Day 18 - Foundations and funding

This morning we were given another presentation by Kurt Kornbluth that was a little bit about his work at UC Davis, a little bit about the design process, and a huge amount of spilled water everywhere! He talked about some lighting and energy storage projects that he was working on and even at the early time of 10am, participants expressed huge interest in the type of work that he was presenting. He gave the audience four crucial tips for design; build often and early; quantify your results; ask "will it pay for itself"?; and 'sure, you'll sell a million, but how are you going to do that?' Kurt's energy and enthusiasm can only be described as infectious and some of it has most certainly rubbed off on some of the participants, many of whom he has been working with quite closely on a number of the projects over the last week.


The participants then had an afternoon and a morning work session split by a presentation from Kate Lessard, of foundation relations in MIT. She informed participants about the different avenues to pursue for funding projects and went into detail about how to work with Foundations to help fund charitable organizations. She simplified quite a complex process by telling the participants that some key questions needed to be asked of themselves even before they approach the foundations themselves. The key questions went something like this:


What problem will you solve?
Who will be served?
How many people will be served?
Why now?
How will you measure impact?
How will you sustain the project (what will happen in the long run)?


This session, in conjunction with the entrepreneurship session given by Paul Hudnut, and the lunch sponsored by the Public Service Centre, has the aim of helping to provide participants with the necessary tools and information to help them implement their projects once they leave MIT at the end of the conference. Kate also highlighted the importance of building a good working relationship with the foundation that is sponsoring you to ensure that the goals of those behind the project, and those behind the funds, are completely aligned.

Siobhan from the Power generation team examining their wheel mechanism

Charcoal Crushers casting concrete rollers

The ropeway transport system team looking for some cheap materials!


Dr. David Sokal, from the Breast Milk team, ready for some testing

In the evening, there was a presentation by TIE Boston, Social Entrepreneur division on Global Crisis for Water and Sanitation. We were provided with some Indian food for the dinner before a panel which included Denise D. Knight of the Coca Cola Company’s Water Sustainability Initiative; Michael Delaney, Director of Oxfam America’s Humanitarian Response; Dr. Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Asoc. Prof., MIT and Lotika Paintal, founder of a start up non-profit, Water Centric. Lotika was also moderating the panel and I found her presentation on her newly formed venture, Water Centric extremely interesting. It gave an insight into the ways in which a newly formed venture could effectively tackle a very specific issues by working closely with community partners.

The panel finished at about 8pm but most teams continued to work late into the night, in preparation for the second round of design reviews, due to take place tomorrow afternoon. Taking into account the long work hours, the level of camaraderie and energy the participants have shown is exceptional. The rope way transport team, in particular, always seem to be up to some kind of mischief, hidden away in D-lab!

Winnie hard at work in the orphanage...sorry - I meant workshop!

Day 17 - Bikes not Bombs

Participants returned to the workshops this morning with renewed vigour, after their break the previous evening. Some of the teams are moving on to their second and third prototypes at this stage and the work spaces are a cacophony of noise with participants anxiously experimenting with their various projects. Participants were delighted to be finally able to spend a full, interrupted day in the workshops, as their projects are now entering a crucial stage. There is still time for teams to try out and build different designs but come the weekend they will have to have centered in on the specific prototype they want to build, otherwise there will simply not be enough time left!

Some quality craftsmanship from Joshua on the newly refined Charcoal Crusher

Sunil using bike parts for the rope way team

Participants get to grips with some welding for their projects

After a tiring day, we organized a trip to Bikes not Bombs, a Boston based non-profit, for the participants. We made sure to clarify that the trip was optional but the prospect of free dinner meant that very few of the participants stayed at the dorms! Bikes not Bombs were established in 1985 and aim to provide bicycle technology as a concrete alternative to war and environmental destruction. They work with community partners in Tanzania, Guatemala and a host of other countries and have sent over 33,000 bikes to Central America, the Caribbean and Africa (and New Orleans) in the last 24 years, providing old or damaged bicycles to local villages. The home organization, such as Global Alliance in Tanzania, then works to fix these bicycles, sell them at reasonable prices to the locals, and in the case of Bernard, dismantle them to work on new pedal powered forms of technology!

The dinner table at Bikes not Bombs

After a quick potluck dinner, with meals provided by Crossman, John, Zubaida, Sumit and other organizers we were free to move onto some quick presentations. The founder of Bikes not Bombs, Carl Kurz, gave us a brief introduction into their work before opening the floor up to the IDDS participants. Laura then introduced our two presenters for the evening, Shaibu Laizer and Carlos Enrique Marroquin Machan, from Tanzania and Guatemala respectively. Both Shaibu and Carlos are direct beneficiaries of bikes from the organization, which have been sent to their home countries, and as such were delighted to present!

Laura introduces IDDS to the folks fat Bikes not Bombs

Shaibu was understandably nervous, as it was his first time presenting to a group, but he overcame this and gave us an insightful presentation about the impact that an organization like Global Alliance can have on empowering communities and young people in particular. He talked in detail about his respect for the organization based on his own experience, growing up as an orphan in Tanzania and not having the financial means to complete his education. Global Alliance gave him the chance to work with and for the community, under his mentor Bernard Kiwia, and he is now employed as a bike workshop manager in his native Arusha. Shaibu's presentation, and the confident young individual in front of us, sent an extremely powerful message about the importance of grassroots organizations such as Global Alliance. To find out more about the work that Global Alliance does in Africa visit http://www.globalallianceafrica.org/ .

Bernard and Shaibu field questions about Global Alliance

We were then given the opportunity to hear about the innovative work that is currently being done at Carlos's workshop, Maya Pedal, in Guatemala. Carlos has come up with a variety of methods to harness energy using pedal power and had pictures of washing machines and a number of other appliances running without electricity. His organization then attempt to bring this technology to as many people in the community as possible but Carlos spoke of the difficulty inherent in this due to the current lack of funding available for his organization. Some participants were extremely interested in Carlos' technologies and we hope that the funding available from the Rockefeller foundation can facilitate people like Joshua Cholobesa, one of our Zambian participants, and Carlos working together on projects in the future. Find out more about Maya Pedal by visiting http://www.mayapedal.org/ .

Carlos presents his finely crafted work at Maya Pedal in Guatemala

One of Carlos' technologies in action

Day 16 - Learning from each other(and from the experts!)

The Charcoal Crushers rose very early this morning and, accompanied by Amy, began some early morning charcoal burning so that they would have some materials for testing later in the day. They pioneered the very interesting and elaborately named method of "egg on a stick" to grab some early morning snacks as they worked. By all accounts, it was far tastier than one might imagine!

Amy ready to go into action

The finished product

After this, the Charcoal crushers, along with the other nine teams, got back to building and prototpying within, and often directly outside of, the workshops.

Nathan and Joshua, two of the Charcoal Crushers, sort through the carbonized corn cobs

Bernard, from the charcoal crushing team, speaks to a reporter from NPR(National Public Radio)

The participants were then treated to a lunch organized and sponsored by MIT's Public Service Centre. Each organizer facilitated individual round table discussions with the participants, explaining the role of the Public Service Centre and the potential for collaboration with MIT students on projects within their home countries. It was made clear to participants that if they submitted proposals to the Public Service Centre, the institution could then allocate funding for MIT students to work on research projects relating to the work or go out on field placement in the January break or on a summer internship.

Many of the participants were extremely excited about this and some great conversation was sparked at the table between community partners and students as they brainstormed about potential ways that they could work together in the future. In addition to this, there is follow up funding available from the Rockefeller foundation for for both the individual IDDS projects and for potential collaboration between participants in the future. This is something which was not available for last year's summit and as such we are hoping that it can help bring many more projects and prototype's to the implementation stage this year.

After lunch we returned to room 32-151, the lecture theatre in which we had spent so much of our first week. The subject of this afternoon's lecture was The Full Belly Project, a project which aims to relieve hunger and create economic opportunities in developing countries through the design and distribution of labor saving, locally replicable agricultural devices. The lecture was presented by the project's founder, Jock Brandis, and he spoke at length about his peanut sheller project in Mali and he also spoke to us about the potential the Jathropa plant had for developing new industries in the developing world. Find out more about Jock's work, and the full belly project, at www.fullbellyproject.org/ .

A Jatropha flower

Jock Brandis in Mali with his Peanut Sheller

After this the participants broke once again into their teams to continue work on their projects. We had then organized an evening of cultural interaction to help participants to let off some steam and to learn a little more about each other. We had about twenty five short presentations from participants from all around the globe over some Mexican burritos and tacos and I personally found all of the presentations extremely interesting and some of them downright hilarious. Participants spoke about their home cities, countries and favorite places with infectious enthusiasm and I now seem to have a much larger list of places I need to visit!

The presentations were also interspersed with some hilarious jokes told by Kenneth and Joshua, two of our Zambian participants. All of their jokes seemed to centre around the eventual loss of their father's job due to the influence of their former colonial masters, the English, and as such Steven Gerrard specifically, hailing from Manchester, seemed to be on the receiving end of quite a number of jokes! It was all taken in good humour though and was followed by some hilarious impromptu presentations from our Brazilian participants. Rafael even showed us some "traditional" Brazilian dancing once we gave him some encouragement! We were also treated to a wonderful piece of fiddle music from Michelle Marcinel, and this instantly had me thinking about some potential collaboration for the Irish dancing at the talent show next Thursday week.

The consistently energetic participants finished up the evening with a late night game of ultimate Frisbee on the Football field, before getting an early night ahead of another full day building in the workshops.

Grudge match before late night Ultimate Frisbee

The participants take a break mid-way through the frisbee match

Day 15 - Inventors and Innovators

Week 3 began with a lecture on some final design considerations participants needed to consider for their projects. The lecture centred around three main concepts; Design for Affordability, Design for Manufacturability; Design for Re-use and Failure. This was demonstrated with the use of the example of the $3 Drip Irrigation System developed and implemented by Paul Polak. Kurt Kornbluth, a lecturer in UC Davis, then showed the group the example of a low cost wheel chair and Amy Smith presented images of sustainable road side workshops in Guatemala.

Participants then broke into their various teams to continue the work on their projects and we hope that they can implement some of the design techniques and approaches presented this morning. This vast majority of this week will be spent within the workshops, as teams attempt to construct working prototypes for the design reviews next Friday, and of course the all important final presentations on the 6th August. The participants are obviously delighted with this situation, as all of them love getting their hands dirty in D-lab and the other workshops!

Lico and Limbor work on the stabilized soil block mechanism

This evening we were treated to an amazing lecture/demonstration by Shawn Frayne, an inventor involved in sustainable wind energy solutions. Shawn was part of Amy's very first D-lab class in MIT and is the perfect example of the potential that this class has in inspiring young innovators. He has founded two wind energy based companies, the most high profile of these being Humdinger Wind Energy, and gave us a rousing lecture on the need for inventors to come back to the fore.

Shawn Frayne speaking about his technologies

And we have light!

Amy introduced Shawn by claiming that he had "revolutionized the Wind Energy movement by unrevolutionizing it" and he went on to describe invention as "the pursuit of simplicity".He spoke candidly about the life long interest he had for invention . Before he joined D-lab he had questioned whether invention could be said to still truly exist, as he saw the vast majority of technological 'innovations' were only nuanced improvements on pre existing products, and these were only for the benefit of the richest 10% of the world's population.

A number of key technological innovations had been made 100 years ago, he argued, and the only way to replicate this rapid production of new ideas and technology was through a focus on the developing world. He highlighted that "Harder problems make for better inventions" and that you will do your best thinking when you are boxed into a corner. The constraints that are imposed naturally by work in developing countries force engineers, designers and community partners to become innovators.

He introduced the term "Confluent technology" to us, explaining that he believed that the appropriate technology movement had evolved to such an extent that a new term was needed. He told us that a focus on problems in the developing world would spark innovations that spark new industries thus reaching a point where technologies developed in emerging economies will impact industries around the world. I found this idea extremely interesting as it highlighted that working on appropriate technology in the developing world was actually in the best interests of the developed world, rather than simply having to bear the burden of providing financial aid.

He presented the participants with examples of the kind of appropriate technology out of which these innovations could emerge. He showed us some SODIS bags for water purification and transport, a technology that some participants from IDDS worked on last year, and he also demonstrated an Aeroelastic Flutter technology which can be used to harness wind energy. Even at the reception after the talk, participants were eager to see Shawn show them more examples of appropriate technology, and he duly obliged! Find out more about Shawn's work with wind energy by visiting http://www.humdingerwind.com/ .

Shawn Frayne and Kurt Kornbluth entertain the crowd with their demonstration of the Windbelt

Day 14 - Working through the weekend

We had planned to have the IDDS Olympics this afternoon but due to the death of a family member of one of the participants we decided it would not be appropriate. Some of the participants decided to take the day off while others kept working right through the weekend.


The organizers then looked over the evaluations from Week 2 and it must be said that people are even happier now with the way the conference is progressing. At the mid-way point of the conference we can all look forward to a week of building and prototyping within the workshops!

Day 13 - "How to" sessions

Way back in early July, at one of the first organizer meetings, we had planned a day of technology demonstration and dissemination. On Thursday afternoon participants had then been given the chance to decide which two "how to" sessions they would be most interested in attending. The options on offer in the morning session were Water treatment and testing, Pedal powered generator, Biogas digesters and Peanut/groundnut sheller and these were followed with afternoon sessions on Infiltration wells, Microbial fuel cells, Pedal-powered grain mill, corn sheller and a Pot in Pot evaporative cooler.

Past participants, organizers and mentors all gave hour long hands on tutorials on building and specialist techniques in which they had experience. The sessions were completely optional and as such it was great to see such a huge turnout from almost all of the participants. Bernard Kiwia had told me about his delight in being able to bring home pedal powered techniques shown to him by Carlos at last years summit and we are hoping for some similar interactions and technology sharing to come out of today's sessions.

John Shaba, a Zambian participant, with the water testing kit

Water testing in action

After the work sessions we split into two groups and took the participants on tours of Fablab and OLPC(One Laptop per Child). Fablab is a project which began in MIT and which aims to give ordinary people around the world the technology to design and make their own products. The lab already has sister laboratories in Costa Rica, Ghana, India and Norway and all the participants I spoke to enjoyed the hands on tour. I personally attended the OLPC tour and found the idea quite interesting.

OLPC's mission statement is to "To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning" and we were given a brief synopsis of the history and vision of the project by two of OLPC's staff. Participants were impressed with the technology and the aim of the project but expressed concerns as to how many children and schools were actually using the laptops in an educational capacity. All of the ten dollar computer team attended the tour however, and found it extremely useful in the context of their project. They even stayed behind for over an hour afterwards to get as much information as physically possible out of the very open and friendly OLPC staff!

OLPC's interesting network system

Participants take a look around the cluttered OLPC office

We then organized a rather unusual trip to see an open air showing of Shakespeare's As you like it in Boston Common. Almost half of the participants made the trip, needing to let off steam after a long week. Once there, however, we couldn't actually get close enough to see the performance and were attracting dirty looks from some of the other spectators so we decided to go for an impromptu game of Frisbee in the nearby park. We even went about creating a human pyramid of sorts and had a lot of fun in the process, with Sunil Singh Jethuri, one of the Indian participants, inspiring the other participants through his effervescent enthusiasm. As you can see in the picture below, the space on top is reserved for him!

Participants adopt an unusual approach to the human pyramid!

Day 12 - Design Reviews

The participants continued their work on the projects this morning in preparation for the upcoming Design review in the afternoon. We then provided lunch separately for the participants and the reviewers and I got a chance to see some of the basic models of the projects before the session began. Alvaro showed me the terrain model that the Rope way Transport team had constructed out of foam and explained that it was still quite basic, with a lot of work still to do. He also quietly informed me that twenty minutes previously, his team had found out that the area they were working in would not have access to electricity, dramatically changing the conversations they would be having with the reviewers!

The rope way transport system foam model

I also had a chance to take a look at the models that the low cost incubator and stabilized soil block maker had come up. The incubator's had come up with quite a number of different concept foam models but they explained that what they really needed was a baby! This does not look likely however so they are working on obtaining items to simulate the heat that a regular incubator would provide. The soil block team showed me their tentative model and they were looking forward to getting some feedback about it from the reviewers.

The first Incubator foam model

Another participant's vision of the incubator



The stabilized soil block maker in its very early prototype stage

Before the official review session began the teams were charged with giving 90 second presentations to their fellow participants and the reviewers. We made our way up to the 5th floor of the Green building in MIT for the presentation and some conference logistics. I'll let the presentations speak for themselves.

Brian Rasnow introduces the Pearl Millet threshers

Derek Lomas talks about the idea behind the $10 computer

Francesca Campagnoli presents Micro Hydro(or Pico) power

The Charcoal Crushing team is introduced by Jessica Vechakul

Kenneth Muyayaeta introduces the Power Generation from Mechanical Devices team

Mariela Molina Parades presents the Stabilized Soil block maker


Madeleine Abomowitz introduces the low cost incubator team

The hand held diagnostic medical tool is presented by Mark Jeunette

Stephen Gerrard gives a speedy presentation on the Flash system for heating breast milk!

Winnie Yiu, of the Rope way Transport team, presents

The design reviewers then spoke to the various teams in three changeover sessions. Participants were also encouraged to interact with people outside their teams and give their honest opinions and advice on the protoypes. Benjamin Linder, who helped to facilitate the sessions told us later that he believed that the most dynamic conversations took place between the structured time sessions. Participants made sure they got as much out of the session as possible but all the reviewers I spoke to also were delighted to get the chance to offer their insights and learn about the projects on offer at this year's summit.

Elizabeth Kneen, Breast milk team, answers questions from design consultants at the review

Once the participants had completed the reviews, and their second round of weekly evaluations, they were given the chance to participate in a choice of optional special interest groups. The participants had been given the option, earlier in the week, of choosing a preference out of a list of interests such as Entrepreneurship and Innovation, IDDS through the years, University to University collaboration and Curriculum Development.

I sat in on this last option and found the session extremely informative. The group discussion was facilitated by Amy Smith and we each first explained our interest in the area, before talking about some key issues that exist in creating space for service and experiential learning in universities. Amy spoke to us about her experience in setting up D-lab in MIT and explained the difficulties inherent in the process. The huge range and diversity of the backgrounds of the people participating in this interest group meant for an interesting hour of discussion and we assigned related tasks which we agreed to work on during the rest of IDDS 08'.

Participants were then given the evening off and we collectively let off some steam through games of tennis, soccer and cricket. Sumit Pahwa, an organizer/participant from India, had been attempting to organize a cricket match since the inception of the conference and as such he was delighted that he was finally getting the chance to teach his fellow participants the ins and outs of bowling, batting and fielding. He made sure that his team won though!