#createmiami

Misstudy

Misstudy aims to launch an online tutorial series on college and career mentorship, giving her clients unprecedented access to resources to enrich their lives. idea.me/misstudy (read more)

Onetown Boards

Felix’s Onetown Boards team has developed a high quality prototype for a more versatile and safer longboarding experience, equipped with powerful LED lights and performance tracking app capabilities. idea.me/onetownboards (read more)

EARTHWARE INC

Michael, CEO and Co-Founder of Earthware Inc, is the business mind behind the compostable, organic plant-based plastic PLA cutlery, which the team produces right in Miami. idea.me/earthware (read more)

LET’S TALK IT OUT

Jonathan is a leader at Let’s Talk it Out, the conflict resolution program that helps youth monitor mitigate & manage difficult emotions.idea.me/talkitout (read more)

COMPOSTHUBS MIAMI

Fertile Earth Foundations’s Compost Hubs project builds community while reducing its waste production. Miamian citizens and businesses could have an easy and accessible way to compost – by drop-off or pick-up – for the first time.  idea.me/fertileearth  (read more)

ECO ASHTRAY

Luiz’s project will reduce beach pollution caused by cigarette butts and harm to the natural environment and wildlife while increasing environmental awareness and stewardship, ultimately beautifying Miami beaches. idea.me/eco-ashtray (read more)

7-LIFE FESTIVAL

The festival includes meditation, music, art, food, technology, speakers to provide diverse experiences and routes to access Mindfulness, inspire through charismatic speakers offering actionable insights, and act as a catalyst to build community. idea.me/7life (read more)

Myk and his team are driven to introduce and validate Mindfulness and its many benefits to the Miami community, where there is no dedicated mindfulness festival. A novel concept, Myk cites “overwhelming empirical research that shows the positive benefits of both meditation and mindfulness,” explaining how meditation changes the brain; athletes can use Mindfulness to improve performance, while “CEOs and executives can use mindfulness to make better decisions”

Luiz was first inspired to address the issue of cigarette butt pollution on Miami beaches when around 400 volunteers, participating in his non-profit's first annual Big Sweep Beach Cleanup Competition, collected thousands of cigarette butts from a 15 block beach stretch in Miami Beach. He recalls being “quite terrified with the outcome” and explored reasons why people were leaving their butts on the beach and, eventually, potential solutions.

CompostHub’s Melissa loves community gardens, “how they build community, bring people together and provide access to something that is good for us physically, mentally and emotionally.” Melissa had always been drawn to composting, but was dissatisfied that it was such a “solitary activity and often hidden away.” CompostHub’s begun at the thought that it didn’t have to be this way, envisioning that natural spaces, gardens and farms, are areas where people can “come together to learn, laugh, connect and create compost.”

Jonathan of Let’s Talk it Out was motivated to start the program after seeing high incidences of bullying in his community both in news headlines and in “personal, demeaning stories,” particularly of the youth demographic.

What fuels his fire is when he sees “a child's eyes light up as he or she finally grasp the concepts that you have been teaching.” Jonathan says it's those moments when the young participants take ownership of the material and began to “display the depth of understanding through the skits or during the call responses”. For the Let’s Talk it Out team, it is the “most fulfilling thing to actually see them resist change and ... accept the fact that there are alternative ways to resolve conflict” without resorting to violence.

It all began when Michael noticed that every day he would use a set of cutlery for lunch and throw it away. The work necessary to make those utensils bothered him: oil extraction, refinement, shipping, manufacturing, more shipping. Michael decided to tackle the continuing harm plastic waste causes to the environment by joining incubator EcoTech Visions and starting Earthware.

Michael states that “in the space of compostable products there are two areas of impact: production location and end of product life”. While many companies produce overseas to cut costs, which creates emissions during shipping, Earthware produces in Miami, which additionally adds to manufacturing jobs and economics growth. On the flip side, manufacturer's typically leave consumers to their own devices. Earthware “wants to work with our customers to define a recovery process” that either reuses raw material for new products or composts them for 0 plastic waste.

Felix “grew up with the love of making art” and possessed a “huge curiosity of how things worked”. Felix also loved longboarding. Whether at school or in supermarkets, at the beach or in business meetings, Felix’s board has been either attached at his hip or cruising under his feet. No wonder his inspiration is overcoming the obstacles of the modern skateboarder by applying evolving Miami tech.

Felix’s product tackles three obstacles impeding a safer and holistically better longboarding experience. First, skating at night he “feared for his safety” because roadside obstacles were invisible to him, and more importantly, he was invisible to cars. Second, there are no boards on the market that track how fast and long he was boarding for. Third, Felix wanted a board both durable and affordable. Felix rapidly prototyped models of his board and after surveying hundreds of skaters and skate shops, he felt validated that Onetown Boards would be competitive in the boarding market.