VillageTech Solutions
The company works to improve the welfare of Nepal's rural people by offering transport and energy systems that are safe, efficient, inexpensive,
Description
VTS (VillageTech Solutions) is a small team dedicated to creating viable technical solutions to problems that limit welfare of people in the developing world.
Under the name EcoSystems we designed and built 38 "WireBridges" in Nepal that provided safe carriage across rivers.
We redesigned the commercial banana-cableway transport system to be a low-cost, low-(environmental) impact common carrier, but due to the Maoist insurgency had to sideline this work.
The 'tractor' we designed is now be adopted back into the banana industry.
We designed a pedal-power system to provide energy for lighting to villages lacking both the grid and suitable insolation, but this was terminated after field trials encountered a "social obstacle to pedaling".
The charge controller designed for this pedal system was reconfigured by our former Nepal manager to be the heart of the quite successful SunLight solar system. Nearly 1000 Nepalese families displaced by the 2015 earthquake now have SunLights.
For the past seven years we have been designing a 'delivery device', Looma, that can bring 'the world' to remote schools that lack electric power, Internet and/or financial resources. Many university teams have contributed to the hardware and software design, and we have conducted seven 'summer camps' with 15 to 20 interns who code, and gather and process content.
The 2019 summer camp has 20 interns. All will focus on creating top-quality 'lesson plans' that will be added to the twelve Looma in the field, on a monthly basis. Support for this yearlong Pilot test has come from several Nepalese organizations including Teach for Nepal, Ullens School, and the UMN.