The Appropriate Technology Collaborative
Welcome!
The Appropriate Technology Collaborative was recently featured in Sierra Magazine. Writer David Ferris covers our designs for new inexpensive renewable energy tools that can be made with local materials around the globe. Our technologies provide desperately needed jobs and sustainable solutions.
From Sierra:
WITH 1.6 BILLION PEOPLE LIVING OFF THE GRID, the financial and environmental costs pile up quickly. Residents of the world’s poorest nations sometimes spend a third of their income on kerosene, a fuel that poisons lungs and poses a fire hazard; a kerosene lantern emits 550 pounds of carbon dioxide every year. Battery-powered lights are an option, but could result in mountains of tiny cylinders of toxic waste. Inexpensive devices that harness the sun and wind can supply small amounts of power, come from local materials, and create local jobs. The developing world’s population is expected to grow by 2.5 billion over the next 40 years, so these innovative energy savers can’t come soon enough.
More at: Sierra Magazine
ATC - Growing Success and Providing Opportunity
In the last 12 months, with community support and a growing group of volunteers ATC expanded programs, created new affordable technologies for low income people and prototyped our work in Latin America. We also published several of our designs online where they have been picked up by hundreds of nonprofits and individuals around the world! (Now Over 500!)
Our unique approach to design and development, where we live and work with our clients in low income countries and create multi-cultural design teams with students and professionals has created great results! (See list below)
Your contribution to ATC will help us start out 2010 on a strong foundation. We have ambitious goals - of expanding workshops, creating new energy efficient low cost technologies that provide jobs and create real lasting opportunities for families to improve their quality of life.
ATC is a charitable 501(c)(3) organization, donations are tax deductible.
You can donate online by clicking on the button below.
Fall Fundraiser Great Success!
Our Fall Fundraiser at the Jolly Pumpkin in Ann Arbor drew a larger than expected crowd Sunday Nov. 8th. We had great presentations from the student design teams + wonderful food from Ann Arbor’s newest local food Cafe and Brewery. One comment was how rich and varied the experience was. Continuous slide shows, designs on display, new technologies. There was a lot to do. We prefer to provide an interesting and rewarding experience VS the traditional fundraiser of a silent auction and a dinner menu from the 1940s.
ATC Mission Statement
Over two billion people live without access to basic infrastructure services such as clean water, sanitation and electricity. Another billion people live in slum cities, with minimal infrastructure. The great majority of these people illuminate their homes with kerosene lamps, cook their food over wood fires, and carry in clean water. Living like this, with poor sanitation leads to disease and early death.
The Appropriate Technology Collaborative (ATC) is a 501 (c)(3) not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to design, develop, demonstrate and distribute appropriate technological solutions for meeting the basic human needs of low income people in the developing world. ATC works in collaboration with our clients and other nonprofits (NGOs) to create technologies that are culturally sensitive, environmentally responsible and locally repairable in order to improve the quality of life, enhance safety, and reduce adverse impacts on their environment.
Our design partners are the people and the communities we serve. We create long term relationships with our client communities so that we can better understand and design for their particular needs.
We make many of our designs available online, licensed through Creative Commons for anyone in the developing world to use or improve upon.
For our most recent news please check out the Appropriate Technology Collaborative Blog.
Please see the article about the Appropriate Technology Collaborative in the Ann Arbor News. Click Here
ATC Awards Recognition and Honors:
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John Barrie, the Appropriate Technology Collaborative Executive Director has been awarded a 2008 Lindbergh Foundation Grant for “Designing and Prototyping a Highly Efficient Replacement for Kerosene Lamps for Rural Guatemala and Nicaragua”. The prestigious Lindbergh Grant will be used to document existing conditions in Guatemala and Nicaragua and to then design an easy assemble LED based light using recycled cell phone parts. Local engineers in Guatemala will be part of the ATC Design team for this project.
More at: The University of Michigan
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The Appropriate Technology Collaborative student sponsored team won the 2007 and the 2009 Edison Prize at Michigan State University for the design of a solar powered refrigerator - designed to be constructable using locally available materials in rural Africa.
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John Barrie and Dr. Norbert Muller won the Boston Innovation Prize for the design of a super efficient air conditioning system. The AC uses water vapor as the refrigerant gas and a novel turbine to pump the gas at very high velocities. More at: ZDNet