Where did the idea for the Bamboo Bike Project come from?
The Earth Institute at Columbia University has a track record of doing this kind of thing. The idea was also fairly simple. Once I saw Craig Calfee’s bamboo bike design I thought it would be great if we could incorporate it into the Millennium Villages we have in various parts of Africa. Transport is always a real problem in these communities so this is a great way of using a natural resource to improve transport.
What are the Millennium Villages?
The idea is to fight poverty at the local level through community-led development so that rural Africa can achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015 – reducing extreme poverty and hunger by half and improving education, health, gender equality and environmental sustainability. We work with villages to create action plans that are tailored to the villages’ specific needs and we try to incorporate new advances in science and technology into the projects.
