In Maha Atma Gandhi's very own words, first broadcast by All India Radio

 Gandhi’s words in the Telecom Italia TV ad:
“If you want to give a message it must be a message of ‘Love’, it must be a message of ‘Truth’. I want to capture your hearts. Let your hearts clap in unison with what I’m saying. A friend asked yesterday, ‘Did I believe in one world?’ How can I possibly do otherwise, of course I believe in one world”.

Background information for meeting with MDA on Friday, 13

Bunker Roy’s Barefoot College located in Tilonia, Rajasthan is the unique starting point for a story of resourcefulness and innovation under the most adverse conditions. The liminal space where high technology meets utter poverty can arguably be one of the most creative environments churning up such inventions as an amphibious bicycle in remote Bihar, car battery cellphone charging systems or even bamboo poles converted into antennas in an African village with no running water or electricity.

Originally supposed to be a one hour documentary on the barefoot solar engineers of Tilonia, illiterate women not only from the neighbouring villages of the desert state of Rajasthan in India, but now coming on scholarships from as far away as Mali, Uganda and Ethiopia, to learn how to build and maintain solar powered cookers and generators, the concept currently under discussion seeks to expand the sharing of the knowledge gained across geographical, cultural and language barriers.

ShareIdeas.org is a recently launched initiative by Vodafone and Nokia – an open source community based social media platform intended to support and propagate the sharing of information between NGO’s and other aid workers across the world on how mobiles can be used to improve the social and economic development of those at the bottom of the pyramid. This is currently in the wiki format and in English and only for mobile handset applications. It’s reach is limited to the literate and the internetworked.
Six months ago, at the Confederation of Indian Industry/NID Design Summit in New Delhi,

I spoke on the resourceful inventions and innovations that those who lived amongst conditions of extreme scarcity created as solutions to their daily needs. To quote:
What I propose is that take Prof Anil Gupta’s work at the National Innovation Foundation, where teams of field workers keep their eye open for inventions in their travels through rural India and expand this into a global network. Numerous ingenious solutions have emerged, and as they have been developed under the most adverse conditions, are as ecologically sound as possible in terms of materials, recycling, energy etc consumed. […]

This “mash up” as they say, where information meets technology meets rural innovation can arguably provide a solution to not only India’s most pressing needs but also to more pressing problems facing all of us in the world today. A two way exchange of information that empowers, permits cocreation and connectivity, communication and commerce, will ensure that the next inventor in remote Bihar who develops an amphibious bicycle would not need to travel cross country to be noticed, funded, or noticed globally. India herself would have put him on the world map.

Solutions, business models, products and services that use the minimum of scarce resources, recycle or reuse materials, leave a minimal footprint on the environment and are sustainable have been extensively documented amongst the poor. But to our educated eyes they seem crude and primitive. So they are very often overlooked or ignored. Only the latest technology can provide us with solutions for the future, we seem to say.

What can we learn from these inventions and innovations as we look towards creating a sustainable ecofriendly lifestyle? The technically proficient, the engineering experts, the world class designers are all who practice in conditions of abundance. They create with no shortage of materials, funds, resources, fuel or energy. As the Earth’s climate changes, and the environment suffers, our material and fuel resources become increasingly scarce, we must all seek new ways to making, doing and building.

The idea is to create a multiplatform delivery mechanism for this vital information, building on the Share Ideas concept mentioned above – first to discover and record such learnings from sustainable agriculture practices, renewable energy sources, innovative use of recycled materials, and other devices that improve the quality of life at the bottom of the pyramid. Then to share this information in an open source manner, disseminated with clarity across language and literacy barriers – do we use videos? Pictograms? Simple text? Multiple languages? And to share it on appropriate delivery mechanisms to reach those who need it the most – do they have broadband access? Or just cellphones? Is WAP the best way or is sms? All of these questions and more need to be answered as well. The infohub would form the seed of a global documentary series as well. We hope to cover Brazil, parts of Africa and India if not more locations.