Intermediate Technology (IT) is a British charity working with poor rural communities in nine countries - Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Malawi, Nepal, Peru, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Zimbabwe - to improve the quality of their lives.

IT puts people first. It encourages the use of tools, machinery and methods that make the best use of local knowledge, skills and resources, rather than increasing people's dependence on expensive, imported, often inappropriate machinery.

Training and transferring technical knowledge is at the heart of IT's approach. Finding out the root causes of problems and working out solutions with the people themselves, providing valuable hands-on advice and support.

In 1966 Dr. Fritz Schumacher, a leading economist, realized that this approach could be harnessed by people the world over to work themselves out of poverty. He set up Intermediate Technology to put these ideas into practice, and in 1973 published his ideas in a best-selling book, Small is Beautiful, rather like our bike tour !

An example of their work is helping people design and make robust, locally-made bicycle trailers to reduce the burden of carrying goods. As one of the few charities promoting the bicycle we decided to help them by raising money for and awareness of IT and their work. Our money, about 1800 UK Pounds, has gone to help finance the first Latin American hand book on Micro Hydro schemes, and has completed a project to train people in poor 25 rural communities in Peru to build use and maintain simple water chlorinaters. If you would like to know more about IT their E-mail address is itdgcru@gnapc.org