Technology

I have always thought of humanitarian design as a concrete thing, a product or material etc. and more specifically something that is readily available or accessible in a local area. I am finding , however, that systems and technology play an important role in design based aid. For DeSE I looked at a few organizations that fit this category: Kiva, One Laptop per Child (aka the $100 laptop) and Vodafone.

One thing all of these organizations have in common is technology. They all utilize basic technological tools which are no more than 25 years old, to aid third world communities, some of which have infrastructure hundreds of years behind the first world.

The first such organization, Kiva, uses the internet to connect Micro Finance Institutions (MFI’s) to lenders in the first world, in order to support poverty stricken entrepreneurs.

One Laptop per Child (OLC) strives to improve primary education by bringing computers to impoverished school systems.

The third, Vodafone, brings cell phones to communities sans communication in order to increase productivity and in some cases provide a business for an individual (to sell the use of their phone as a service so they can raise capital).

These companies, although tackling different problems with different tools, share the same end goal: decrease poverty, and the same means: technology.

Despite their similarities Kiva, OLC and Vodafone differ in somewhat drastic ways; they all operate on different levels. Kiva is strictly a service to link individual to individual, lender to borrower. Kiva is expressly concerned with tackling poverty on that individual level and thereby would be considered a ‘bottom-up’ system of aid.

OLC provides a product, the $100 laptop, which can be bought by the government or an individual school or school system. Therefore it can be bottom up, but it is designed to be a more traditional aid system where the government buys and distributes to the poor. Also, where Kiva and Voda are tackling poverty by increasing productivity OLC is doing so by increasing education.

Vodafone is somewhere in between Kiva and OLC. The company provides a product and service at a cost, for profit. This is a bottom-up system as well, where the productivity of individuals and communities is increased in turn stimulating the economy.

Other than technology these three organizations do have one other thing in common; they are all successful. Just goes to show there’s more than one way to skin the proverbial cat that is poverty.

NOTE: Vodafone is not only a humanitarian organization but also a regular cell phone provider.