because one world is plenty
A Village To Heal The Planet: A Practical Whole-Systems Showcase Village
So here's the idea in a nutshell: take a patch of land in some low-cost-of-living area, probably a developing world country, and set up a profusion of different OSAT (open source appropriate technology), permaculture and other innovative living systems side by side. The idea is to have a place where a person can come to see not one working system in each category ("pumps",) but as many systems as can practically be installed and maintained running beside each other to enable comparison and cross training.
People can then come to the village for a year or so, live using the systems, learn their ins and outs, participate in operation and maintainance , install test systems, and generally get a first-class, year-round, fair-and-foul conditions education right across the board. They key is that this education is cheap. People without heavy external financial commitments could spend a year at the village for a few hundred dollars a month, making it an ideal opportunity for local subject matter experts, college students, development workers and similar groups who don't have much money, but may have time.
FUNDING
Land is cheap. We won't worry too much about the land.
Individual technologies - a given well technology, a given growing system - often have dedicated NGOs or academic institutions which support and back that technology. The idea is to approach a profusion of such groups and attempt to cook "stone soup" where each group participates given the participation of other groups. If three or four water groups are each willing to fund the set up of one system on site, it's a lot easier to get the remaining technology groups to participate. And the price of digging one well, in an area with decent infrastructure and other activities along those lines, is not huge. Nor is the cost of putting one volunteer or student in the field for a year to maintain that system, and to learn / teach everything that can be gleaned from the other experts who are their teaching about and maintaining their own systems.
This model: essentially a giant "teach in" among appropriate technology charity representatives, has two unique features.
1> Everybody is going to be living using the systems they are advocating.
2> Everybody gets time to learn about, critique, improve and cross-train on other people's systems.
This element, of "eating one's own dogfood" by using the systems one promotes is a key factor in open source software development. Innovation is said to come from software developers "scratching an itch" - looking at something that they want to work differently, and then writing the software to make it work that way. In a similar manner, a group of fifty to two hundred appropriate technology experts, living together in a village, for a year or two, sharing ideas, using each other's systems, and discussing lessons learned over the history of their technology, could easily become a global resource.
In future years, a mixture of students, locals, NGO workers from further afield, volunteers and those who are curious could come to the village, live for some extended period as a training course, and then return, taking their newfound expertise and sense of potential with them, to spread the news about what works around the globe.
Possible? For each organization, we would be asking them to fund development of one of "whatever they do" in the village. One well, one solar cooker per hut, one solar hot water system, whatever it takes. Given that they are already specialized in deployment of these systems, the marginal cost is probably small compared to the likely global benefit. We would also commit to documenting and publicizing the technologies deployed on the ground to help people clearly comprehend how much technological diversity there is in the field. I think a deal like this has a good chance of being attractive enough to individual charities to get participation.
The land is another question, but land is cheap in many locales.
That leaves operating funds for documenting the work, organizing, and perhaps some travel to conferences etc. A few members of staff would be required also, but they'd live at the village, and that would keep costs very, very low.
I think this is entirely plausible and feasible. What do you think?
People can then come to the village for a year or so, live using the systems, learn their ins and outs, participate in operation and maintainance , install test systems, and generally get a first-class, year-round, fair-and-foul conditions education right across the board. They key is that this education is cheap. People without heavy external financial commitments could spend a year at the village for a few hundred dollars a month, making it an ideal opportunity for local subject matter experts, college students, development workers and similar groups who don't have much money, but may have time.
FUNDING
Land is cheap. We won't worry too much about the land.
Individual technologies - a given well technology, a given growing system - often have dedicated NGOs or academic institutions which support and back that technology. The idea is to approach a profusion of such groups and attempt to cook "stone soup" where each group participates given the participation of other groups. If three or four water groups are each willing to fund the set up of one system on site, it's a lot easier to get the remaining technology groups to participate. And the price of digging one well, in an area with decent infrastructure and other activities along those lines, is not huge. Nor is the cost of putting one volunteer or student in the field for a year to maintain that system, and to learn / teach everything that can be gleaned from the other experts who are their teaching about and maintaining their own systems.
This model: essentially a giant "teach in" among appropriate technology charity representatives, has two unique features.
1> Everybody is going to be living using the systems they are advocating.
2> Everybody gets time to learn about, critique, improve and cross-train on other people's systems.
This element, of "eating one's own dogfood" by using the systems one promotes is a key factor in open source software development. Innovation is said to come from software developers "scratching an itch" - looking at something that they want to work differently, and then writing the software to make it work that way. In a similar manner, a group of fifty to two hundred appropriate technology experts, living together in a village, for a year or two, sharing ideas, using each other's systems, and discussing lessons learned over the history of their technology, could easily become a global resource.
In future years, a mixture of students, locals, NGO workers from further afield, volunteers and those who are curious could come to the village, live for some extended period as a training course, and then return, taking their newfound expertise and sense of potential with them, to spread the news about what works around the globe.
Possible? For each organization, we would be asking them to fund development of one of "whatever they do" in the village. One well, one solar cooker per hut, one solar hot water system, whatever it takes. Given that they are already specialized in deployment of these systems, the marginal cost is probably small compared to the likely global benefit. We would also commit to documenting and publicizing the technologies deployed on the ground to help people clearly comprehend how much technological diversity there is in the field. I think a deal like this has a good chance of being attractive enough to individual charities to get participation.
The land is another question, but land is cheap in many locales.
That leaves operating funds for documenting the work, organizing, and perhaps some travel to conferences etc. A few members of staff would be required also, but they'd live at the village, and that would keep costs very, very low.
I think this is entirely plausible and feasible. What do you think?
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by larahna on -
Well...I would have to agree with you on this one. Its plausible...possible even.
I will share about the convertible community project I am involved in currently. I'll try to put it into a nice neat nutshell.
1. Community needs to work well and be sustainable
2. Communities need to be vibrant during times of peace and resilient during times of crisis
3. The solution must be cost effective for it to be a real solution
The convertible community project I am working on is designed to be a community that will include the following pieces: 1. World Help Training Center - living learning laboratory for all things sustainable, green, growing, building, the tech-brain center of the community, 2. Spiritual wellness center - the guiding element of society functioning well begins at the spiritual level...the level that shapes values...how we live together and 3) the MiCom - the microcosm residential community - the people and where they live.
Here are the stats for this project.....
29.9 acres - 4.9 acres allocated to the learning lab, 5 acres allocated to the spiritual wellness center and 20 acres allocated to the MiCom. Land lots are designated in 1/10 acre increments. This is approximately a 40x108 lot
The land lots can support a dwelling structure and provide adequate land (using urban gardening techniques) to support an individual (and really a small family).
Here are what the numbers look like....Individuals/families for $1000 can basically buy beneficial interest in a lot. For $50/month in land access/maintenance fees they are provided with the basic services typically purchased from municipal suppliers (water, power...infrastructure).
For this community project...It would provide $200,000 in capital to purchase land and build the infrastructure to support 200 residents (or families). Considering the land cost, that leaves approximately $100,000 to put in sufficient well system(s) and power for the community.
The monthly income of $10,000 would be the operating capital to continue with ongoing maintenance and improvements for the site.
The social implications......well the bottom line of it is that individuals can effectively pay $1000 up front and $600 per year and then live freely with the time not spent chasing dollars to keep up with expenses of traditional living. Of course this does not include living structures but looking at building tech like hexayurts I'm hopeful that a modular style cabin can be completed for about $1000. This would be the multiplier for constructing larger structures. At a cost of approximately $6/sq ft....ultra cheap housing is within the reach of most.
This cold appeal to individuals in about 4 categories: 1. full time residents, 2. part time residents, 3, occassional residents (weekend warriors, vacation residents, retreat residents, etc), or 4. crisis prep residents (those who commit and join so that in the event of crisis, preparations will have been made and accomodations secured in an off the grid self sustaining community)
The challenges.....getting 199 individuals committed to this reality to commit to the project.
That's my thoughts on feasibility. I am so sure that its possible that the land is secured.....and I moved out onsite a few weeks back......www.worldhelptrainingcenter.org.
There's my 2 cents!
live life fully today!
LaRahna
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Permalink Reply by Fabio Barone on -
I absolutely endorse this idea - I mean, everybody in this forum I guess wants to transition to a new sustainable and equitable world. This needs to encompass all of human activity, not "only" food, or "only" energy" or "only" community - but all of it - and it needs to be demonstrable, distributable, replicable, etc.
Such a place is badly needed in my opinion. Ultimately though, it should be replicable to existing human communities, rather than "only" designed ones. Which doesn´t lower the necessity of such a scheme.
I allowed myself to dream lately. Maybe it is utter Utopia.
What if we could get to work with "us" a whole country?
Cuba is on the verge of change. Leaders do not know where to go after Castro. The rest of the world is just waiting to "colonize" the island again to sing victory for capitalism again.
Imagine a well-crafted proposal could be put together, where we could impressively express a new outlook for the country - an outlook of energy independence, food security (who watched "The Power of Community" knows there´s already a strong position in this there), clean water - combined with their education and health system...
It could start with a village, or a bioregion, as a pilot. Imagine the first US export into Cuba to be a (donated?) fab-lab/rep-rap - not an insane idea with Obama, maybe.
I am convinced a whole army of volunteers/professionals could be recruited to make that happen.
Funding would become a totally different issue if you have some authority in your team...
The question is, can a national or regional government be made enthusiastic about such an idea? In times of global (economic) crisis, it might be, especially in developing countries...
Cuba would be an ideal candidate, but there are others, if respective governments are open to alternatives - David Matos posted on an Angola in metamorphosis, and maybe there are more - Venezuela for that (with totally different implications and ramifications though). OSAT of course is about appropriateness - which may take different connotations in different areas (e.g. more focus on tech for A, more focus on food for B, etc.).
Am I completely thinking non-sense? Well, I am convinced not. But maybe this really just belongs to the area of dreams....
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Permalink Reply by Agroinnovations on -
I think this is a pipe dream. Influencing policy within a hierarchical context is, in my opinion, a waste of time. Until we face the reality that our model is fundamentally incompatible with bureaucracy, we're not going to get far at all. Instead, we should create a parallel system that is capable of slowly replacing the existing one as it crumbles. For more on this concept, see a recent episode of the C-Realm podcast (http://c-realmpodcast.podomatic.com/player/web/2009-01-07T11_42_09-08_00) and Jeff Vail's website (http://jeffvail.net/).
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Permalink Reply by David Braden on -
I love the idea. Don't have many contacts with OSAT non-profits but I would be willing to help anyway I could.
Perhaps we could build in a cross interest discussion about how each of the technologies supports and is supported by other technologies . . .
If the exercise we successful in developing a package of technologies that resulted in self-sufficiency - the end to poverty for those who employ them - it would be a compelling fund raising story for each of the NGOs involved.
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Permalink Reply by gmoke on -
The appropriate open source village can also be nomadic and appears in nascent form at the various Maker events and such public demonstrations as Burning Man. It could happen once a week at a farmers' market or once every month or month and a half at a public event or celebration. I've done solar busking in Harvard Square that is geared towards survival solar, emergency and disaster, refugee camp scale, the bare minimum.
We know some of these technologies already. It's time to put them to use and build the sustainable or, better yet, restorative village right where we are.
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Permalink Reply by Sepp on
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What about virtualizing that village. It doesn't even have to be all in one place.
Pulling all the data together, a network of implementations could be brought together by exchange of information.
Of course the physical village where everyone makes a pilgrimage is the most obvious implementation, but in the absence of capital to make it happen (and capital seems to be one of the weak points we have in P2P and open source implementations) one could use existing and in-progress installations to form the "village". All that's needed is someone with a place large enough to have visitors live in for a while, and with either some technology already implemented or to be implemented. People who want to learn could then be directed to get in touch with those projects they can easily reach, and where the type of experience they seek is available or just being lived.
My point is, I guess, that it doesn't necessarily have to be a village all in one spot. It is the idea that counts, and if there are enough parts out there that could form the network of a practical whole-systems showcase, it could be done just with information being brought together and then exchanged.
What do we have the net for, if not for these types of needs...
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Permalink Reply by Vinay Gupta on -
Yes, there's a lot to be said for that in the initial stages, but it doesn't get us one critical feature: testing the systems _together_ to see the combined effect on standards of living in the region. That, to me, is the key.
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Permalink Reply by Kalyan on -
I can volunteer with a small piece of land in Karnataka, India (about 250 kms from Bangalore). My friend has built a cool house in it. He runs an adventure travel company in Bangalore, so he can get the tourism element into the play too (as Lucas suggests). We call this small piece of land: 10 degrees off! What next?
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Permalink Reply by Lucas on -
Came here from http://changemakers.com/en-us/node/21695
Some ideas:
1) I'm guessing tourism will be added to the mix, somehow. Some folks would gladly go to a place where they can build a solarcooker AND play with a pump AND make a few bricks of fancy shapes they can take home. One requirement is you must leave copies of some pictures. ;-)
2) The key question is What's the next step to make it happen. Partners, location, funding, date. I'd say partners might abund in GlobalSwadeshi and around, no?
3) Which means this should be broadcasted widely. What's the twitter hashtag, #villagehealplanet?
4) Vinay, maybe you need to interview others about your own idea, and get that online.
5) Thinking about what Larahna writes - how much of a "community" do you need? How much of a "community" is there in a University campus? A shared cafeteria would be the most some innovators will put up with.
6) Maybe there'll be folks who stay longer than others. I'd say hardcore folks will stay one year, but others will come and go. Maybe what's needed is the commitment of the "sender" organisation: one volunteer goes, another comes.
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Permalink Reply by Alex Rollin on -
Yes. Looking at Changemakers page again.
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Permalink Reply by Alex Rollin on
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Permalink Reply by Chris Watkins on -
Great stuff, Vinay. I add bits to the wiki that I thought were suitable (your whole post, and Lahrana's 3 points - no doubt I've missed some, but the wiki is open.)
I remember talking with you about an open license for Global Swadeshi - I seem to remember you confirmed this, but I can't find the license statement on here. (I knew you'd share, so I went and added anyway.)
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