Wednesday, March 26, 2008

3-2-1 Contact!

Last week I attended a conference in Dallas and met a man who is originally from Honduras but is now teaching at MIT. We sat next to each other at a conference luncheon. Frankly, I was intimidated at first. In my imagination, he could probably bend my spoon with his mental prowess, and I would be doing good just to not spill food on myself. But he was interested in our project because it is located in Honduras, his home. He was very helpful.

His uncle has much experience setting up NGO's and for-profit businesses in Honduras, so he could be a tremendous help to us. That is the part of our project that is the cloudiest in my mind. Well, Uncle H., as I like to call him, is in the U.S. at the moment and we spoke on the phone yesterday. We are going to meet up soon and see what advice he might have.

In addition to having a helpful uncle, my new acquaintance from MIT told me of a group called Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (http://www.aidg.org/) that is doing very similar work to what we are trying to do - only they are a few years ahead of us. They implement appropriate technologies to produce energy and water for developing parts of the world. They use hydroelectric as we intend to use, but also wind power, solar power, and biogas. They have an experimental business in Guatemala. Maybe I can swing by and see it while I am in Honduras next month. It's just next door, right?

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