Activity Description: ISI has identified a unique niche market that it believes will translate into a promising business opportunity. In both the U.S. and in Mexico ISI is formalizing agreements with organizations that currently cater to or want to offer products and services to the Latino market. These include hometown community organizations, local and national money transfer, check-cashing and pay-day loan organizations, and local and national convenience store and pharmacy chains. Mexican companies such as Gigante, Elektra and Novamedic are already part of the program.

Activity Description: In developing countries like Cambodia and Laos, low levels of education and poverty reinforce each other. Young adults are often forced to forgo education and take unskilled low-wage jobs. The situation is even more difficult when compounded by a physical disability, deceased or missing parents, or when young women are subjected to the horrors of the sex trade. Digital Divide Data is connecting the power of education and training programs with real job opportunities for disadvantaged individuals.

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Several years ago in Los Mochis, Mexico, an early morning fire in an agrochemical warehouse released massive amounts of toxic fumes into the environment, causing serious health problems for the local population. This was the first in a series of ecological disasters that convinced Jorge Berni, a longtime resident of the agriculture-dependent community, that farmers needed a safer solution for crop control than the heavily toxic pesticides upon which they had relied.

Berni combined his training in chemical engineering with his twenty years of experience as an organic farmer to produce Bug Balancer, a chemical solution that serves to repel harmful pests that destroy farmers’ crops while attracting beneficial insects that are the natural predators of those pests. Local farmers quickly became interested in this solution when they began noticing that while their crops were being ravaged by insects, Jorge’s remained relatively unaffected. Word quickly spread of the benefits of this new, safe formula, and Jorge created Berni Labs in 1994 to increase distribution of the increasingly popular product.

Bug Balancer is an ideal solution for Mexico’s numerous small farmers. The formula is cost effective, as its price is ten times lower than some of the leading pesticides and it eliminates the need for expensive spraying equipment, reducing the cost of application by 20 percent. Bug Balancer is also safe for the environment and for the health of agricultural workers who have been forced to utilize traditional pesticides for a lack of competition. The natural formula includes a number of herbal extracts such as garlic, and it can even be applied with workers still in the field.

Today, Berni Labs has continued to achieve new levels of success as it taps into a growing demand for organic crop cultivation in Mexico. The company’s small team of 14 had its most lucrative year in 2005, generating nearly $1 million in sales by working with 17 distributors across the country. Berni Labs has also begun to expand its operations internationally, winning an enterprise competition with Mexico’s Ministry of Economics to receive government support for research and expansion into the Canadian market.

As Berni Labs continues to establish Bug Balancer as a safe and affordable alternative to pesticides, the company has begun research and field testing on other products to be released in coming years. This includes a formula for shrimp farmers to increase their yields that is based on Bug Balancer technology as well as a project to meet the needs of small ranchers that will inexpensively produce large amounts of livestock feed in a heavily condensed space.

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The Full Belly Project, spearheaded by Jock Brondis, an ex-Peace Corps volunteer and light and sounds engineer, is a non-profit organization that designs and delivers simple agricultural machines to people in developing countries around the world. This project teaches people how to build hand-operated machines with common materials.

The peanut industry is not only huge in the Philippines but the reach goes as far as the different corners of the hemisphere, to almost 100 countries, feeding 500 million people and making it a great source of protein. It is also a cash crop which provides livelihood for poor people of developing countries.

But for such a big industry, the agricultural technology of peanuts is still trailing behind. People are still shelling peanuts by hand, painfully one by one. In Africa, most of those who do the work are women. (To save on fuel, peanuts are left dried under the sun which makes their shell hard to open.)

Jock Brandis, on his way to visit a friend in Mali, saw the heart of the problem and decided to use his technical skills to provide an agricultural solution. Thus the Universal Nut Sheller was born.

Invented by Brandis, the nut sheller can work 40 times faster than by hand. This coincided with the establishment of The Full Belly project spearheaded by Brondis which aims to “to relieve hunger through appropriate agricultural technology.” The goal of the organization is to distribute these machines around the world and make peanut a number one source of protein of third world countries. Brandis, out of his generous heart, didn´t patent his invention because he believes that it is “a gift to those in need.”

Not only can peanut provide livelihood but it contains highly nutritious properties which could solve worldwide hunger and eventually poverty-this time on a full stomach.

The machine is made of concrete and simple metal parts which only cost 50 dollars to make. It can shell “50 kilograms of peanuts per hour, and one machine can serve the needs of a village of 2,000. Its life expectancy is 25 years.” The Full Belly Project is now working in Uganda, Senegal, Zambia and Ghana. Filipino MIT graduate and Centromigrante head Illac Diaz has also collaborated with Full Belly Project with the help of a local cement company to teach locals how to build the machines.

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Activity Description: Since 1999, Kothmale Community Radio (KCR) has been serving as an interface between the rural communities in the central hill region of Sri Lanka and new communication technologies through its Community Multimedia Centre (CMC).

The eTUKTUK is a community building initiative that aims to converge the technological benefits of digital communications and new media with community radio. The eTUKTUK is a self-contained mobile telecentre and radio broadcasting unit housed within a three wheeled motorcycle.

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Founded by three Dutch men in 2005, Kamworks is a Cambodian company that aims at the production and sales of solar energy and other off-grid systems to promote rural development through commercial activity in Cambodia.

Kamworks produces an ultra-high efficiency solar fridge and freezer, a community solar electricity generator, and "Angkor light," a portable solar lantern.

Kamworks has been announced as a winner in the World Bank Development Marketplace Competition with an innovative distribution model for the Angkor Light, in a joint project together with the Khmer Foundation for Justice Peace and Development.

Activity Description: Villagers in India lack access to affordable healthcare. As a result, life expectancy in villages is 8 years less than for city dwellers, the prevalence of disease is high, and diseases of poverty such as malaria and tuberculosis often go untreated.

Jiva’s "TeleDoc" is a low-cost eHealth program which provides effective Ayurvedic healthcare, and brings high-quality medical attention directly to rural India. In the ‘Women's Healthcare’ component, TeleDoc will provide training, software, and village-appropriate information resources addressing women's reproductive health—including pre-natal and post-natal care.

Activity Description: Dimagi offers customized, low-cost services in health informatics and software development through its team of specialists in medicine, public health and engineering, to bridge the gap between clinical needs and engineering constraints.

Dimagi's systems are built upon power efficient and practical, robust hardware platforms that range from mobile phones to mini-PCs. The engineering team has experience developing and deploying systems for rural India, South Africa and Zambia.

Activity Description: A Chinese company has developed an inexpensive Linux-based computer as a way to close the "digital divide." YellowSheepRiver's $150 "Municator" is available now and claims to have performance akin to Pentium III-quality; it is also compared to MIPS's four-way superscalar R10000 processor, which shipped in 1995.
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Whereas the MIT One Laptop Per Child models offer an LCD display and no harddrive, the Chinese model offers an external 40GB USB drive and an S-video cable to support television hook-ups.

Activity Description: Tools for Self Reliance is a UK-based charity that aims to empower artisans working in developing countries so that they can better participate in the development of themselves and their communities. To achieve this, TFSR works with local partner organisations to provide tools and skills training, thereby increasing self-reliance, diversifying incomes, and improving livelihoods.

Recognising that tools are only a small part of the answer to the problems facing the poor, TSFR works with local organisations to take an integrated approach to meeting the needs of rural crafts-workers , such as ensuring availability of credit to crafts-workers, teaching tool-using and repairing skills, as well as business and enterprise training.

Activity Description: The International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) is an independent, non-profit organization that assists developing countries to realise locally-owned, sustainable development, by harnessing the potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs). IICD works with its partner organisations in (currently nine) selected countries, helping local stakeholders to assess the potential uses of ICTs in development.

Activity Description: Although illegal, using charcoal for fuel in Kenya is cheap ($150 per tonne) and therefore popular: more than two million tons of charcoal are used for fuel per year. Chardust Ltd. was founded in 2000 with the aim of producing viable substitutes for charcoal on a commercially sustainable basis. Chardust developed techniques to convert biomass wastes into low-cost charcoal briquettes.

Chardust creates local employment and sells over 200 tonnes per month into institutional and domestic markets in Kenya, displacing an equivalent amount of unsustainably harvested lumpwood charcoal. While providing a cheaper energy alternative to traditional charcoal, Chardust sales contribute to job creation, waste recycling and environmental conservation.