Smart and Sustainable Toolkits for Self-Sufficiency Pull People from Poverty

The Grupo para Promover la Educacion y el Desarrollo Sustentable, or GRUPEDSAC, is doing something amazing.

The non-profit organization, lead by Margarita Barney and based in Mexico, has developed an eco-techniques toolkit that improves the living conditions in rural communities. The toolkit includes a variety of tools that an area needs to live comfortably - and sustainably.

Focusing on utilizing appropriate technologies, the toolkits include such items as cisterns for rainwater harvesting, so that citizens don't have to depend on unreliable, expensive or polluted municipal water sources; a solar dehydrator for preserving foods during harvest seasons; a wind/solar generator or an electricity-generating bicycle so homes away from sources of electricity may have lights in the evenings; a solar water heater and a rope pump; a solar oven or wood burning stove and many more items that are ideal for low-impact living.

GRUPEDSAC provides the tool kits for communities living below poverty levels, and teaches them to become self-sufficient for food, water, shelter and energy, raising the standard of living without raising the environmental footprint of the community. Addressing both poverty and sustainability simultaneously, GRUPEDSAC stands apart from many projects that forget or ignore the impacts of comfortable living. And that's just why they were recently nominated as a Tech Award Laureate.

Helping People Improve While Maintaining Sustainable Lives

When it comes to helping an area "improve," some of the best intentions are rife with unsustainable consequences. That's why projects like GROUPEDSAC that keep sustainable living front and center of their humanitarian projects are so vital. They prove that we can all have comfortable, healthy, and sustainable lives.

Other projects that exemplify this include the Backpack Farm Project, which gives people in developing areas everything they need to raise crops with eco-friendly techniques; Alimon, the German non-profit organization that has been working to bring drinking water to Peruvians since 2006 through tools that harvest fog; and the Fair Wage Guide, simple, free tool that puts the pricing of handmade goods into a localized framework, helping users figure out what is a fair living wage to request in exchange for their work.