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Gadgets for the poor

David Minthorn

NEW YORK: A new breed of industrial designers is confronting Third World poverty with innovative products aimed at encouraging rural entrepreneurs.

Instead of advocating aid giveaways with uncertain results, these socially conscious designers hew to the profit motive and sell their products to the poor. They say their strategy fosters dignity, not dependence, and ensures sustainability.

By creating simple, efficient gadgets for poor countries, the designers aim to provide mostly Africans, Asians and Latin Americans with the means to generate cash on local markets.

Low-cost water purifiers, crop preservers, wireless lighting, drip irrigation and load-carrying bicycles are among the simple but ingenious products being mass-produced under the humanitarian design trend.

An exhibition of more than 30 such devices opened on Friday at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, turning the Fifth Avenue mansion's garden into a global village.

On view are shelters, water purifiers and monsoon storage units, solar lighting systems, a solar-dish kitchen, a pit latrine kit and two-wheeled transporters. There is even a hand-powered laptop computer, price $100, on display.

"Design for the Other 90 Percent," closes on September 23.

— AP

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