Video: 5 years of AIDG
by Catherine LaineDecember 31st, 2009
Duration: 4 min 19 sec
Thanks for making our work possible.
December 31st, 2009
Links of the Day: How not to write about poor people or Africa
by Catherine LaineDecember 30th, 2009
Bill Easterly author of “White Man’s Burden” and ideological nemesis of Jeffrey Sachs gives the top 10 wrong ways to write about poor people.
My favorites.
6. Discuss only income, health, access to clean water, and literacy. Leave it to anthropologists to cover areas like happiness, traditions, ceremonies, festivals, friendships, kinship, love between men and women, or love between parents and children.
.
.
.
8. Don’t show pictures of poor men, who make your audience think of drunkards, wife-beaters, or janjaweed.
9. These topics are only for Marxists: power, class, discrimination, oppression, or history.
Along the same lines, check out actor Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond, Constantine, In America, Amistad) reading Binyavanga Wainana’s must-read article How (not) to write about Africa.
Related Posts
So do you think we can end extreme poverty by 2025?
Bentley Leadership Forum Part I: Keynote by Jeff Sachs
Development Porn: NGO Imagery
Link of the Day 060508: David Weinberger and the Ninja Gap
Copenhagen’s Climate-Friendly, Bike-Friendly Streets [Video]
by Catherine LaineDecember 30th, 2009
Duration: 5 min 8 sec
Tens of thousands of people from nearly every nation on earth have descended on Copenhagen this month for the UN climate summit. As the delegates try to piece together a framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, they’re also absorbing lessons from one of the world’s leading cities in sustainable transportation. In Copenhagen, fully 37 percent of commute trips are made by bike, and mode share among city residents alone is even higher.
Come see “the busiest bicycling street in the Western world”, and lots of other you-gotta-see-them-to-believe-them features including bike counters (featuring digital readouts), LEDS, double bike lanes (for passing) and giant hot pink cars.
via Will D
AIDG 5th Annual Holiday Party
by Catherine LaineDecember 29th, 2009
Tonight we’re having our 5th annual holiday party. Can you believe it? It’s been five years since AIDG got started with $800 and a bag of tools. We’ve accomplished a lot in a short amount of time and we couldn’t have done it without you.
Our holiday party is how we say thanks to all our friends, colleagues and supporters. So if you are in the Boston area come mingle and get an update on the work you helped make happen. If you’re new to the AIDG community or want to be a part of it, don’t be shy! Come out and meet everybody. Hear the stories first hand.
Come Celebrate with us
LOCATION: Our office space in Chinatown.
33 Harrison Avenue, 5th Floor, Boston, MA 02111
DATE: Tuesday Dec. 29, 2009
TIME: 6PM -9 PM
RSVP: Cat Laine claine@aidg.org 800-401-3860 x703
Directions:
On the T
From the Orange Line: Stop at Chinatown. Exit near intersection of Essex St and Washington St. Go East on Essex towards Chinatown. Make first right on Harrison Ave. If you hit Beach Street, you’ve gone too far.
From the Green Line: Stop at Boylston Street. Exit near intersection of Boylston St and Tremont St. Walk East on Boylston/Essex St 2 blocks (away from the Common). Take a right on Harrison Ave. If you hit Beach Street, you’ve gone too far.
From the Red Line: Stop at Downtown Crossing. Exit near intersection of Summer St and Washington St. Go Southwest on West on Washington St towards Park Street. Turn Left on Essex. Make first right on Harrison Ave. If you hit Beach Street, you’ve gone too far.
Social Entreprise Conferences in February and March, 2010
by Catherine LaineDecember 26th, 2009
Harvard Social Enterprise Conference 2010
New Frontiers: Redefining Service for the 21st Century:
This year’s theme highlights the emerging trends in social enterprise that benefit society throughout the public, private, social, and non-profit means. Over the last decade, the word “service” has become multi-dimensional, stretching beyond basic volunteering to encompass fields like micro-financing and corporate social responsibility, among others.
Date: February 27-28, 2010
Location: Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA
Price range: $40 - $110 depending on student status and Harvard affiliation
Register
Social Venture Capital/Social Enterprise Conference
Social Venture Capital/Social Enterprise Conference, Miami-2010 will be your best opportunity in 2010 to learn, network, and connect with hundreds of top social enterprise/financial leaders and organizations from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the state of Florida- in addition to organizations worldwide which have an interest in expanding to the region.
Date: Mar 17-19, 2010
Location: Miami Beach Convention Center, Miami, Fl
Price Range: $179 to $545 depending on whether you are a student, in an NGO/Government or book early.
Agenda (subject to change): Day 1 Day 2 Day 3
Bonus: Pete Haas, our ED, will be speaking on a panel.
Related Posts
HBS Social Enterprise Conference 2007: Cheryl Dorsey and Victoria Hale
HBS Social Enterprise Conference 2007 Panel: Social Venture Capital
HBS Social Enterprise Conference 2007 Panel: Making People Care
Video: RISEPAK, a Web 2.0 tool for disaster response [Harvard Social Enterprise Conference]
Video Update: Catapult Design’s Pico-Turbine [Good Magazine]
by Catherine LaineDecember 22nd, 2009
Duration: 2 min 55 sec
Catapult Design is working with AIDG and the [Appropriate Technology Design Team] to design an affordable wind-powered generator capable of producing enough electricity to charge a cell phone, power a radio, or operate LED lights for nighttime use. The generator is intended for rural, off-the-grid communities without electricity. Catapult Design’s product, a pico vertical-axis wind turbine, is designed to operate in low wind speeds while charging a
12v car battery – this battery will in turn power small electrical devices.
Duration: 20 sec
The setup and control station down at the NASA-Ames Research Facility wind tunnels in Mountain View, home for our wind turbine blade testing.
Related Posts
Video: EWB-SF: Prototyping low cost wind turbine at AIDG Guatemala
Video: EWB Low cost wind turbine at Maker Faire
Friday Shoutouts 10102008: SOIL/Rosemond Jolissaint and Heather Fleming
Video: William Kamkwamba on the Daily Show & a little 80’s nostalgia
by Catherine LaineDecember 21st, 2009
Duration: 7 min 44 sec
From his TED bio:
William Kamkwamba, from Malawi, is a born inventor. When he was 14, he built an electricity-producing windmill from spare parts and scrap, working from rough plans he found in a library book called Using Energy and modifying them to fit his needs. The windmill he built powers four lights and two radios in his family home.
My favorite thing about William’s story and this interview with John Stewart is that it provides a storybook example of how access to information either through your local library or through the internet can be life-changing. William’s current path started because he picked up a book and did what so many autodidacts and tinkerers do. He started to make things. He’s on his way to Dartmouth next year through a series of serendipitous internet events. Blogger Mike McMay (Hacktivate) read about him in a local Malawian newspaper. After reading Mike’s writeup, Emeka Okafor (Timbuktu Chronicles blogger and AIDG advisory board member) “spent several weeks tracking him down at his home in Masitala Village, Wimbe, and invited him to attend TEDGlobal on a fellowship”.
Following Kamkwamba’s moving talk, there was an outpouring of support for him and his promising work. Members of the TED community got together to help him improve his power system (by incorporating solar energy), and further his education through school and mentorships.
After his ‘discovery’, William gets into the African Leadership Academy, a prep school in Johannesburg founded by fellow Echoing Green alums, Chris Bradford and Fred Swaniker. Somehow with all these changes going on, he also manages to write a book, The Boy who Harnessed the Wind with Bryan Mealer.
Yup, all this because of a simple trip to the library. It makes me feel rather nostalgic for Levar Burton and the Reading Rainbow. All that books can transport you stuff.
Because I imagine that the theme song is currently playing in your brain, here are the lyrics just in case that little voice inside your head forgot the words ;).
Reading Rainbow Theme Song
Butterfly in the sky
I can go twice as high
Take a look
It’s in a book
A Reading Rainbow
I can go anywhere
Friends to know
And ways to grow
A Reading Rainbow
I can be anything
Take a look
It’s in a book
A Reading Rainbow
A Reading Rainbow
Pop the name of a book that changed your life in the comments. Mine are the Rand McNally atlas and basic science books that my mom got me as a kid. They kicked off my love of science and learning.
Related Posts
William Kamkwamba - TED Interview (Video)
Quote of the Day: Where the world sees trash, Africa recycles - Erik Hersman of Afrigadget
Entrepreneurship Principles from the African Leadership Academy
Education: Future “green” ambassadors of Guatemala!
Gever Tulley: 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do [TED]
AIDG’s Peter Haas selected as a 2010 TED Senior Fellow
by Catherine LaineDecember 21st, 2009
The non-profit TED has selected AIDG’s Executive Director Peter Haas as one of 20 inaugural Senior Fellows. The TED Senior Fellows program is designed to bring together young world-changers and trailblazers from the arts, science, entrepreneurship, the NGO sector and education. As part of its commitment to TED, AIDG will be launching an exciting new initiative in our technology research and development program in 2010 that will transform our ability to do research with local and university partners. We’ll be able to share more details next year.
Two of our favorite bloggers Erik Hersman (Co-founder of Ushahidi.com; blogger, AfriGadget and White African) and Juliana Rotich (Co-founder, Ushahidi.com; blogger, Afromusing and Global Voices) are also 2010 senior Fellows.
Erik Hersman of Afrigadget documents low-tech entrepreneurialism in Africa. Specifically he looks at ingenuity born of necessity, “tech that keeps economies on life support”. Raised in Sudan (until the war got bad), Kenya, and then again Sudan, he’s a bit of a tech anthropologist searching for Africans solutions to African problems.
From wikipedia
Ushahidi (Kiswahili for “testimony” or “witness”) was a website created in the aftermath of Kenya’s disputed 2007 presidential election that collected eyewitness reports of violence sent in by email and text-message and placed them on a Google map. It is also the name of the open source software developed for that site, which has since been improved, released freely, and used for a number of similar projects.
.
.
.
The software has since been used to track violence in Congo and pharmacy stockouts in Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, and Malawi, and monitor elections in Mexico and India, among other projects. It was also used by Al Jazeera to collect eyewitness reports during the 2008-2009 Gaza War.
In addition to Pete, Eric and Juliana, here are the 17 other fellows:
Taghi Amirani (Iran/UK) - Documentary filmmaker, Amirani Films
Rachel Armstrong (UK) - Teaching fellow, The Bartlett School of Architecture; physician; science-fiction author
Frederick Balagadde (Uganda/US) - Research scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; co-inventor of the microchemostat, a medical diagnostic chip
April Karen Baptiste (Trinidad) - Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Colgate University
Faisal Chohan (Pakistan) - CEO, Cogilent Solutions; founder, Brightspyre, Pakistan’s largest online job portal
Colleen Flanigan (US) - Fine artist; stop-motion armaturist, coral reef restoration expert
Gabriella Gómez-Mont (Mexico) - Founder, Tóxico Cultura, a Mexico City-based artistic think tank
Jonathan Gosier (US/Uganda) - Founder, Appfrica, a business incubator in Kampala
Adrian Hong (US/North Korea/South Korea) - Director, The Pegasus Project; former director, Liberty in North Korea
Juliette LaMontagne (US) - Education consultant; innovation facilitator
Alexander MacDonald (US) - Economist, NASA Ames Research Center
Juliana Machado-Ferreira (Brazil) - Biologist, SOS FAUNA; PhD candidate, Sao Paulo University
VK Madhavan (India) - Executive Director, Central Himalayan Rural Action Group (Chirag)
Naomi Natale (Italy/US) - Founder, One Million Bones, a large-scale social activism art installation
Bola Olabisi (Nigeria/UK) - Founder, Global Women Inventors and Innovators Network (GWIIN)
Alexander Petroff (US/Democratic Republic of the Congo) - Founder, Working Villages International
Mohammad Tauheed (Bangladesh) - Architect; founder, ArchSociety
Related Posts
Quote of the Day: Where the world sees trash, Africa recycles - Erik Hersman of Afrigadget
Video: RISEPAK, a Web 2.0 tool for disaster response [Harvard Social Enterprise Conference]
Neil Gershenfeld at PopTech and AIDG’s Dream of a Guatemalan Fab Lab
AIDG Biodigester Intern: Christopher Salam [Video]
by Catherine LaineDecember 21st, 2009
Duration: 2 min 29 secs
AIDG biodigester intern, Christopher Salam, talks about his work with us in 2009. Chris has been assisting on biogas field visits, building and managing the demo biodigester installations at AIDG’s Guatemala office and testing biodigester effluent enrichment through vermicomposting.
Recorded Nov 2009.
Related Posts
AIDG Micro-Hydroelectric Intern: Will Stone
Intern Profile #1: Chase Nelson (AIDG Guatemala)
Intern Profile #2: Corrina Grace (AIDG Guatemala)
Intern Profile #3: Alex Surasky-Ysasi (AIDG Guatemala)
AIDG Micro-Hydroelectric Intern: Will Stone [Video]
by Catherine LaineDecember 21st, 2009
Duration: 1 min 33 sec
AIDG Micro-Hydroelectric Intern Will Stone talks about his work with us in Guatemala. Will assisted in the upgrade of a Pelton Turbine at the Nueva Alianza community and designed a Mitchell Banki Turbine for use at the Corazon del Bosque ecopark.
Recorded Nov 2009.
Related Posts
AIDG Biodigester Intern: Christopher Salam
Intern Profile #4: Sunny Pereira (AIDG Haiti)
Intern Profile #5: Katie Bliss (AIDG Guatemala)
Intern Profile #6: Natalie Bonilla (AIDG Guatemala)
