Grinnell College Social Justice Innovator Application

February 3, 2011

It is with great pleasure that I recommend Marcin Jakubowski, PhD, for the Grinnell College Exceptional Young Innovator for Social Justice prize. I have been very impressed with Marcin’s innovative but practical concepts to increase social and economic vitality in 21 st Century communities. With little or no financial support he has been converting these concepts one prototype at a time into transformative tools and systems with remarkable success.

Having immigrated from Poland when he was 10, Marcia has always been aware of how abundant the American marketplace is. However, he also knew that the appearance of prosperity did not necessarily mean equal access to resources by individuals. During his undergraduate work at Princeton in the 1990’s, he became aware of the great inequities that our seemingly abundant American lifestyle created. Not only for humanity, but for the environment as well. He began volunteering at the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton, and subsequently wrote his thesis on solar cells. While finishing his Ph.D. in fusion physics at the University of Wisconsin, he came to realize that his field of study was not in alignment with his core values and goal to help create a more sustainable and resilient world. Thus, he decided to begin living by his most basic principle of "do no harm". Five years ago he and his partner bought a 30 acre farm in Missouri and set to work on creating this vision. After a series of mechanical failures with his farm equipment, and thousands of dollars in repair costs, he determined that the only way to achieve this goal was to use an absolute creative approach to create a complete economy from local resources.

Since that time he has been working on the Global Village Construction Set (think life size Lego set) of open source tools for creating advanced civilization from local resources. He is doing this without outside funding and he is showing real results. To date he has produced prototypes for an open source tractor, CNC torch table, 150 ton metal hole puncher, micro tractor, soil pulverizer, compressed earth brick press, and several other substantial tools. There are still many tools left to be developed, including an induction furnace to convert scrap metal to steel - as an example of closed-loop production.

I believe the Global Village Construction Set is a perfect fit for the Grinnell award due to its potential to effect positive social change on a broad scale. This project is entirely open source and focuses on open business models for replication for any interested producer. The work features radical modularity and lifetime design. For example, Life Trac, the open source tractor, has interchangeable ‘Power Cube’ engine units that can be aggregated for additional power, and used in the other machines as well, including the CEB press and metal hole puncher. All of the components are designed for disassembly, so that every machine is easy to repair and modify with bolts, and simple tools. The open source model, and the simplicity of the machines, reduces the costs for the user/producer to one tenth of the normal costs for purchase and maintenance of standard farm equipment. The social ramifications of this are significant. The economic leveling of the playing field for the small to mid scale farmer will result in the family farm surviving in the age of industrial agricultural practices.

Marcin has recently been awarded a TED Fellowship for 2011, won the Make Magazine Green Innovation prize, has had an article published in Grist Magazine, and is competing for the Buckminster Fuller Institute Challenge for Socially Responsible Design award. His continued dedication is to finish the 50 machines in the next two years through open source collaboration and development. With funding this ambitious goal can be achieved in the time frame set. It is with the greatest sincerity that I recommend Marcin Jakubowski for the Grinnell College Exceptional Young Innovator for Social Justice prize so that he may continue this meaningful and potentially earth changing work.

Thank you for your consideration of this remarkable young man.

Sincerely,