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At least 6 awards are made each year to teams that demonstrate innovative solutions to problems in local, national, and international communities. Each winning team has demonstrated to the judges that their project was innovative, sustainable, and feasible. Having a good idea is an important first step, but it's just an idea. Each of the following projects is an idea brought to life through the team's energy and dedication. We wish you good luck in conceiving and developing your own ideas this year, and please check out the Get Connected part of this site if you'd like to learn how we can help you along the way.
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5000 IDEAS International Technology Awards
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3000 IDEAS Award
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3000 IDEAS Graduate Student Award
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2000 IDEAS Community Building Award
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2000 IDEAS Domestic Project Award
In Bonito Oriental, Honduras, 26 communities (50.000 inhabitants) are currently receiving contaminated drinking water. Calcium Hypochlorite treatment systems were implemented after Hurricane Mitch (1998), however none of these have proved effective. The objective of this project is to ensure safe drinking water to these communities, using a design that is of low cost, low maintenance and made of readily available materials. An important aspect of the current system's inefficiency is the fact that the chlorine addition to the water is not sensitive to changing inflow rates. Thus, at high flow rates the water will not be mixed with sufficient chlorine. We designed a solution based on an additional pipe branched off of the main inflow pipe. Water flowing through this tube will run through a contracted section lowering the pressure at that point. The flow of the concentrated chlorine will then increase with increase in the water flow. This provides a system that produces a constant chlorine dosage without any moving parts or increased maintenance. Careful consideration needs to be paid to the human aspect of the project. Therefore, a handbook will be written in order to provide detailed descriptions on how the system should be run. While our group is focusing on one village, 25 other communities in the area are experiencing the same problem. Through the use of the handbook these communities could use our solution, too. Our team works in collaboration with a local NGO and with Centro Técnico San Alonso Rodríguez, a strong community leader. Download Proposal
Lack of access to clean drinking water is one of the largest health problems facing the developing world today. In order to ensure that drinking water is clean, it must be tested for the presence of microbial contamination. The TestWaterCheap team has designed an inexpensive testing device, the Zip Aqua II, which costs only $13! This is much lower than the standard equipment's $1000, a price far too expensive for most small technical centers in developing countries. These centers usually do not test drinking water quality because they cannot afford the expensive equipment. Our invention will allow them to test local drinking water frequently and inexpensively. The Zip Aqua II is a device that allows water to be vacuum-pulled through a filter paper. This is an essential step in “membrane filtration” -- the accepted method for quantitative water testing. Our innovative product incorporates all the necessary features of a membrane filtration device into a unique baby bottle design. Additional components convert these baby bottles into water-testing equipment. The resulting design is both easy to use and inexpensive. Our community partners – the MIT Design-Lab class, a technical center in Honduras, and an NGO working in El Salvador – are eager to test drinking water sources and water treatment systems with our product. By enabling more frequent testing, the Zip Aqua II will help to provide more people worldwide with access to clean drinking water. Download Proposal
The Parabolic Power Project aims to create a modular core unit that concentrates the sun's energy using a reflective parabolic trough and an absorber to store and transfer heat to an application appropriate to rural Lesotho; such as cooking, electricity generation, running a pump or refrigeration. The innovation of this project lies in the modularity of the parabolic concentration unit, its robust and simple construction using locally available materials, and its efficacy as a multi-purpose energy source for off grid applications. This project can be accomplished using materials available in southern Africa and fabrication techniques currently employed at the Bethel Business and Community Development Center (BBCDC) in rural Lesotho. BBCDC has already successfully designed and deployed a parabolic trough unit for cooking loaves of bread, but the current model suffers from flaws in the optics, efficiency losses and is difficult to construct and transport. Our design simplifies the construction, improves the optics and maximizes the thermal efficiency of the parabolic trough in addition to making it modular to increase functionality. The enhanced parabolic power unit will aid BBCDC both in its mission as a leader in education for sustainable development and as a manufacturer and distributor of renewable energy applications. After transfer and demonstration of the design, BBCDC can implement this technology at the grassroots level through existing market mechanisms, alleviating the widespread dependence on expensive diesel, Liquid Natural Gas or Photovoltaic panels for remote power applications. Download Proposal
Hurricanes and flooding in the Rio Aguan Basin in Honduras have claimed the lives of thousands of local inhabitants. Government-sponsored volunteer-operated and radio-based early warning systems (EWS) already in place have proven to be insufficient in the region of large basins to ensure efficient evacuations in the case of emergencies. In partnership with the local NGO Centro Tecnico San Alonso Rodriguez we seek to implement a supplementary automated early warning system that will provide 24-hour monitoring of the current river and weather conditions in the Rio Aguan Basin, and will automatically issue an emergency alert when one is warranted. Our system will consist of water flow meters that will wirelessly transmit data to a central information system. If flooding is imminent, the system will issue an emergency alert that will signal the at-risk communities to evacuate. This system will help prevent future loss of life due to natural disasters in the Rio Aguan Basin area, and if effective could serve as an early warning system model for other areas to adopt. Download Proposal Speakeasy is a community-based telephone service that allows immigrants to establish conference calls with social service agencies and volunteer "guides" – knowledgeable community members who perform language translation and provide referrals to social services and neighborhood businesses. Speakeasy differs from other telephone translation services by drawing on language expertise within the community of need. Unlike bilingual operators employed by city agencies, Speakeasy guides are members of the communities they serve, and are intimately familiar with the challenges immigrants face. Guides' services are not limited to one or several agencies; instead, they can assist with any type of telephone call, and can also act as "virtual translators" for face to face interactions. Speakeasy provides a means of civic engagement without the time and space constraints constraining traditional volunteerism. Guides register their mobile and hard-line phone numbers and schedules with Speakeasy and receive calls at the time and place of their choosing. This design allows guides to maintain community ties while simultaneously fulfilling work, family, and other responsibilities. Powered by open source software and “outdated” hardware, speakeasy provides a low-cost, community-based solution to language and cultural barriers impeding immigrants' access to services and information. Drawing on tacit knowledge and informal social networks to overcome real-world barriers, speakeasy also contributes to ongoing community development efforts by promoting civic engagement, building social capital, and enhancing the community’s sense of its “collective efficacy.” A prototype of speakeasy has recently been completed. It will be deployed for a limited evaluation in Boston's Chinatown neighborhood in March, 2004. Download Proposal
There are approximately 10 million blind or visually impaired people in North America; around 109,000 blind people in the United States use canes to get around, and another 7,000 use seeing-eye dogs. The need for assistive vision technologies is clear. Over the past several years, statistical methods have dramatically improved the accuracy and speed of computer vision algorithms; for example, it is now possible to reliably detect faces in a video signal at 15 frames per second. We propose to develop a system which will make use of current computer vision technology to aid blind or visually impaired pedestrians. We will produce a real-time, portable system that will aid in wayfinding for blind people, specifically the task of crossing the street. The first concrete task we plan to tackle is the pattern recognition and interpretation of walk/don't walk lights in the visual field of blind pedestrians using 2D input. Through continued academic research and in collabartion with commercial partner organizations such as the Blindsight Corporation, we anticipate that work will be carried on beyond the tenure of this grant. Download Proposal |
