Forging a partnership where the poor really matter.
For Saul of Tarsus, it was traveling the road to Damascus. For John Bairie, it was a trip to Ecuador in 2004.Barrie, a well-known and successful green architect and industrial designer, was looking out the window of a bus at Ecuadoran houses.
"I do solar design," Barrie said. "I realized that if you rearranged the materials [wall and windows] you could make buildings that were much more comfortable in which to live. You could be comfortable during hot days and cold nights.
"My training put me in a position where I could do something. No one was designing things for poor people. I can do this."
Thus was born the Appropriate Technology Collaborative.
Its mission is to create "new sustainable technologies that promote economic growth and improve the quality of life for low-income people worldwide."
Since 2007, the Appropriate Technology Collaborative has worked in Guatemala and other countries to build relationships with clients in communities in the developing world. With the assistance of architectural and engineering students at U.S. universities, the organization designs solutions based on inexpensive, locally available material.
Students at schools like Michigan State University in East Lansing and Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., help create designs the local community will implement. The Appropriate Technology Collaborative makes these solutions available without charge to the local community.
The collaborative makes a five-year commitment to its client, who can take the product to the market, forming microbusinesses and generating income for the local community.
Some of the organization's projects include:
* Based on available material, a $10 solar home heater is locally made in Guatemala. The No. 1 problem for many folks in mountain areas is lung disease because of the cold. The project trains people in the community to manufacture and sell the solar panels.
* The Appropriate Technology Collaborative partners with Dr. Aldo Castaneda, who was head of cardiac surgery at Harvard for 15 years and who now lives in Guatemala City. About 1,300 children are born every year in Guatemala with a congenital heart defect and need an operation. But doctors in rural areas aren't trained to diagnose the condition. The organization has developed a cell phone app that couples with a special stethoscope to record infant heart sounds and transfer the data back to a clinic in Guatemala City. The result is that heart conditions can be identified and children's lives saved.
* A low-cost solar refrigeration unit keeps vaccines chilled for weeks in sub-Saharan Africa.
* The collaborative designed a treadle pump that can be used to pump fresh ground water in semiarid areas such as Tanzania.
* Recycled cell phone parts are used to make inexpensive lights for slum dwellers, replacing kerosene lamps. The material cost for one LED light is 80 cents. Since power is at best intermittent in most slums, the advantage of this system will be that the battery can be recharged when power is available.
* A thermo-acoustic engine is a piece of pipe that can be used to generate electricity. As with many of the Appropriate Technology Collaborative's technical innovations, this can be made on site.
* Engineering students at the University of Michigan are partnering with a village in Guatemala to use women's weaving skills to make blades for small wind turbines.
The Appropriate Technology Collaborative is based on four principles:
* Building long-term mutual relationships between the student teams and the clients. The organization commits to a peer-to-peer partnership of mutual respect based on listening and collaboration.
* Providing the opportunity for clients to discover solutions within themselves to harness human creativity and enhance dignity. The process employs a consensus model. For example, when the collaborative produces new technology, the following year it is a Guatemalan engineer who will be doing the teaching among her/his peers. Real entrepreneurial energy is unleashed.
* Making the process as transparent as possible by documentation and replication. In that way, other nongovernmental organizations can learn from the Appropriate Technology Collaborative's successes and avoid its failures.
* Making the technologies available to the world without charge. With the exception of biomedical technology, the collaborative gives away all of the technology generated. Technologies are available free on the collaborative's website, apptechdesign.org. An exciting next step is to apply that technology in the United States in communities such as Detroit.
Barrie and the Alternative Technology Collaborative put a vision of a sustainable future into action. It is one thing to say that all of God's children are worthy of dignity and contain great potential, but the collaborative makes that vision a reality.
By reliance on available material, by full partnership with the people whose lives will be impacted, and by a model of transparency and openness, the collaborative embodies a vision of the reign of God. It is attempting to answer the questions: What would the world look like if we really believed in the dignity of all humanity? What would the world look like if we treated the poor of the world as real partners? What would the world look like if we believed that every child being made in the image and likeness of God isn't just a nice slogan?
[Fr. Charles Morris is a priest of the Detroit archdiocese. He is public policy representative for and a former director of Michigan Interfaith Power & Light. He teaches courses in sustainability at Madonna University in Livonia, Mich.]
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| Title Annotation: | Appropriate Technology Collaborative |
|---|---|
| Author: | Morris, Charles |
| Publication: | National Catholic Reporter |
| Geographic Code: | 2GUAT |
| Date: | Apr 13, 2012 |
| Words: | 890 |
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