Appropriate Technology Communities

Other Communities

AuroVille (south India, near Pondicherry) - membership is international and it is not owned by individuals. Among many other facets they use reclaimed land efficiently with established manufacturing and income producing enterprises. A metal workshop manufacturing (among other things) equipment supportive of sustainability such as windpumps, shredder and compressed earth block presses (for building): http://www.aureka.com/

This project description - http://www.globalideasbank.org/showidea.php?idea=4952 - mentions a number of other sites in a list with Gaviotas - Other centres of hope such as the Earth Centre, the Centre for Appropriate Technology (Wales), Die Kleine Erde, Gaviotas Village, Rocky Mountain Institute, Wuppertal Institute and Findhorn (Scotland) are all wielding increasing influence and in most cases are also now financially sustainable. ... in South Africa ... Wildrocke Farm and Valley Trust for Permaculture, and Orange Farm and the GreenHouse? Project for community building.

The Global Ecovillage Network's about page has this list (and there's more in their directory): Sarvodaya (SriLanka); EcoYoff? and Colufifa (Senegal); the Ladakh project on the Tibetian plateau; ecotowns like Auroville in South India, the Federation of Damanhur in Italy and Nimbin in Australia; small rural ecovillages like Gaia Asociación in Argentina and Huehuecoyotl, Mexico; urban rejuvenation projects like Los Angeles eco-village and Christiania in Copenhagen; permaculture design sites such as Crystal Waters, Australia, Cochabamba, Bolivia and Barus, Brazil; and educational centres such as Earthlands in MassaChusetts. http://gen.ecovillage.org/

(lists edited to remove duplicates)

Also see http://www.arcosanti.org/

Other networks

Google:local+inventors+permaculture (replace permaculture with sustainability, native, grassroots, etc. It's hard to weed out all the get-rich-quick stuff when looking for "developed" world stuff; please let me know what works well for you!) It may be especially difficult to directly find everyone we're thinking of, especially people who live in areas where the InterNet is not widely available. However it's easy to find people who would know the people we're looking for:

Honeybee Network - http://knownetgrin.honeybee.org/gui_search.asp Article about that and other grassroots innovation support projects - http://www.goodnewsindia.com/Pages/content/discovery/sristi.html Venture capital approach - http://www.urbanecology.org/gaviotas/2002report.htm conference

http://terc.edu/ - their focus is hands-on science education, and they have good contacts worldwide for local grassroots inventive types.

On women inventors - http://www.unifem.undp.org/resources/wmdst/footnote.html

Eclectic resource pages from another friends-of group - http://www.geocities.com/friendsofafricanoutlet/ResourcesPage.html

Development Marketplace - WorldBank? program that "promotes innovative development ideas through early stage seed funding"

Looks like their focus is elsewhere http://www.small-planet.org/ but Anna Lappe and her mom Frances Moore Lappe did recently tour the world and meet with people innovating locally - Hope's Edge - BookSense:1585422371

Making Waves: Stories of Participatory Communication for Social Change - http://www.rockfound.org/display.asp?context=1&Collection=1&DocID=420 - a Rockefeller study on the importance of local communication; they talked with many local broadcast media (note to self: including Kothmale Community Radio in SriLanka)

Intermediate Technology Development Group - http://www.itdg.org/

http://www.citnet.org/communities/ - Sustainable Communities Initiative of the Citizens Network for Sustainable Development (U.S.; actually, not very grassroots-looking)

International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development - http://www.icimod.org.sg/

Engineers Without Borders - http://www.ewb-isf.org/

World Neighbors - http://www.wn.org/

Found many of these from Appropriate Tech @ changemakers.net; there's a lot there of interest; i've selected the organizations that seemed likely to be in touch with local innovators. Reading all this has heightened my sense of how easy it would be to slip into international advocacy and/or logistics of particular technologies and particular people. Not many are talking explicitly about tapping and supporting the innovativeness of local people.

Specific inventions:

An EarthShip uses a widely available resource of some countries (e.g. UnitedStates) - used tires primarily - to make the walls of new buildings.

South African company, Roundabout Outdoor's merry-go-round water pump - http://www.roundabout.co.za/main_the_playpump.htm (GavioTas is known for developing a seesaw pump)

On legal stuff in the UnitedStates: http://www.libraries.wright.edu/find/gov/patent/inventorresources.html

My interest is in applying this thinking in the "developed" world, and in applications in Jaffna, SriLanka, where the silver lining of recent war is the relative lack of fancy development. Jeyanthy and i would like to promote Gaviotas thinking in the area; and use more appropriate technology in our home and a community center we are "imagineering" in hopes this will spread such ideas to others.

Please feel free to add your interest here, and any relevant resources and especially communities that you know of.

--JohnAbbe

Also see Afrigadget

For a list of other positive possibilities see BuildingActivities.