Blog
Teaching Circuits and Solar
Measuring Solar Panels
ATC is teaching a class – “Circuits and Solar” in Guatemala this month. Our team of local engineers are teaching a very hands-on class that communicates the essence electricity, circuits and then how to make and install a small scale solar home energy system. The ultimate goal is to get solar into households that lack electricity.
Photo: Tina Watson
Slum Cities
Managua, Nicaragua Slums
By the year 2030 slum cities around the world will grow by over a billion people. Most poor people on the planet will live in slums and The Appropriate Technology Collaborative will be there to design new affordable, sustainable products that improve life and provide opportunity. We are developing relationships with people in Managua Nicaragua and Guatemala City to start this new exciting aspect of our work.
Our process in slums will be similar to how we have been working in rural parts of the world. We will listen to our clients and develop new technologies through collaboration.
ATC 2011 Success
Last year, thanks to the hard work and commitment of our clients in developing countries, and literally hundreds of volunteers from the U.S., we were able to achieve astounding progress on our goal of developing and distributing affordable, sustainable technological solutions that empower people and promote dignity. Working side-by-side with our partners in developing countries, we installed a water irrigation system that will provide potable water for the 4,500 residents of a rural village in Guatemala and also enable them to begin developing new business models based on having more time to devote to family and jobs.
Hundreds more people in developing countries benefited from our Solar Vaccine Refrigerator (SVR) that preserves life-saving vaccines. Our treadle pump continued to lengthen the growing season for farmers in Peru, New Guinea and 21 other countries. We made amazing progress in finalizing the designs of a remote stethoscope that can save the lives of at-risk babies born in remote areas all around the world. We are also making great strides in our long-term goal of helping local residents start up micro-enterprises. Graduates of a spring 2012 workshop will prepare to launch new businesses selling a low-cost solar-powered home energy systems that can illuminate houses, charge cellphones, and power computers off the grid. And a women weavers cooperative in Nueva Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan will prepare to sell wind turbines constructed from their village’s distinct weaving patterns.
We sponsored 6 World Challenge Design Teams to work and travel in Guatemala, Nicaragua and India. We presented our work at conferences throughout the United States and we were invited to speak in Shanghi China in 2012.
ATC moved our prototyping operations to the new Maker Works space in Ann Arbor where we have access to high tech tools and we started work on a our Appropriate Technology Lab where we have the limited tools found in most low income countries.
2012 will be our busiest year with international projects scheduled for February, March, May and August.
More Soon!
Guatemala Summer 2011
Jeremy Listens to Angela Rosales
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We will be back in Guatemala to coordinate project reporting requirements with ATC’s own Ruben Mata and Engineer Jose Ordonez.
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ATC will be setting up the installation of solar panels on a school in Santa Cruz la Laguna, meeting with our partners at rural medical clinics + Doctors at Roosevelt Hospital.
Guatemala Enhanced Stethoscope 2011
ATC + M-Heal Students Meet Midwives in Guatemala
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M-HEAL team students meet with midwives of the indigenous Kaqchikel group in a small settlement outside of Comalopa in rural Guatemala. The students are trying to asses the needs and skills of the nurses and midwives to better design a remote stethoscope that would send heart-sounds of patients in rural part of Guatemala to a Guatemala City hospital.
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Check Out Video: Students Without Borders
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Photo & Video by Marcin Szczepanski, Multimedia Content Producer/CoE’s Communications and Marketing
Final Push for Global Giving
Students Learn Weaving
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Update: Thanks to you we were successful with our Global Giving campaign! We will be returning to Guatemala Spring 2012 to continue our work with the women’s weaving cooperative.
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We need to raise just $1,600.00 to make our overall goal of $5,000.00 for the Women Wind Weavers project on Global Giving. Any size donation much appreciated.
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The funds will go to pay the women to learn and teach a new skill – to weave and make wind turbine blades for renewable energy in Guatemala. Funds will also purchase materials and cover a fraction of our expenses. The project will be a model for other groups who want to do the same sort of work in other parts of the world. Our first weaving co-op will help train others to do the same. We have identified eight areas of Guatemala where the wind is good and electricity is scarce.
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We met the student part of our World Challenge Design Team yesterday at the University of MIchigan. An amazing group – they met for a two hour design session in the middle of finals week. Now that is dedication!
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The team has several variations on how to form turbine blades using the unique properties of cloth woven by the back-strap and loom styles in Guatemala. We should have some turbines to test in the fall and then next spring we will have another design review with the women wind weavers.
Please consider a donation to this important project. With this one technology we will create good paying jobs in a new green industry and we will empower women in Guatemala to create new markets for their traditional practices.
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ATC = Empowerment by Design
Small Wind Turbines for Developing Countries
Traditional Weaving
From Michigan Engineering:
Two things stand out in the town of Nueva Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan, Guatemala: electric power is scarce and women are expert weavers. A Michigan Engineering student team used those two facts as a basis for a project in which they designed a wind turbine with blades that are covered with woven material and powerful enough to drive a small electric generator to produce clean, emissions-free power – green energy is popular even in rural Guatemala.
The students initiated the project with the hopes that their device would provide power to the region and stimulate business for the weaving cooperatives. During spring break, 2011, the team traveled to Guatemala to build the frames of the blades from local materials and then cover them with cloth woven nearby.
More at: Michigan Engineering Forum : All things technical: Small Wind Turbines for Developing Countries
Photo by Marcin Szczepanski, Multimedia Content Producer/CoE’s Communications and Marketing
ATC Women Wind Weavers @ Global Giving
Women Wind Weavers + BLUELab
We have started our spring 2011 campaign to fund the Women Wind Weavers of Guatemala. Donate: Women Wind Weavers
Problem:
Women bear the brunt of global poverty. Of the 1.2 billion living in abject poverty (less than $1.00 / day) an astonishing 70% are women. Women’s poverty leads to children’s malnutrition, stunted growth and cognitive impairment.
ATC Solution:
We need to create new opportunities for women to take control over their financial destiny
Our collaborative design team provides opportunity from the start. We are working with a local womens weaving cooperative to co-create a new technology that uses the traditional skills in new ways.
To help thousands of women, we will publish the Woven Wind Turbine online along with instructional photos and video. From our previous projects we expect dozens of nonprofits (NGOs) around the world to use our designs to help create new income for poor women worldwide.
Current Status:
We started working on the design and method of construction for woven wind turbine blades in September 2010. In February / March 2011 we met with our local partners in Nueva Santa Catarina Ixtahuacah, Guatemala. Collectively we began the design process for weaving both traditional fibers and high-strength fibers to create strong fabric that can then be formed into high efficiency wind turbine blades.
Read more and donate at: Women Wind Weavers
Photo:
Marcin Szczepanski
Multimedia Producer
Communications and Marketing Department
College of Engineering
University of Michigan
Update from Guatemala: “It broke our hearts to have to say we could not help”
At a clinic in the mountains of central Guatemala, a mother and baby waited hopefully for the American students and their special stethoscope.
The tool could eventually help diagnose congenital heart defects early enough for children to get preventative treatment and avoid permanent damage to their hearts, brains and lungs. But right now, it’s an early prototype.
The Michigan Engineering students were visiting the clinic to learn how to improve their device. Because it’s still in the development stage, they weren’t prepared to actually use it yet.
“It broke our hearts to have to say we could not help,” said Nathaniel Skinner, a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering who is leading the team designing the stethoscope. “The team was surprised, saddened, and encouraged. Nothing could make us want to move faster and deliver technology and hope to Dr. Christian Barrios and his staff more intensely.”
Dr. Barrios heads a clinic in Nueva Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán—one of many the students visited this week as they journey across Guatemala. They’re meeting with the midwives, doctors and patients who need this technology as the students work to refine it into something that can help save young lives. The College of Engineering’s Marcin Szczepanski is traveling with the team and posting photos, videos and observations of the trip on tumblr.
More: After The Jump
Photo: Marcin Szczepanski
A Visit to Comalopa, Guatemala
M-Heal + ATC Visit Clinic in Comalopa, Guatemala
M-HEAL team students meet with midwives of the indigenous Kaqchikel group in a small settlement outside of Comalopa in rural Guatemala. The students are trying to assess the needs and skills of the nurses and midwives to better design a remote stethoscope that would send heart-sounds of patients in rural part of Guatemala to a Guatemala City hospital .
Photo by Marcin Szczepanski, Multimedia Content Producer/CoE’s Communications and Marketing
M-HEAL team answers questions about the Guatemala trip
1.) Traveling in Guatemala doing research for this project, what has been the biggest surprise for you so far?
When traveling in Nueva Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán, we visited a local clinic to speak with their staff and find out if the technology we would be developing came across as helpful. Although John Barrie from ATC had been explicit that we were in our own infancy as a project, the clinic had been hopeful that we could use our stethoscope on a patient they had brought in. We, by no means, were in a position to be able to assist the baby or mother, and it broke our hearts to have to say we could not help.
To us, this elicited the most unique combination of emotions. We wanted to help but could not. We had been explicit that we were not prepared to actually work with children, yet they had wanted just that. It was frustrating and, at the same time, so uniquely touching to see how hopeful they were for our work—even desperate. If we had any doubt that this project would be important, or even pivotal to some of the regions of Guatemala, our experience made quick work to oust those concerns.
The team was surprised, saddened, and encouraged. Nothing could make us want to move faster and deliver technology and hope to Christian Barrios (the doctor) and his staff more intensely.
2.) What is one thing you’ve learned over the past few days of meeting with midwives, Dr. Castañeda and relatives of patients?
We have really narrowed down on our objective. Before we came to Guatemala, we did not know too much about our end-users; now we have seen them face to face. We have determined where everyone sits in the line of people needed to make our project a success, and we have learned their roles. If distilled to one thing, we have learned the work-flow of the vision Dr. Castaneda and the doctors see for this project and are much better equipped to try and deliver it.
3.) Is this trip changing your perspective on anything? If so, what and how?
It would be impossible for our perspective not to change. From the trivial fact that cars always have the right of way to the profound realization of the capacity for the locals to organize themselves and fix a health system to the best of their abilities, we’ve been impressed and moved (and have not gotten run over by any cars—so it’s a good trip).
4.) Are there any other important revelations you’ve had so far that you want to mention?
Seeing the midwives, nurses, and community medical volunteers first-hand at rural clinics made it clear that this project is a collaborative effort. Without full understanding and support from the community, this project will fail. However, it gave us confidence to see volunteer community members taking healthcare into their own hands — through medical education, home visits for newborn checkups, etc — inspiring efforts that could be assisted by the device we are developing. Technology is crucial to the solution, but only one part of the entire “ecosystem” that will improve outcomes for children impacted by congenital heart defects. In the end, Dr. Castaneda’s foundation is the keystone to all of these efforts, without which there would be no option for treating these children.
