5 April 2017: Alan Bundy

I will talk about my favourite charity, Practical Action. It promotes the use of appropriate technology in the developing world, to help people out of poverty. It's founded on the ideas of E. F. Schumacher, who wrote the book "Small is Beautiful". It identifies the problems faced by poor people in developing countries, then designs technological aids to help address those problems. A vital part of those designs is that the technology can be built and maintained cheaply by local people, which is why it is called 'appropriate'.

I'll give lots of examples of the kinds of appropriate technologies that have been successful.