From Google Doodle to clean water in Bangladesh? Well, yes, sometimes it is unexpected but not impossible in today’s so much connected world – as long as someone is thinking and dreaming big to do just that!

11-year old Audrey Zhang of New York is the winner of 2014 Doodle 4 Google competition. She won out of more than 100,000 submissions, 250 state finalists, 50 state winners, and 5 national age group winners. This year’s theme was “draw one thing to make the world a better place.” Audrey Zhang’s submission was based on her idea of transformative water purifier. Her piece, titled “Back to Mother Nature,” depicts an elaborate water-cleaning machine. She created a whole world around the device – one populated by humans, a whale in a top hat and dragons.

She wrote: “To make the world a better place, I invented a transformative water purifier. It takes in dirty and polluted water from rivers, lakes, and even oceans, then massively transforms the water into clean, safe and sanitary water, when humans and animals drink this water, they will live a healthier life.”

Later, Zhang worked with a team of artists at Google to animate her drawing. It is on the Google home page from June 9th.

Audrey Zhang’s win translate into $30,000 college scholarship money for herself, $50,000 Google for Education technology grant for her school and a google.org donation of $20,000 in her name to charity:water toward providing clean water to schools in Bangladesh.

Her win is good news for Bangladesh as some schools there will get clean and safe water!

It’s amazing to think sometimes that a simple dream of solving a problem on a piece of paper can provide life saving essentials to someone who lives other side of the world! Indirectly but inevitably, Audrey Zhang have touched the life of some Bangladeshi school children. Congratulations to Audrey Zhang!

Hope charity:water will tell the story of Audrey Zhang, her Google Doodle, her dream of making a transformative water purifier to Bangladeshi kids who will be beneficial from this donation. May be one day those Bangladeshi kids will be transformed to dream wild, think big, and change the life of others too!

Bangla-Pesa is a social community-backed currency/voucher. They are only accepted in an impoverished settlement called Bangladesh near Mombasa, Kenya. The Banga-Pesa voucher is only allowed to circulate among the registered members who use it as a credit system plan and are expected to repay it after getting Kenyan money (shilling) later. The currency, introduced by Koru, a Mombasa-based non-profit organization, is not designed to be an alternative to the Kenyan shilling but to complement it by boosting economic activity in Bangladesh, where shillings are scarce. Some 200 businesses have agreed to accept the currency, and in return, each has been awarded a credit of 400 Bangla-Pesa.

That credit works like a zero-interest loan. Every new business that joins the Bangladesh Business Network/Bangla-Pesa network must be supported by four guarantors who are already members. If the new business spends its 400 Bangla-Pesa and fails to earn as much back, its guarantors must make up the difference, or all five businesses will be ejected from the network and forced to pay back the debt directly in goods and services.

The organization, Koru, is a registered community-based group. The initiative aims to support the locals in trading and saving more money for development.

“Bangla-Pesa is a program to strengthen and stabilize the economy of the informal settlement of Bangladesh by organizing its more than 200 small-scale businesses into a Bangla Business Network, through which its members can utilize a complimentary currency to mediate trades,” reads part of the introduction statement on Koru’s website. Ruddick, the co-founder of the project, says their objective is to help the members trade their excess capacity among themselves.

When the concept first hit the Coastal town of Mombasa, State agencies, including the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), panicked. They feared the complimentary currency voucher circulating in Bangladesh, Mombasa County, might replace the shilling, Kenya’s legal currency. The initiative’s founders and members found themselves in court for allegedly using illegal currency to transact business. They, however, were released later.

Anyway, it is thrilling to know that there is a small Bangladesh in Kenya where people work hard to improve their lives.

Is a currency like Bangla-Pesa unheard of? Not really. Indeed, many other examples of social or complementary currencies like Bangla-Pesa exist. Here’s a list. So why is Bangla-Pesa special? Well, just because it is BANGLA-PESA! 🙂