Today, Nominet Trust proudly announced that Not Impossible's award-winning Project Daniel: 3D Printing Prosthetic Arms for Children of War-torn Sudan has been named among the 2014 Nominet Trust 100 (NT100) – a global list of 100 inspiring ventures from around the world.
Projects featured on the list are using technology to tackle some of the world’s biggest social problems from education and human rights abuses to climate change and health. Following a global call for nominations earlier this year, the work of Not Impossible, led by founders Mick Ebeling and Elliot Kotek, has been selected by an independent steering committee in recognition of its crowd-sourcing approach to inventing and enabling low-cost technological solutions to solve seemingly impossible problems.
Not Impossible's life-altering endeavor, Project Daniel, recently celebrated its one-year anniversary. The subject of Intel's "Look Inside" campaign, Project Daniel saw Ebeling travel to Sudan to 3D-print and fit prosthetic limbs for children of the war-torn region, where he then left the equipment behind with locals he'd trained who continued the work after he left, thus establishing the world's first 3D-printing prosthetic lab and training facility.
Costing just $100 USD in materials, arms can be printed over the course of a day or two. In the past year alone, despite civil flare-ups in the South, and a bombing raid on the hospital that houses the equipment, the trained locals have printed over a dozen limbs for their own community. And the work of Project Daniel has just begun, with its impact resonating through the global movement it has helped to lead. Time Magazine said of Project Daniel, "It's hard to imagine any other device doing more to make the world a better place."
The project made with the support of Precipart and Intel, and which became the subject of Intel’s “Look Inside: Mick Ebeling” campaign, quickly rose to global prominence, hitting 420 million earned media impressions in 14 weeks and scaling 800 million within 6 months of its CES launch.
The NT100 inclusion is added to a list of honors earned for Project Daniel, including the prized Titanium Cannes Lion, along with 1 Gold (Product Design) and 3 Bronze Lions (Branded Content, Film and Cyber.) Prior to Cannes 2014, Project Daniel garnered prizes including the 2014 One Show Gold Pencil in both Design and Intellectual Property & Products (as well as being tied for “Best in Show”); AICP’s Next Cause Marketing Award, and the work being entered into the permanent film archives at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, as well as the AICP Curator’s Recognition Award by a unanimous vote of the AICP Show Curatorial Committee; the 2014 Silver Telly and Bronze Telly Award; and the 2014 Maker Faire Editor’s Choice Blue Ribbon for creativity, ingenuity and innovation.
Not Impossible won’t stop there. The team is embarking on a slew of new and exciting projects, one of which involves open– source ocular communication interfaces, as well as twelve other life-bettering projects currently in the works.
This year, Not Impossible is rubbing shoulders with fellow NT100 organizations from established tech markets in the US and Europe, such as Freecycle, Random Hacks of Kindness and Google's self-driving car, alongside initiatives from emerging economies, including eCompliance, a revolutionary use of fingertip-readers to record tuberculosis treatment in India; philanthropic food-photo sharing app Feedie from South Africa and HarassMap, an anonymous crowd-mapping platform for sexual harassment in Egypt.
Annika Small, CEO of Nominet Trust, the UK’s leading tech for good funder, said: “There is a striking progression in the quality and maturity of this year’s NT100, indicative of a wider evolution in the ‘tech for social good’ sector as a whole. More people than ever before are using technology to solve problems that matter to them in bold new ways. This year’s NT100 list is populated by extraordinary people with inspirational stories to tell and it shows us that imagination, social conscience and technology make a potent mix to affect change.”
The final list was compiled by an illustrious steering group chaired by Annika Small and including General Partner of Google Ventures, Tom Hulme; angel investor and entrepreneur, Sherry Coutu; Chief Executive of Big Lottery Fund, Dawn Austwick; CEO of Big Society Capital, Nick O’Donohue; Director of Wayra Europe, Simon Devonshire; innovation expert, Charles Leadbeater; internet entrepreneur, Dickie Armour; Senior Fellow at the Stanford University Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, Lucy Bernholz; and Deputy Editor of The FT Weekend Magazine, Alice Fishburn.
To see the full list of NT100 projects, please visit the Social Tech Guide, a dynamic, growing online resource to help inspire social enterprises, or follow the action @socialtechguide / #2014NT100.
Important related web-links:
Social Tech Guide – http://socialtech.org.uk/
2014 NT100 – http://socialtech.org.uk/nominet-trust-100/2014/
http://socialtech.org.uk/nominet-trust-100/2013/
Nominet Trust – http://www.nominettrust.org.uk/
About Nominet Trust
Nominet Trust is the UK’s only dedicated Tech for Good funder. The Trust is committed to realizing the potential of digital technology to address complex social challenges. A UK registered charity, Nominet Trust brings together, invests in and supports people committed to using digital technology in imaginative ways to create social and economic value.
Nominet Trust has invested more than £20 million in hundreds of UK-based ventures since its inception, providing business support as well as financial investment, connecting ventures to prospective partners who can help increase their reach and impact.
For more information, visit http://www.nominettrust.org.uk
