Why we do what we do | Some of our success stories | A message from our founder
Talent is everywhere...unfortunately resources are not
Every year, the world's top research universities graduate hundreds of scientists who grew up in the developing world. Many of them would like nothing better than to return to their homelands — to serve as mentors and help build their country's scientific capacity, to research diseases like dengue fever and malaria that are endemic in the developing world but relatively unknown in places like the US and Europe, or just to be with their families and loved ones.
But, all too often, the financial realities of conducting research in the global South force scientists and clinicians to face a daunting choice: return home and work in relative obscurity, with impossibly meager equipment and budg- ets, or stay in the developed world and contribute to the ongoing global brain drain from poorer nations to wealth- ier ones.
We have a solution
Seeding Labs was founded to give these talented researchers a third way. Our goal, since the beginning, has been to help our fellow scientists follow their dreams without sacrificing their careers.
What we do is simple. We collect the surplus and used lab equipment universities, hospitals and private research companies in the United States would otherwise store on a top shelf or send to the trash. We use this surplus to help equip scientific and clinical labs in the developing world for a fraction of what the equipment would cost at retail.
So far we've delivered equipment worth more than $200,000 to scientists and clinicians in ten countries on a budget of under $10,000.
Our donors are happy because they get practical use out of equipment which would otherwise be gathering dust on a shelf or taking up space in a landfill. Our recipients are happy because they're finally able to pursue the research priorities that are important to them and contribute to the educational and economic development of their home countries. We're happy because we help scientists help other scientists, and we are making friends all over the world while we do it.
We've sent equipment to HIV/AIDS clinics in Haiti. We've helped to build a new medical school in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, part of a university dedicated to setting new standards for transparency and public service in African education. We've equipped a research scientist in Argentina whose work was recently featured in The Economist. And this is only the beginning. A two-year grant from Echoing Green has launched our expansion in the Boston area and around the country. Your support will help us sustain that growth.