Notes on a Nonprofit, a regular feature of NEW’s blog, profiles nonprofit organizations in southeast Michigan.
This month’s featured nonprofit is Appropriate Technology Collaborative (ATC). NEW asked John Barrie, the Executive Director of ATC, to answer a few questions about his organization.
What is the Appropriate Technology Collaborative?
The Appropriate Technology Collaborative (ATC) is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization whose purpose is to design, develop, demonstrate and distribute appropriate technological solutions for meeting the basic human needs of low income people in the developing world. ATC works in collaboration with our clients and other nonprofits (NGOs) to create technologies that are culturally sensitive, environmentally responsible and locally repairable in order to improve the quality of life, enhance safety, and reduce adverse impacts on their environment.
Our design partners are the people and the communities we serve. We create long term relationships with our client communities so that we can better understand and design for their particular needs. We make our designs available online, licensed through Creative Commons for anyone in the developing world to use or improve upon.
Some of our more popular designs are: A high efficiency solar lighting system to replace kerosene lamps. Kerosene is used to light the homes of about two billion people worldwide. Our solar lighting system is brighter, less likely to burn your house down and it costs less than kerosene. We also have a solar refrigerator. This was designed by engineering students at Michigan State University. It has no moving parts and it doesn’t use electricity. You just put it in the sun and it makes things very cold. We also have a treadle pump designed by the University of Michigan BLUELab students. This manual water pump can give a rural farmer the ability to grow more crops and to grow higher value crops. It pays for itself in one season and after that it can increase the income of a rural farm family by 200%.
For our most recent news please check out the Appropriate Technology Collaborative Blog.
How did The Appropriate Technology Collaborative get its start?
I’ve been an architect and designer for a long time. I’ve often worked on projects for low income people. When traveling in South America in 2004, I realized that living conditions for the very poor could be significantly improved with very little money, just better design. My ah-ha moment was when I thought about the thousands of designers I’ve met over the years. Not one of them was devoted full time to designing things for the poor. I figured I had the market to myself.
Tell us a little about John Barrie.
I’m a local Ann Arbor resident, I attended the University of Michigan, I have degrees in both Mathematics and Architecture and my favorite color is green. I’m married to Karen Connor whom I met in high school. We have three kids, two cats and five computers.
What are some needs for which ATC is currently trying to develop solutions?
We are looking for ways to economically provide clean water, electricity and products that help families earn more money, improve education and improve the environment.
If people want to help ATC, what can they do?
People can contact us through our website, www.apptechdesign.org. We also will be having a fundraising event in the near future. It will be designed to be informative and really fun. All the cool kids will be there