Weston, MA - February 11, 2007 - The Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG) today announced the selection of ten exceptional undergraduate and graduate students for its spring and summer internship programs in Guatemala.

The mission of the internship program is to give students direct hands on experience in international development and appropriate technology implementation in developing countries.  Peter Haas, the AIDG's Executive Director stated "The program also provides an opportunity for the transfer of technical knowledge between workers in our incubated business and university students".

The interns will primarily be developing prototypes of appropriate technologies. Successful and locally demanded technologies will then be manufactured and sold by AIDG's incubated business, XelaTeco.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact:

Catherine Laine
claine@aidg.org
617-378-2605

 AIDG and XelaTeco to be featured on NPR's "Day to Day"

 Weston, MA - AIDG and XelaTeco will be featured on NPR's national and international news program, "Day to Day", on Thursday February 1, 2007. The piece recorded in November by tech journalist, Xeni Jardin, is part of a 5-part series on Guatemala.

Check your local NPR station for listings or listen online after 4:00PM Thursday at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7105046.

  For more information on the AIDG, go to www.aidg.org , email info@aidg.org, or call 1-800-401-3860.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact:

Catherine Laine
claine@aidg.org
617-378-2605

Appropriate technology innovators bring renewable energy to a rural community in Guatemala.

Quetzaltenango, Guatemala - January 5, 2007 - The Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG) and its first incubated business, XelaTeco, completed a micro-hydroelectric project in El Palmar, Guatemala last month that is providing 40 families (roughly 200 people) with electricity in their homes for the first time.

Peter Haas, the Executive Director of the AIDG, is to appear on WGBH's Design Squad, a new  reality competition for teens. The show's goal is to help kids develop a lifelong interest in math, science, and engineering by showing them the weird and wonderful things engineering can accomplish.

Over 13 episodes, eight teenagers compete to design and build fantastic, whimsical, and fully operational machines for real clients. Teams, and team members, are scored for their ability to think outside the box and meet (or surpass) the demands of the challenge at hand. In the final episode, the top two scorers battle for the Grand Prize—a $10,000 college scholarship from the Intel®Foundation to study science, engineering, math, or technology.

  The episode with Haas involves the creation of a simple peanut butter maker for MIT professor Amy Smith and Haitian community activist Gerthy Lahens.  Peter will help judge the competition as well as build a more durable version of the winning design. The end product will be presented to a women's peanut butter cooperative in Petite-Anse, Haiti. This episode is particularly special because it is the only one in the series that illustrates how engineering can have a wider global impact and be used to address important social issues.

   Design Squad was filmed in and around Cambridge, MA (with some footage taken in Haiti) in summer 2006 and will premiere on PBS in February 2007.

 Recipients begin internships in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala this summer 

The AIDG announced the selection of eleven undergraduate and graduate students that will participate in the first year of its Internship Program.

The AIDG's Internships are designed to give students direct hands on experience in international development and appropriate technology implementation in developing countries. Peter Haas, the AIDG's Executive Director stated that "The program also provides an opportunity for the transfer of technical knowledge between workers in our incubated business and university students".

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

AIDG Founder named one of the year’s best emerging social entrepreneurs by Echoing Green.

Peter Haas, founder of AIDG, has been awarded $60,000 seed capital to continue work of promoting affordable and environmentally friendly infrastructure solutions in Latin America.

Weston, Mass - June 16, 2006 – Peter Haas, the CEO of the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG) was named one of the best emerging social entrepreneurs for 2006 by the global non-profit organization Echoing Green for his innovative plan to promote the use of clean technologies in developing countries. As a winner of the prestigious Echoing Green Fellowship, Haas will receive $60,000 of seed capital as well as strategic counsel, leadership training and technical guidance over the next 2 years to develop and expand the AIDG.

The AIDG's 1st incubated business, XelaTeco, recently won a contract funded by the United Nations to produce and install a 16 kW hydroelectric system for the Comunidad Nueva Alianza, a worker-owned coffee plantation in the Guatemalan highlands.  Currently, the community has no access to grid electricity.  The hydroelectric system being installed by Xela Teco will supply power to 40 homes at the site, providing a reliable source of renewable energy.

Xelateco is producing the electronic ballast load controllers, pelton turbines, housings, safety features, as well as laying the penstock and connecting all of the houses. This is an amazing feat for a team that just got started in August 2005. Your donations are what support this effort, so please consider donating today. We couldn't do this without you.