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spotlight: a hands-on approach to Third World aid | |||||||||||||||||||||||
International Development Design Summit 2008 |
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MIT's International Development Design Summit (IDDS) will hold its final presentations on Wednesday, August 6, at Bartos Theater (E15).
Last month, about 60 people from 20 nations arrived at MIT to be part of IDDS, an intensive month-long program to create technological solutions to meet the needs of people in the world's developing nations. The goal of the program is to develop simple, inexpensive devices that in some cases can be produced locally and make a real difference for people and communities. This Wednesday, August 6, participants will present the prototypes that they have been working on for the past three weeks and explain their plans for implementing their projects. This year's summit is the second incarnation of the workshop. Several of the technologies that were developed during last year's summit, including transparent containers for transporting and sterilizing water, devices for reducing the smoke from cooking fires, and low-cost refrigeration systems, are on their way to being produced in various countries around the world, says MIT Senior Lecturer Amy Smith. The event is the brainchild of Smith, a past winner of the MacArthur "genius" grant and founder of MIT's D-Lab course. As Niall Walsh, a student from Trinity College Dublin who is helping to organize the event, describes it in his blog, the conference's purpose is to "challenge convention by creating physical solutions. A team... from around the world will work together to attempt to create, within a few weeks, technologies that could change lives." For more information, visit the IDDS website and follow Niall's blog. |
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