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Exhibit Showcases Affordable Technologies To Empower Third World

DENVER (CBS4) - A new traveling exhibition opened in Denver on Friday. Its catchy title is "Design for the Other 90 Percent."

The exhibition is all about showcasing affordable technologies for empowering the Third World.

A steam-powered water pump is for villages without electricity. It runs on sunshine. A load-carrying bicycle was designed for workers without cars.

"It's a ceramic water filter, so places you can't get access to clean drinking water, this device is literally a matter of life or death," Exhibition spokesman Andrew Romanoff said. "The truth is there are billions of people on Earth, good customers for a lot of products and services, if we can be ingenious enough to design them."

Potentially life-changing, many of the products are also good for the environment.

"Somebody wondered if trash could be made into a home. So what they wound up doing was shredding more than 3 years worth of e-mail to make this shelter."

Many exhibitors are non-profits. But Nokero is a for-profit company selling solar powered light bulbs to international customers.

"What Nokero recognizes, what a lot of the for-profit groups recognize, is there's money to made among the world's population. Even though a lot of the customers earn just a dollar a day, there's a lot of them," Romanoff said.

Romanoff was an unsuccessful candidate for U.S. Senate, and before that Speaker of the Colorado House.

"There's a connection between what we're doing and what I did in the legislature," he said.

With so many people trapped by extreme poverty in other parts of the world countries, Romanoff says he's proud be making difference.

The exhibit is displayed at the Redline Gallery. Visit the Redline Gallery website for more information.

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