impression on us, and her unique project and we hope you will enjoy her story as much as we did.

Her name is Emily Chu, she is not a famous painter... yet but she is definitely a "one of a kind" person and we are happy to share her story with you.

Will by Emily Chu

During an online meeting via Google Hangout, Emily shared with us some of these incredible experiences and she left us speechless.

She was born in Taiwan and at the age of six she moved to Seattle, USA together with all her family. She likes to travel a lot, to meet new people and to discover new cultures. While she was still in high school, she went to Japan and Thailand as a volunteer. 

Hope by Emily Chu

Afterwards she got involved in an entrepreneurship program and she travelled to Italy and Greece where she discovered a new lifestyle, so different from what she has experienced before. After finishing high school in Seattle, she went to college in Malibu, California where she graduated a bachelor in International Business.

Another childish game we play by Emily Chu

According to Emily, the years in college shaped her personality and the professors she had, really helped her find her passion and follow her own path. She had the honour to have Tom Shadyac, the movie director of the documentary I Am (we strongly recommend to watch the movie)  as a professor, who turned out to be a great mentor and an amazing life coach preaching self awareness.

She continued her self-development journey and she went to Argentina where she spent 4 months as an international exchange student. There she was faced again with a different culture, influenced by the local economic, social and political context.

Upon her return from Argentina, she got accepted for an internship within United Nations in Washington D.C where she was part of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Despite her excitement and her willingness to change the world she realised one more time that all these developing countries are facing too many problems which could not be tackled by an "intern".

The illusion of stillness by Emily Chu

Because of her ambition to do something valuable and worthwhile she got enrolled in two different law programs when she returned from Washington.  Firstly she participated in "Global Justice Program" and later on she joined "Micro Enterprise Program" where she had met incredible people that will inspire her later on to pursue her passion for art and to give birth to an amazing project called "Kollidescopic Creations".

Beau by Emily Chu

Basically this program was providing life coaching courses to homeless people from Skid Row, a small city in L.A. Additionally, they were giving business and entrepreneurship classes to those interested in pursuing a career in this field. Here, Emily recalls meeting people that have touched her as she says: " They were so ambitious to change the course of their lives, they set their priorities right, they knew exactly what they wanted to do with their future and above all they CARED about everything". And then she realized that she wants to care too, that she wants to make a change as well... and so she did.

Recently she came up with this great project Kollidescopic Creations. Emily has a great passion for painting and encouraged by people who believe in her and in her talent, she decided to use this gift to paint unique works of art inspired by the life story of 10 random people around the world. After only one week from the launch of the project, she has already found 10 participants who will share their life experiences for this creative cause. They have nothing in common with each other, they were born in different parts of the world, they speak different languages, and they were raised according to different cultures and religions. In other words, they are unique and so are their life stories. You may find the list of participants here

For more information about the project and the motivation behind this idea, we invite you to watch the emotional video prepared by Emily  here.

Samantha by Emily Chu

We believe in this project, we believe in Emily's talent, and we believe that her extraordinary passion and motivation may change the way people perceive art and that somehow the average life story of a person can inspire an amazing work of art.

If you wish to support Emily, please take a look at the link above and check on KickStarter how you can participate. Of course, don't forget to share it on your social networks.

You can find more updates about the project also on this platform: http://myinfinitybox.com/ which was launched a few days ago. This platform was created to support the entrepreneurs, artists and individuals to connect and learn from each other by sharing about the things they care about.

We hope you enjoyed her story, that you feel somehow inspired to follow your passion, to care about the people around you and about the things you do, and from time to time please DARE to be different.

Love,

Laura&Elena

PS: Images above have been provided by Emily.