Friday Shoutouts 10102008: SOIL/Rosemond Jolissaint and Heather Fleming
by Catherine LaineOctober 10th, 2008
Not sure if this will be a regular feature, but it’s always nice to give shoutouts to friends and colleagues.
Left to right: Sasha Kramer, Kevin Foos and Sarah Brownell
1. Sasha Kramer, co-founder of SOIL and our partner in composting toilet making in Haiti, and Haitian musician Rosemond Jolissaint were interviewed on Berkeley’s Hard Knock Radio on KPFA 94.1 this past Thursday. Listen to the show as well as great Haitian music from Rosemond and fellow musicianBelo.
EWB-SF’s Malcolm Knapp and Heather Fleming with low-cost turbine that they helped design. Photo courtesy Jim Merithew/Wired.com
2. Heather Fleming of EWB-SF and Catapult Design was just named a 2008 Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow for work on small-scale wind development for developing countries.
Catapult’s wind turbine is now under development with the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, a U.S.-based nonprofit operating in Guatemala and Haiti. After further testing, Catapult intends for AIDG to produce the turbines, which, in turn, will be a source of income generation for people in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.
“There’s a misconception that people in the developing world are so poor that they can’t afford technology,” Fleming says. “This isn’t a roadblock. It’s a call for innovation and addressing real needs, including the need for sustainable businesses, in a way that’s doable and affordable.”
Fleming joins a class of 16 other Pop!Tech Fellows and will showcase the wind turbine and other developing world projects at the Pop!Tech 2008: Scarcity and Abundance conference Oct. 22-25 in Camden, Maine.
3. Also I mentioned it earlier but I’ll mention it again. Our friends at Appropredia are organizing an unconference devoted to appropriate technology and sustainability in San Francisco October 18t-19. Click here to find out more.
