48 participants representing 17 countries converged upon Colorado State University on July 7th, 2010 to kick off the fourth annual International Development Design Summit (IDDS).
IDDS aims to produce innovative, scalable technologies and enterprises to meet the very real needs of the 2.6 billion people earning less than $2-a-day. For this year’s Summit, the focus has shifted from the creation of technologies to their dissemination. The Summit will take nine prototypes that have been developed at previous Summits, as well as some created outside IDDS, and build action plans that will move products and services into the hands of the people who need them most.
The 2010 IDDS participant roster reflects diverse backgrounds and skills sets: an agricultural engineer NGO worker from Rwanda, a Brazilian artist using industrial waste in her work, and a chemical engineer from the UK, to name but a few. These participants will have the opportunity to explore the challenges of entrepreneurship and technology dissemination for developing markets, investigate techniques for manufacturing from a local to a global perspective, and guide their project teams through the process of becoming viable ventures.
Some of the projects being worked on at this year’s Summit include: a nipple shield that seeks to reduce the transmission of HIV from breastfeeding mothers to their children, a project that creates micro enterprises which produce clean burning cooking fuel from agricultural waste materials and a collaborative effort of former IDDS participants from India and Ghana to provide low-cost solar lighting for rural communities.
Co-Sponsors MIT, Franklin W. Olin College and Cooper Perkins will be joined by the 2010 host institution, Colorado State University, in implementing this year’s curriculum. The Summit runs through July 30th, 2010.
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