KOPERNIK

Kopernik was founded in 2010 by Toshi Nakamura and Ewa Wojkowska, who saw that there were life-changing and affordable technologies that could benefit the people who lived in the most remote and hard-to-reach parts of the world – the last mile. They decided to bridge the technology gap and help those communities access the solutions they needed.

The name of the organization was inspired by Nicolaus Copernicus, the astronomer who changed the way people see the world. Kopernik shared his vision of challenging the status quo and finding smarter, more effective solutions to solve the persistent problems faced by the last-mile communities.

The organization believed that ideas and potential solutions should be tested first and that impact should be demonstrated before large investments were made. They wanted to bring more innovation and experimentation to the development sector and to develop better programs that could reduce poverty. They were proactive in testing ideas that could benefit the larger development community. Their core mission was to find what works and what doesn’t to reduce poverty.