Open: NCIIA 14th Annual Conference

Engineering student projects that address problems in the developing world are becoming increasingly common. Difficulties that arise from collaboration with remote communities and academic institutions raise important ethical questions, e.g, the degree to which meaningful input from the stakeholders is incorporated into the technical component of the project and the quality and duration of the interaction between the constituent groups.

To ensure maximum benefit to both parties, this panel believes that searching questions need to be asked that specifically address these issues and the question of for whose benefit is the work being undertaken.

These enquiries extend to every aspect of the project, from the possibility of exploitation of the communities in the developing countries to the perception by North American engineering students that technical projects can be formulated without a deep understanding and assessment of the environment within which the solution is to be implemented.

Villgro (formerly Rural Innovations Network) is a social enterprise established in 2001 and based in the Chennai District of Tamilnadu State in India. Its mission is to identify and incubate grassroots technological innovations that can have a significant impact on rural lives and enable these innovations to reach rural markets. Villgro identifies these innovations and helps to develop and market them. Villgro believes that many rural innovations can be successfully commercialized as micro-enterprises benefiting rural consumers and contributing to sustainable wealth creation. Once a model is established to transform ideas with potential into reality, a virtuous cycle comes in to operation, encouraging further innovation and wealth creation in rural areas. As an incubator, Villgro impacts all aspects of this cycle: innovation, rural enterprise, rural users and wealth creation. The panelists are interested in sharing their experiences with innovation, enterprise and development with attendees, with an aim to initiate a dialogue on technology, creativity and the synergies needed to enable the rural poor to overcome poverty.