The Institute of Appropriate Technologies for Sustainability Invento – Instituto Invento – was founded in April 2018, in the context of the International Development Innovation Network (idin.org), with the mission of co-creating appropriate technologies with rural and urban communities for a better, more productive, and sustainable life. It is a non-profit organization headquartered in Brasília-DF, with a network of collaborators to carry out its activities. 

The organization’s main line of work is training agro-extractivist communities to develop low-cost technologies that leverage their productive activities. The work is organized in creative capacity development workshops with partner communities where, based on the Creative Capacity Building – CCB methodology, people learn about the project development process and develop building skills with different materials (metal, wood, etc.), designing and prototyping machines and equipment that improve local production processes, based on challenges prioritized by the communities themselves. Most of the workshops are carried out in the field, although some workshops and improvement processes are carried out at the Institute’s headquarters.

Invento has promoted workshops with communities and organizations from the Cerrado and the Brazilian Amazon, attended by more than 300 participants, most of them women. Around 60 prototypes were co-created for different purposes, such as planting, harvesting, and processing agroecological and socio-biodiversity products, and for facilitating access to energy. In 2019, it also promoted ToT Latam (Training of Trainers) in Brazil, in partnership with the University of Brasília, D-Lab/MIT, Diversa (Colombia) and other members of the IDIN network. ToT Latam trained 20 Latin American facilitators in the CCB – Creative Capacity Building methodology. We collaborated with the organization and facilitation of IDIN network events in Colombia, Mexico, and Uganda. Coordinated the AeTrapp Project – Citizen Monitoring of Aedes Mosquito Outbreaks, one of the winners of the 2016 Google Social Impact Challenge, incubated at WWF-Brazil and later transferred to the Institute.

Creative Capacity Building – CCB is a methodology developed by D-Lab/MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and IDIN (International Development Innovation Network). It consists of 4- to 6-day workshops in which participants develop building skills by building existing low-cost technologies, and by gaining practice in handling different materials and tools. At the same time, they prioritize problems faced in their daily lives, for which they design and prototype low-cost technological solutions suitable for manufacturing and use in the local context, following a step-by-step process called the Design Cycle (see figure below). This process aims to improve the quality of life and efficiency of the community’s work, as well as provide a better use of available resources. The methodology enables the solution of different types of problems, and encourages gender and generational equality, in addition to creating new business opportunities, allowing the generation of additional income for the community.

Instituto Invento’s activities have already been financed by several organizations, such as CNPq, FAP-DF, the Oak Foundation, WWF-Brazil, University of Exeter, WTT, CLUA and also had the support of many others, such as D-Lab/MIT, ICMBio, University of Brasilia, Embrapa Cerrados, among others.

At this moment, the Institute seeks the improvement of some of the co-created prototypes, taking them to the level of replicable products, and is structuring social factories for their production in the communities. Social factories will thus enable the dissemination of technologies at the same time as they will allow capacity building in the communities and generation of employment, and income in the countryside.