Project Butterfly is a newly formed environmental initiative in the Newburyport area by a group of venture capitalists, international volunteer groups [NGOs], artists, farmers, and other citizens. Its mission is expressed as below:
 
Project Butterfly seeks to inspire and educate young people in Newburyport and in the developing world to build and implement local micro-scale energy production devices utilizing locally available low cost and recycled materials. We intend to begin this work by engaging our local community in support and linking with NGOs that can help make connections in the developing world.
 
Project Butterfly founder,inventor and veteran venture capitalist Hans Ikier said “I wanted the project to reflect the idea of 'transformation' for the benefit of the children of the world and the image of the butterfly emerging from its dormant phase seemed to capture the idea beautifully"
 
Farmer's Market Kickoff:
 
The Project Butterfly Team will share an educational booth on July 25th. at the Newburyport Farmer's Market at the Tannery in Newburyport with the Smallsolutions project which is setting up pilot programs to get maximum benefit from the XO computers, the low cost laptops developed by the One Laptop Per Child foundation.
 
Kids will be able to see how parts from old TVs and speakers can be used to generate electricity for local use, and will be challenged to build micro wind turbines, or other devices to charge the batteries of the laptops or cell phones.