Village Earth Joins the Appropedia Wiki Community

Village Earth, who created the first wiki for appropriate technology, has joined forces with Appropedia.org, the largest wiki for sustainable development, appropriate technology and poverty reduction. Together, Village Earth and Appropedia are promoting the concept of a centralized, consolidated and open information clearinghouse where users can share what they know and find the information they seek. As Dr. Maury Albertson, founder of Village Earth and Peace Corps, put it, "There is an ENORMOUS POTENTIAL here." (His emphasis.) Appropedia Founder Lonny Grafman said "I'm particularly excited to see this public support for open source solutions coming from an organization as highly regarded as Village Earth!"

Appropedia is a 12 month old living library of sustainability and international development solutions that is managed by a committed team. Appropedia has been experiencing explosive growth in content and user base, and has recently begun recruiting a variety of partner organizations. Appropedia welcomes Village Earth as its newest partner helping to raise awareness of the benefits of open source sustainability solutions. Appropedia uses the same software as Wikipedia, and is committed to being the most user-friendly environment for collaboration in sustainability.

To join Appropedia, Village Earth and their partners in co-creating solutions for a sustainable world, visit Appropedia.

Appropriate Technology Library Used as Teaching Aid in the Phillipines

Testimonial sent via email.

My wife Debra and I are located near Iligan City on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. We teach at the Life Resources Foundation (LRF) which is a two-year residential, post-high school, training institute. Our goal is to give our Filipino students skills they can use to make an impact in the community. Our main focus are Muslim communities. There are thirteen tribes of Muslims in the Philippines and many are very poor.

Debra and I teach community development and we want what we teach to be simple, sustainable and reproducible. Here are some of the classes we are teaching: Nutrition especially about the Moringa plant, simple health care, simple dentistry Debra has training in Atraumatic Restorative Treatment, sanitation, soap making, sewing basics with treadle sewing machines, about water, bio gas and other things.

Our school is located on about 30 acres, so we are also in charge of developing our farm and training our students in agriculture. We are using the SALT system of farming and try to be as organic as possible to help keep cost down. We also teach vermicomposting, herbs, composting, container gardening, seed production and hope to soon get into bee keeping.

The AT Library has been a great resource for us in teaching in all of these areas. We could never have brought all of these resources with us in a printed form and some classes we did not decide to teach until we were here, but thanks to the AT Library we had information readily available.

So we use the AT Library in our teaching and in developing the school. We get so many ideas just looking through the AT Library that I am sure we will not live long enough to try them all. We believe having the Library on DVD will be a big advantage over the many CDs.

Thanks for a great resource!

Lance & Debra Sprick

Life Resource Foundation

Iligan City Philippines

lanceanddeb@usa.net

Send us your testimonial of how you are using the AT Library.

VE's Appropriate Technology Library Helps Villages in Uganda

Bob Wright is originally from New Jersey. He now lives in Karamojo, a district of northern Uganda where he purchased 150 acres of land. On this land he has created a service center similar to those developed by Village Earth's partners around the world. He has sparked interest from local people and they have helped each other develop a village.

Bob recently came to the Engineering Research Center at Colorado State University to visit Village Earth to share his success using the library.

Hostility, caused by ’s dependence on fossil fuels, is severe in Karamojo. Bob pays an armed guard to travel with him because, "bandits will shoot you for your gas." Using the AT library, the village is reducing its dependence on fossil fuels. They have installed solar panels to supply electrical power for their medical clinic and veterinary hospital and they used the AT library book, "Maintaining Motorcycles," to repair and operate fuel efficient dirt bikes. The AT library has been used for many other things too.

They have successfully drilled for water and now have an ample supply for themselves and the arid land. They built an irrigation system and use manure to fertilize crops. The crop production has improved significantly and has excited many villagers.