The Appropriate Technology Collaborative creates new sustainable technologies that promote economic growth and improve the quality of life for low income people worldwide. We design, develop, demonstrate and distribute affordable technological solutions that empower people and promote dignity. ATC works in collaboration with local talent and other nonprofits (NGOs) to create market based solutions that are culturally sensitive, environmentally responsible and locally repairable in order to improve the quality of life and reduce adverse impacts on the environment.
“Dignity is more important to the human spirit than wealth.”
Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO, Acumen Fund
We believe in:
1. Relationships – Only through long term relationships will people develop the trust necessary for peer to peer communication. Through long term relationships ATC strives to listen, learn, discuss, collaborate and demonstrate appropriate technologies.
2. Opportunity – We believe that opportunity is more beneficial than aid. Opportunity allows people to discover solutions within themselves, it harnesses human creativity and enhances human dignity.
3. Transparency – We strive to make the Appropriate Technology Collaborative as transparent, documented and replicable as possible. Our hope is that other NGOs will learn from our successes and avoid our failures.
4. Replicability – All of our techniques and the technologies we catalog are available to the public. We encourage anyone who is interested in our work to contact us. If you represent an existing NGO and want to use our designs, or if you are interested in starting a new NGO, we can help. Please use the Contact Us form on this website.
ATC Process:
Identify Needs of Community: We devote a lot of our time to living and working with our client communities. Through ongoing dialog and careful observation we create a “design space” where new products and technologies can have the greatest positive impact on our client’s lives.
ATC also partners with NGOs that have “boots on the ground” in different parts of the world. We work with our partners to identify needs and solutions to problems they have observed in their communities.
Identify Technologies With the Community: Identifying exactly which new technology to develop is the most critical step in our success. We discuss with our clients a range of possible technologies, development strategies, potential job creation, costs and design timeframes. This is a highly interactive process, a real give and take where our clients are co-equal with ATC, local engineers, designers and social entrepreneurs.
We look for design solutions that both solve local problems and have the potential to solve problems worldwide.
Create Design Team: Once we have decided upon a project we put together representatives from our clients, local designers and engineers along with students and professionals from the United States. This design team communicates regularly throughout the design process.
Local + ATC Online Collaboration: Design is an iterative process where the U.S. team is in regular communication with our client teams as a schematic design proceeds towards a working prototype.
Prototype: Proof of concept prototypes are developed in the U.S. once we are certain we can meet our design goals we create a detailed set of final prototype drawings and calculations.
Workshop: The team meets in the client’s home country to prototype, critique and if necessary refine the protype.
Redesign: Every design is re-considered after the workshop stage. We redesign as a group to create what can become a viable product that can be built in the country where it will be used.
Publish: We license most of our designs through Creative Commons and we publish them online so that other NGOs can copy or improve upon our work.
Constant Evaluation: Critical to design success is ongoing evaluation. We commit to re-visiting our clients for a minimum period of five years. This is to insure that people are trained in ongoing maintenance and we gain valuable insight into how our designs are actually used by our clients.