1. Motivation

Modern design, engineering, and manufacturing techniques did wonders to consumer products; high functionality, and high reliability at a declining cost. Think of a DVD player or a cell phone. These complex products are made of hundreds of components, shipped around the world and retailed at a cost less that $40. These developments were driven by low risk, high margin markets. Markets in poor areas are more challenging. Besides limited financial resources, poor areas lack distribution and communication infrastructures. For this reason, products needed in poor areas did not benefit from modern advances in product development technologies. This is an unfortunate situation as poor people need the best engineering and best products for their essential needs. Too often, their products are badly engineered and more expensive than equivalent products in wealthier areas.

One example is wood fire for cooking. Today, two billion people in the world use wood and other biomass fuels for cooking, an increasingly heavy burden on their daily life, health, and the environment. Majorities of stoves used in poor regions are fuel inefficient and produce toxic emissions. Today, we can develop more efficient and affordable stoves … if only we take the time to design them to local needs, and we help setup a self-sustaining market model to support their dissemination.

2. What do we do?

• We design products and develop design tools that are focused on the needs of poor people. We make our designs with detailed design and manufacturing specifications available free of charge to all entrepreneurs operating in poor areas.
• NGOs and aid agencies are our target audience and primary customers.
• We provide tools and information to help local entrepreneurs make better products.

3. Who are we?

We are a non-profit group of scientists, engineers, designers, and business professionals. We want to improve the quality of life in poor areas by providing sustainable solutions.

Our experience is in design, analysis, tooling, mass productions, materials, physics, management of product development, and business practices.

4. How do we do it?

• Our goal is to act as a technical support to local NGOs.
• We work with local NGOs to select and define problems we can solve effectively.
• Once a solution is developed, we rely on the NGOs to carry out pilot testing, and provide training to manufacturers and users.
• We do field work, as needed, to get first hand experience of local needs and preferences, local materials, and local manufacturing skills. 
• We work with users in poor areas, to test, develop, and iteratively refine our product and tools. At the end of the project, we publish our design and make tools and processes available, free of charge, to other NGOs, aid agencies, and entrepreneurs.

5. What do we offer?

Below is a brief overview of what we offer currently and what is under development. Please, do not hesitate to ask for detailed information. If we don’t have what you need, let us know. We can point to an existing source, or consider your need in our future projects.

5.1. Product designs and manufacturing specifications:

• We make design and manufacturing specifications available online at our website www.SunSmiles.org, free of charge.
• Current offering: Improved wood oven, hybrid solar-gas oven. Several field studies completed.
• Current focus area: arid and high altitude rural areas in Morocco
• Under development: improved wood kilns, improved wood heater, stove manufacturing kit for emergency situations (refugee camps, and natural disasters).

5.2. Online Design tools:

We develop computer tools to assist field workers to adapt proven designs to their specific needs, and to generate construction drawings.

• Current offerings: online calculator to design wood stove/oven and solar cooker to various local conditions (pot sizes, energy source: wood/solar, cooker efficiency, amount of energy)
• Under development: Automated parametric CAD drawing generators for products, manufacturing templates and jigs, manufacturing and assembly steps. Also, templates to build display products (at full or reduced scales) can be generated.
• Under development: Heat transfer performance simulator: an online tool to simulate the heat transfer performance of a parameterized design. This tool allows several design iterations, reducing the needs for lengthy and expensive physical tests. These tools and simulator will be available online for places with internet access. Areas with no internet can download tools to be run on offline computers. Access to tools as well as to source code are available free of charges.

6. What we need:

6.1. People

• Project manager: make and execute projects plan, prioritize tasks, coordinate field work, manage funding and interactions with foundations, NGOs, and aid agencies.
• Technical: CFD/Heat transfer experience, web programmer (online tools), web publisher, programmer (freeware CFD tools customization), and ceramist.

6.2. Material

• Software donation or access: CFD, CAD, Geometric preprocessor (mesh) … preference: Fluent or CFD-RC, ABAQUS , Pro/Engineer
• Testing equipment: thermocouples, lab scales, access to sheet metal shop, access to kiln

6.3. Funding

• Funding for field work (travel expenses, prototyping materials, temporary hiring of local artisans)
• Software acquisition (ABAQUS, Fluent, Pro/Engineer)

6.4. Partners:

Our current partners are Aprovecho, Potters for Peace, SGP/GEF (Smal Grant Program/Global Environment Fund) Office in Morocco , CDER (Center for Development of Renewable Energy , Morocco ), and Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab at Berkeley University .

We are welcoming new partners in technical collaboration, technology implementation, and funding. Please, don’t hesitate to send us questions or request specific proposals.