The ‘One Village Project’ vision
After a few weeks of discussion, I think we’ve finally settled on a good, if unusual, approach to our move. The ‘vision’ of the One Village Project is now ready, and posted on our site. It feels good to reach out to involve a network of friends and colleagues, to build on connections and the privileges we take for granted.
We have modest goals: Starting in September, we’ll stay in one village for a year or two. We’ll try to help, using the skills and resources we have, with whichever projects or developments the residents most ask for help. Maybe it means building a trekking lodge, or organizing visiting doctors for an annual health clinic, or teaching English, making documentary videos, or something else more traditionally part of ‘rural development’ programs, such as women’s micro-lending or agricultural projects.
It will start with a trek to visit promising places and projects, to see which would really benefit from us being there. Now it’s off to the scrap-paper again to sketch out the questions we need to answer to identify likely local NGOs and appropriate towns, not to mention the pile of logistics that needs preparing. And then it’s the contacts lists and memberships on appropriate discussion boards, and scouring the related news articles and NGO reports and Twitter discussions, and….
Time to get started!