We've been entered into Cultivate Wines' The Give contest to receive up to $50,000, which would go toward funding this project in Indonesia to empower women to become entrepreneurs - so help us win by voting for Kopernik here and encouraging others to vote for us as well! Must be 21+ to vote, and you can vote once every day until June 30th.
You know what Friday means on our blog: a new post for our K-lab Weekly Archive! K-lab Weekly is a mailing list for those who want to stay abreast with advancements in the fields of appropriate technology and international development, one article synopsis at a time. All past entries will be accessible from our K-lab Weekly Archive, right here on our blog! To receive new entries every week, sign up here.
Photo by Maximiliano Ortega
Synopsis by Jordi J. Tablada
Rural areas all over the world face the challenge of deforestation and the price increasing of fuel. Wood and kerosene are usually used as cooking fuels, contributing to deforestation and producing smoke that increase indoor air pollution and cause respiratory diseases. Biodigesters may offer a clean, healthy and economic alternative for fuel to domestic households, but the high cost of building one has always limited the technology's adoption in farming communities.
A biodigester is designed to obtain not only biogas to use as cooking fuel, but also natural fertilizer from the decomposition of organic materials, mainly animal manure. The fertilizer produced is free of parasites, protozoa and other disease-causing bacteria, such as E.coli, because of the high methane environment in a biodigester unit. The biogas produced can be connected to the kitchen with pipes to supply fuel for the stove; and best of all, it burns a clear blue flame.
In his detailed manual published in 2009, Maximiliano Ortega shows how to build and install a low-cost, polyethylene biodigester unit based on real experience in Belize. You can learn from his experience here.
By Lincoln Rajali Sihotang, Kopernik Project Officer
Two weeks ago, the last shipment of the technology products arrived at the Pekka Centre in Kelubagolit, East Flores. In total, we have delivered over 1,200 life-changing technology products (Nazava Water Filters, d.light solar lights and UB.03-1 Biomass Stoves) to our local partner Pekka in East Nusa Tenggara (Nusa Tenggara Timur/NTT). The members of Pekka NTT are all female heads of households and they are spread out in 7 sub-districts of East Flores. Due to the remoteness of these areas, the shipment of the technology was a big challenge. A combination of ships, trucks, boats and cars was needed to bring the technologies to these destinations. Changing the means of transportation entailed the additional cost of paying local porters to load and unload the products. This process not only resulted in the significant cost of shipping but also a long delivery time - ranging from 1 to 2.5 months, until the products finally reached the beneficiaries.
A family that has no electricity is enjoying dinner using the d.light S250 solar light.
The fuel-efficient UB.03-1 Biomass Stove is replacing a traditional 3-stone fire with harmful smoke.
By using the Nazava water filter, this woman is now able to drink the water from her well without having to boil it.
This technology dissemination is part of the Agents of Technology – Agents of Change project, a partnership between Kopernik and Pekka. Through this partnership, Kopernik provides Pekka in NTT with life-changing technologies on consignment that Pekka members can choose to purchase for themselves and/or sell to their communities to earn commission. The result of the baseline survey we conducted recently shows that the average income of Pekka members in NTT is a very low and therefore Kopernik and Pekka have developed a system that includes a combination of payment by installments and partial subsidy to enable Pekka members to afford the technologies.
A happy woman - one of the Pekka members with her new Nazava water filter.
This woman does not need to rely on electricity anymore to recharge her mobile phone because she now has the d.light S250 solar light.
Following the delivery of these technologies, we sent a field staff who is currently there to assist the women with the proper usage, maintenance, repair and warranty system of the technologies. We will post more about this in the coming weeks.
All photos by Laura Surroca
Another past K-lab Weekly synopsis for you this Friday! K-lab Weekly is a mailing list for those who want to stay abreast with advancements in the fields of appropriate technology and international development, one article synopsis at a time. All past entries will be accessible from our K-lab Weekly Archive, right here on our blog! To receive new entries every week, sign up here.
Photo by RFID Journal
Synopsis by Lincoln Rajali Sihotang
After the devastating earthquake in January 2010 and the outbreak of cholera in the following months, it became critical to have safe water in Haiti. An American NGO, Deep Spring International (DSI) has been distributing water treatment kits to Haiti since 2007. Each kit consists of a five-gallon plastic bucket with a lid and a spigot, as well as a chlorine solution. DSI sends water technicians to households who use its kits to check whether those households are utilizing them properly and to provide additional chlorine when needed. If the aid workers don’t visit the households regularly, the locals easily revert to drinking unclean water, which promotes the spread of cholera.
Starting in October 2010, to help it better manage its water technicians and the data they generate, DSI equipped them with mobile phones that use radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to track adequate levels of chlorine in each household's kit. When a water technician visits a home, he or she would use the mobile phone to idenftify the kit's RFID tag and receive programmed questions on the phone, such as, "How much chlorine is left (in the household supply)?" and "How much chlorine did you sell?". When the technician responds to these prompts, that information is sent as an SMS text message to the FrontlineSMS software running on DSI's back-end server. Using RFID, the report information is current, more reliable and properly detailed. The system also verifies that control visits have actually been done.
Read the full article about DSI's mobile technology integration from RFID journal here.
On Friday the 15th of April 2012, Hazel, Nelsie and I headed to Tingloy Island to conduct community education campaigns on the Gelacio I Yason Foundation Family Farm School’s (GIYF-FFS) d.light solar project. Tingloy Island is Just off the southwest coast of Batangas, Luzon and about a 6 hour Journey from Roxas, Oriental Mindoro. Tingloy Island has minimal fresh water and electricity is supplied to the island via a generator for restricted hours. We stayed with the Barangay Captain in San Juan, who fed us well and helped us to organise our activities. Over the weekend we ran community events and got a great turn out. Some of the local fishermen were even talking about how the d.light S10 could help them with squid fishing at night.
Masasa Beach on Tingloy Island
On our return from Tingloy Island we were straight back to work. Hazel and I have been working hard on the development of our sales and marketing materials. The next step was to introduce all our fellow teachers and staff members to the d.light products. As the Farm School’s teachers will be running the majority of our solar community education campaigns it was important to equip them with all the relevant information they would need.
Hazel demonstrating the features of d.light S250 to staff members of GIYF-FFS
The following day the Teachers had a chance to test out what they had learnt from our sales and marketing training at a community event in San Rafael. In the afternoon, Hazel and I set out to talk to the San Mariano community about the Farm School’s Solar Project. Many of the store owners were very excited about the d.light S10 and S250 as it meant that they could open their stores for longer hours in the evenings and common power shortages would cause less problems for their stores.
San Rafael community members at our community education campaign
Ate Wilma (store owner) testing out her new d.light S10
On Friday morning staff members Teacher Annabelle, Hazel and I headed to Villa Rosario for another community education and product demonstration campaign. In the afternoon, we continued to give another presentation session in San Mariano, another area where the majority of the community members have no access to electricity.
Community participants in Villa Rosario
The past week has been filled mostly with presentations and product demonstrations. It has been a tiring week but also an exciting one because we got to introduce a new solution to the lighting problem in Oriental Mindoro and I am happy to be part of it.
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