Malnutrition in developing countries is a problem expanding in proportion to the world's exponentially growing population. Urban slums are epicenters of this epidemic. Unlike their rural counterparts, the urban poor lack the land to grow food and other plants to supplement either their diets or their incomes.

VertiGrow aims to improve the quality of life for people in the world's poorest urban slums. We are developing an innovative vertical planting device that is versatile and inexpensive. It will allow people to grow nutritionally and income supplementing plants utilizing vertical space in a land-scarce environment, while at the same time cultivating community empowerment and entrepreneurship. VertiGrow will create community-owned small businesses that support families in forming micro-enterprises selling their produce.

The VertiGrow team was incubated at the Harvard Idea Translation Lab founded by Professor David Edwards at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Science. Please read more about the founding of our organization here. We recently received a grant from the Harvard Initiative for Global Health to launch our technology in a pilot study in Kibera, Kenya, in the summer of 2009.