Bob Marsh, Mark Summer and Kristen Peterson
To reach the village of Nyarukamba in western Uganda, visitors have to clamber up a thin, almost vertical dirt track. It's not the kind of place you would expect to find subsistence farmers surfing the Web with wi-fi computers or making VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) phone calls. But that's exactly what the village's 800 or so inhabitants have been doing--thanks to a wireless, solar-powered communications system installed in the Ruwenzori mountains by Inveneo, a San Francisco nonprofit.
Inveneo was launched in 2004 by three Silicon Valley veterans--Mark Summer, 36; Kristin Peterson, 45; and Bob Marsh, 59--who share a passion for...