ORGANIZATION
Intermediate Technology Development Group
The organization Schumacher founded in 1965 to promote tools productive yet human-scaled—accessible, understandable, and governable by the people who used them. Renamed Practical Action in 2005.
Schumacher founded the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) in 1965, a year after publishing the essay "How to Help Them Help Themselves" in The Observer. The organization's mission was to develop and promote tools that bridged the gap between traditional methods and industrial technology in developing economies. ITDG operated on the conviction that appropriate technology was not a theoretical concept but a practical program requiring engineering expertise, local partnership, and institutional infrastructure. The organization designed hand-operated water pumps, small-scale agricultural equipment, affordable shelter systems, and decentralized energy solutions. It grew into one of the most influential development organizations of the late twentieth century. In 2005 it renamed itself Practical Action, reflecting the maturation of its mission beyond Schumacher's original framing while retaining the commitment to human-scaled technology.
In The You On AI Field Guide
ITDG's methodology was instructive. The organization did not design tools in isolation and deliver them to communities. It partnered with local users to understand what tools were actually