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The following post is from the beautifully articulated TBD email by All Day Buffet.

Vintage copy of a Salinger novel? Ghosts in a jar? Nowadays, you can buy just about anything on the interwebs. That includes the coolest new gadgets – at least, for most of us. But what about high-tech goods for the developing world?

Meet Kopernik, an online platform that delivers progressive technologies to those who need it most. Kopernik showcases innovative products – from self-adjustable glasses to solar water filters – that can create big change in poor communities. Development groups can write up short proposals explaining how they could use the products; the proposals are vetted and crowdfunded by the public. Kopernik is also working on developing their own products and offering DIY and open source instructions on how to build technologies locally.

After ten years at the UN, Kopernik’s founders decided to shake up to the field of international development. (The organization is named after the astronomer Copernicus, who proposed that the Earth wasn’t actually the center of the universe, fundamentally changing the way people viewed the world around them.) The Kopernik team wants people to see global problem solving through a different lens. Their goal: delivering innovation to a million people by 2012. We like their vision.