A farmer in Niger learns how to protect his crops from insects. A resident of Port-au-Prince or a rural Haitian village learns how to avoid exposure to cholera. An entrepreneur in Mali gets step-by-step instructions on extracting the oil from shea seeds to make shea butter she can sell at a local market.These people are benefiting from a new approach to sustainable development education that reaches a much larger audience than traditional methods – and at a fraction of the cost. The initiative, led by a team of extension educators and faculty at the University of Illinois, produces animated educational videos that people around the world can watch at home, over and over again, on their cell phones.“This is a very different paradigm from some other current development projects, where U.S.-based educators are flown to another part of the world, interact with people in the field for a few weeks to several months, and leave,” said University of Illinois entomology professor Barry Pittendrigh, a member of the team that is developing the animations. “From a financial perspective, this is a much cheaper way to do international development.”