permaculture

["Don Titmus" <ujgs2@4dirs.com>]

One item that has been sent to 3rd world countries for many years has been 
the cardboard box solar cooker from Kerr-Cole. Simple, cheap and effecient 
at water purifiying and cooking foods that remove the need for wood. This 
then saves the lives of many women.

Don

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>
To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2007 5:05 AM
Subject: [permaculture] Tools for poor at NYC museum show - Yahoo! News


> <http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/gadgets_for_the_poor;_ylt=A9G_RxULcTxGI0IBXwphr7sF>
> Tools for poor at NYC museum show - Yahoo! News
>
> By DAVID MINTHORN, Associated Press Writer Fri May 4, 6:40 PM ET
>
> NEW YORK - A new breed of industrial designer is confronting Third World 
> poverty with innovative products aimed at
> encouraging rural entrepreneurs.
>
> Instead of advocating aid giveaways with uncertain results, these socially 
> conscious designers hew to the profit motive
> and sell their products to the poor. They say their strategy fosters 
> dignity, not dependence, and ensures sustainability.
>
> By creating simple, efficient gadgets for poor countries, the designers 
> aim to provide Africans, Asians and Latin
> Americans with the means to generate cash on local markets.
>
> Low-cost water purifiers, crop preservers, wireless lighting, drip 
> irrigation and load-carrying bicycles are among the
> simple but ingenious products being mass-produced under the humanitarian 
> design trend.
>
> An exhibition of more than 30 such devices opened Friday at the 
> Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum,
> turning the Fifth Avenue mansion's garden into a global village.
>
> On view are shelters, water purifiers and monsoon storage units, solar 
> lighting systems, a solar-dish kitchen, a pit
> latrine kit and two-wheeled transporters. There's even a hand-powered 
> laptop computer, price $100, on display in one of
> the huts made of cardboard and plastic.
>
> "Design for the Other 90 Percent," which closes Sept. 23, underlines 
> designs for the needs of the 5 billion people
> across the globe who have little or no access to the products of wealthy 
> countries.
>
> Display sections focus on water, shelter, health and sanitation, 
> education, energy and transportation. Wall boards for
> each dramatize the vast disparity between the haves and have-nots:
>
> _"Almost half the world's population, or 2.8 billion people, live on less 
> than $2 a day," notes one.
>
> _"Seventy percent of people in the developing world have no access to 
> electricity in their homes, health clinics or
> schools," says another.
>
> _Women in sub-Saharan African often spend "15 to 30 hours a week 
> transporting water, firewood, crops and grains for
> milling."
>
> Q Drum, a donut-shaped polyethylene container manufactured by a South 
> African company, is helping solve the water
> transport problem. It can be filled with 75 liters of water and rolled 
> like a wheel from the well to the household.
>
> The designers in the show stress self-help.
>
> "What poor people need most is a way to make money," says Martin J. Fisher 
> of KickStart International, purveyor of a
> portable press that makes building blocks from soil and lightweight hand 
> pumps to irrigate fields.
>
> Writing in the show's catalog, he explains that KickStart insisted on 
> selling its pumps because "no giveaway program can
> be sustainable. By selling our pumps, we create a sustainable supply 
> chain."
>
> Paul Polak, whose International Development Enterprises sells 
> drip-irrigation systems in India and Africa, underlined
> keeping prices low. "Affordability isn't everything; it's the only thing," 
> he writes.
>
> Other products on display include the Big Boda load-carrying bicycle, 
> which can transport 100 pounds of goods to market,
> a ceramic charcoal stove, a LifeStraw purifier that makes any surface 
> water drinkable, and the Water Storage System that
> stores 10,000 liters of monsoon rain in a plastic bag inside a hand-dug 
> pit.
>
> Some of the products relate directly to America. Katrina Furniture Project 
> builds tables, stools and church pews from
> the 2005 hurricane debris. Day Labor Station is a wooden shelter designed 
> to accommodate Hispanic workers waiting for
> construction or gardening jobs. And Mad Housers Hut is a prefabricated 
> shed used for Atlanta's homeless.
>
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