Simple Ways of Beating Poverty – Thinking Outside A 5 Star Hotel Room

A dietary staple for millions around the world, peanuts have long required painstaking hand-shelling that has limited their potential as a cash crop for farmers in developing nations. But the Full Belly Project has made peanut shelling as easy as riding a bike by bringing their pedal-powered peanut sheller to tiny villages in remote corners of the world.But for a half-billion people worldwide, peanut shelling is a task that consumes two months of every year. Methods for shelling the nuts vary as Rosenblith explains, “In Africa you will see seven-year-old kids with these big pieces of wood. They will make games out of it. Like one person will pick it up, throw it down. They’ll just do that for hours.”

It’s hard work that usually falls on the shoulders of women and children. Director of engineering for the Full Belly Project, Jock Brandis first observed this labor while repairing a water pump in Mali. Brandis had no formal engineering training. His college major was anthropology. But his friend, who was working in Mali with the Peace Corps, knew he could fix anything and wrote to ask for his help.

Haunted by the images of the gnarled, scarred fingers of the women in Mali, Brandis began working in his backyard to create a simple machine that would shell peanuts. He developed a machine that could be produced out of inexpensive and even free parts, readily available in the third world. Oil barrels. Sand bags. Concrete.

Rosenblith joined Brandis and coined their work “open source appropriate technology.” Appropriate technology, Rosenblith says, is “starting from nothing or starting with what people have and basically reaching them where they are, rather than telling them what they need to do.”

“A lot of international development work occurs from four-star hotels in the capital cities of the countries that economists are working in,” Rosenblith says. “They need to step out of their four-star hotels, go into the villages, and ask simpler questions.”

Full Belly Project

Full Article (with video) from the Redhat Magazine