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Cell phones already are widely used in Africa, and Sean Hewens’ vision is to push that existing technology further with computers and other equipment, paving the way for Internet access and computer literacy.
Hewens, a former attorney at WilmerHale, has centered an entire organization on that mission. His nonprofit, Smallbean, has delivered solar-powered computer labs and packages of technology — a laptop, solar power, cameras, audiorecording equipment, portable hard drives, coupled with computer education — to villages in Kenya and Tanzania.
Applied in a variety of ways, technology is at the core of much work being done in developing countries, and Smallbean is among a number of Boston-area nonprofits at the forefront.
Smallbean has created the Citizen Archivist Project — educating about technology through oral history projects.
The organization provides the equipment for communities to document everyday life and upload the information to a digital archive, training them on how to use the devices and putting the Boston-based nonprofit at the place where international development and technology meet.
“Our mission is to close the technology gap,” said Hewens. “The technology is arriving and allowing them to compete in terms of jobs in international marketplace.”
Smallbean took in $22,000 last year, $19,000 through grass-roots fundraising in Boston and $3,000 in corporate fundraising.
Another example of a local nonprofit is Design that Matters, a Cambridge-based organization that designs low-cost medical devices, so far focused on projects related to newborn health.
Working with partner organizations that are based in Africa, Asia and elsewhere, the organization has developed a newborn incubator, a respiratory therapy device and an infant phototherapy device. The equipment is specifically designed to work within the constraints of hospitals in developing countries that lack, for example, electricity, elevators, filtered air and smooth floors.
Design that Matters strips out unnecessary features that are common to domestic devices but drive up the cost. The organization’s respiratory therapy device costs 90 percent less than what a domestic device costs, said Timothy Prestero, CEO of Design that Matters.
Next on the organization’s design agenda, Prestero said, are pediatric hearing aids and posture support chairs for people who use wheelchairs.
Design that Matters’ budget this year is a half-million dollars, and the organization is targeting a $650,000 budget for 2011.
Meanwhile, a group of students at MIT has designed and produced a machine that produces sanitary pads filled with absorbent pulp made from banana tree fiber. The student group is now working on a second version of the machine and is redesigning the sanitary pads based on feedback from women who used them in Rwanda, said Katie Smyth, an MIT graduate student.
Once the design is finalized, the students plan to create a nonprofit that would make the machines available for purchase by women in developing countries, who would buy the machines with microloans and create businesses out of producing and selling the pads.
Smyth said the goal is to develop the right machine and the right product.
“It could be a year or two or even longer by the time we have tons of machines rolling out,” she said.
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