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International Development Design Summit

Project to improve quality of life in third world countries

The International Development Design Summit (IDDS) is a collaboration to find cost effective technology solutions for the third world. It was first held in 2007 at MIT. It is held annually to study problems in the developing world and create real, workable solutions to them.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

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The International Development Design Summit (IDDS) is a collaboration to find cost effective technology solutions for the third world. It was first held in 2007 at MIT. It is held annually to study problems in the developing world and create real, workable solutions to them.2

How it started

Background

"I believe very strongly that solutions to problems in the developing world are best created in collaboration with the people who will be using them", said founder Amy Smith. "By bringing this group of people together, we get an incredibly broad range of backgrounds and experiences.

WorldChanging reported on August 14, 2007 that the results from the first International Development Design Summit (IDDS) had been very positive with end products including an off-grid refrigeration unit tailored for rural areas using an evaporative cooling method to store perishable food and a low-cost greenhouse from recycled and widely available materials.

From Wikipedia’s article on International Development Design Summit, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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