International Clinic supports award-winning program

Humanitarian Engineering Social Entrepreneurship (HESE) is the Northeast regional winner of the 2013 Outreach Scholarship W.K. Kellogg Foundation Engagement Award and is now a national finalist for the C. Peter Magrath University Community Engagement Award. The award comes from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. HESE has spent years developing and testing low-cost greenhouses and creating a self-sustaining business model for farmers in East Africa. In the past year, Penn State Law’s International Sustainable Development Projects (ISDP) Clinic collaborated with HESE to address legal barriers to implementing humanitarian projects.

“This is an exceptional recognition and honors the amazing work of our HESE partners; and we’re proud to work with them and to contribute to the success of their projects,” said ISDP Clinic Director Jeff Erickson. Erickson noted that Clinic students drafted the green house license agreement, counseled HESE Greenhouses Team and Director Khanjan Mehta on the meaning and effect of contract terms, presented the contract to the Kenyan entrepreneur in Nairobi, and helped negotiate its final form.

Yue He '14, from China, was liaison to the Greenhouses Team last semester. He headed up review, revision, and drafting of non-disclosure agreements for use between HESE and prospective licensees of HESE Greenhouse technology in territories other than East Africa. He was also able to help the HESE team on the supply chain side by helping to obtain quotes from Chinese vendors. The Clinic looked into customs and regulatory issues related to the import of such products into several African countries.

Looking ahead, Erickson said the ISDP Clinic will continue to work closely with HESE in 2013-14 in addition to medical school faculty from two teaching hospitals with independent projects in Africa. “We’ll be focusing on healthcare delivery through transnational telemedicine and looking at the regulatory and operational climate affecting healthcare delivery in sub-Saharan Africa,” he said.