Gandhi’s movement for non-violent social change challenged America. Can Martin Luther King, Jr. do the same for China?
Bringing King to China is a documentary film about culture, race and human rights. The film takes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream of equality and peace to China—and then brings it back to the U.S. It's the story of a young American teacher in Beijing, whose failed protests against the Iraq war inspire her to produce a play in Chinese about Martin Luther King, Jr. Her journey begins after worldwide demonstrations fail to stop the invasion of Iraq and she learns (mistakenly) that her father, an ABC journalist covering the war, has been killed by a suicide bomber.
Objectives: Create an annual flagship event and news hub to build and maintain the identity of the international Open Science Movement. Organize the various sub-communities into an effective, global, socio-technological force for rapid change in science/innovation policy. An attempt to gather all stakeholders who want to liberate our scientific and technological commons and enable a new era of decentralized, distributed innovation to solve humanity’s greatest challenges. Continue reading “Event: 29-31 July 2010, Berkeley CA, Open Science Summit”
Alleviating poverty is more guesswork than science, and lack of data on aid's impact raises questions about how to provide it. But Clark Medal-winner Esther Duflo says it's possible to know which development efforts help and which hurt — by testing solutions with randomized trials.
About Esther Duflo
Esther Duflo takes economics out of the lab and into the field to discover the causes of poverty and means to eradicate it. Full bio and more links
Play becomes work with playpump + eventually no water, no maintenance, and elder women can't use it. See synopsis and watch the Frontline video here
(clips from the synopsis about the Frontline video documentary)
Five years ago, Amy Costello reported a story for FRONTLINE/World. It was about the challenges of getting water in Africa, and a promising new technology called the PlayPump.
After years of covering “bad news” in Africa, she was happy to report a story that seemed to offer something to cheer about. Her story showed how simple it might be for children to pump fresh water just by playing. Behind it all, a South African entrepreneur named Trevor Field.
“A report commissioned by the Mozambique government on the PlayPump that was never released, cited problems with the pumps – women finding it difficult to operate; pumps out of commission for up to 17 months; children not playing as expected on the merry-go-rounds, and maintenance, “a real disaster,” the report said. “
Field had made his career in advertising, but when he heard about this new device, he formed a company and started making PlayPumps himself.
To cover maintenance costs, he proposed selling ads on the sides of the water tower. He said the PlayPump model would be a big improvement over the hand pumps that Africans have struggled with for years.
“The majority of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers. Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90%.” —Dr. Paul Polak, International Development Enterprises
Imagine connecting item & service-requests to those lacking basic needs into a global online and mobile market forum like a Craigslist.org merged with Kiva+ SMS/txt message capabilities, something like Ushahidi, Wikimapia, as well as GoogleEarth-like & SecondLife-like 3D map to post photos and messages of requests and successful transactions without a centralized “middle-man” who manages everything.
Example: An African farmer needs a part for 1950’s Romanian pump. An aid worker posts need via UNICEF Rapid SMS. A Romanian engineer volunteers to make the part; a German pays for FedEx from Romania to Nigeria; a tourist commits to personally delivering it and posting a photograph of the farmer and repaired engine online to close out need.
It would be designed so that anyone could add “affordable” items (that meet a particular criteria) to the list. Please email earthintelnet |at| gmail.com if you have suggestions. For more info on the concept, see page 7 of the Earth Intelligence Network overview draft and this global range of nano-needs graphic. On 7/21/10 Craig Newmark of Craigslist.org sent this email: “..a number of people say they're working on similar efforts,” but he did not specify. Another great example is Practical Action's “Practical Presents” store where a goat, fish cage, farm tools, and many more products can be purchased for donation.
Global Range of Needs Index/Map/Forum could include the following items:
+ Cheap colloidal silver-treated water filters: see Potters Without Borders & Potters for Peace
+ Lifestraw, the one person water filter that can be worn around the neck
The International Development Design Summit is an intense, hands-on design experience that brings together people from all over the world and all walks of life to create technologies and enterprises that improve the lives of people living in poverty. Unlike most academic conferences, we emphasize the development of prototypes, not papers and proceedings. In moving the technologies on the path from idea to implementation to impact we aim to create real ventures, not just business plans. IDDS is part of the revolution in design that aims to encourage, promote, and build more research and development resources that focus on the needs of the world’s poor. We draw inspiration from several current models of innovation, design and community empowerment: co-creation, cross-disciplinary collaborations and crowd sourcing.
IDDS is a diverse group of people. We come from more than 20 countries around the world—from Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, South America, and Central America. We are students and teachers, professors and pastors, economists and engineers, masons and mechanics, doctors, welders, farmers, and community organizers. One of the things that makes IDDS a special conference is this richness of backgrounds. It is a conference about innovation, and we believe that innovation thrives in the intersections of disciplines that come from bringing together such an eclectic group.
We believe very strongly in the idea of co-creation: the concept that it is better to provide communities with the skills and tools to become innovators and develop new technologies themselves rather than to simply providing the technologies. We believe that developing the capacity for innovation and creativity is critical for long-term sustainable improvements in the quality of life in a community. It is our goal to demonstrate a model where a user-based community of active, creative designers can invent, innovate and inspire each other to create new technologies.
But not all of our participants are from communities in the developing world. Nearly half of the our participants are students, and we hope to inspire them with the opportunity to interact with field practitioners and to see that inventiveness is not restricted to those with formal education. IDDS also provides a forum where they can meet with like-minded people who are driven by the same desire to make an impact in the world. It is our hope that by creating a diverse global network we can empower individuals and their communities to tackle the tough problems that reside in the developing world.
For this year’s event, the focus has shifted from the creation of technologies to their dissemination. Co-sponsors MIT, Franklin W. Olin College, and Cooper Perkins will be joined by the 2010 host institution, Colorado State University, in developing and implementing the curriculum. IDDS 2010 aims to guide project teams through the process of becoming viable ventures. Curriculum includes key principles from the Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise program at CSU, the D-Lab program at MIT and the Design Stream at Olin College.
