Thursday, September 20, 2007

Open Source hardware - Sustainable development

Something which is often discussed on the LUF Blog is new and interesting uses of the open source way of collaborating with each other. For the last year I have been working on an open source project which brings together hardware designs, software and knowledge, all under an open source umbrella. The project is called Akvo and is about bringing knowledge about sustainable water and sanitation solutions to people who are trying to realize water and sanitation for those that have none.

Why is this important? About 1 billion people do not have access to safe water to drink and more than 2.5 billion people do not have adequate sanitation facilities. This causes huge problems and massive suffering. Millions of children die every year to curable diseases like diarrhea, which happen because of poor access to water and sanitation.