MacGyver In A Box
Do you have an idea to help solve one of the planet’s biggest problems and MAKE the world better? What would MacGyver do? Read on to find out more and then if you are interested register for the challenge below.
Contest and Rules
The specific design challenge or problem that is addressed in this competition is the development of a cost effective, indoor toilet that will allow proper sanitation and privacy for billions of the world’s population without indoor bathrooms. The targeted community for this competition is rural Guatemala. Ideally, the design should not require extensive plumbing and should be designed to consider its potential integration with some of the other potential low-cost infrastructure solutions for a developing community.
TIMELINE:
The contest submission window runs from November 1, 2025 until January 31st, 2026. Judging will be from February 1st – February 31st, 2026, with the winners named in March 2026.
CONTEST AWARDS:
The awards for the contest are being sponsored by both Make Magazine and the MacGyver Foundation. Winners will be announced on the MacGyver-in-a-Box webpage. The award structure includes the following:
First place: First prize is $350 dollars with the potential for a Clubhouse Guatemala sponsored opportunity to travel to Guatemala and help implement the idea in local houses for testing.
Second place: Second prize is $100 dollars
Third place: Third prize is $50
This challenge has completed. See the results here.
What Is MacGyver-In-A-Box?
Every year globally there are millions of WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) related deaths. In developing communities, home sanitation toilets are crucial for public health, environmental protection, and social well-being. They prevent the spread of diseases, improve sanitation, and enhance overall quality of life. The first MacGyver-in-a-box (MIB) design challenge competition seeks to develop cost effective home toilets to improve the sanitation of developing communities. This contest is expected to be the first of a series of MIB challenge competitions which will seek to incentivize engineers, hobbyists and the “maker” communities to utilize their skills to better the living conditions of many worldwide.
This first contest is partnering with the philanthropic NGO organization “Clubhouse Guatemala” and is designed to both meet an immediate sponsored need of a targeted developing community, while exploring a set of rules and best practices for future contests that will increase in scope, visibility and award and target creating a full range of low-cost infrastructure technologies for developing communities. These might include:
1. Power
2. Clean Water
3. Sanitation
4. Refrigeration
5. Cooking
6. Heating and Cooling
7. Transportation
8. Communications
9. Education
10. Medical
The idea is to take inspiration from large-scale, crowd-sourcing contests like the X-Prize that are intended to solve large-scale problems with innovative solutions. But instead of trying to solve planetary size problems with high-tech solutions, we are trying to solve local problems with low-cost, low-tech solutions. The way MacGyver would.
Read the Make Magazine MacGyver In a Box article.