This is Surely Possible

IMAGINE

Let us pause to imagine what could happen decades after the Community Centered Libraries have started. What might change and what could be set into motion? What are the possible ways that Community Centered Libraries may contribute long term to the economic development and improved quality of life for those in the surrounding area? What benefits might be enjoyed by those who used the libraries and their neighbors after 10, 20, 40 and more years?

VERSION 1.0

The first detailed outline for the Community Centered Libraries was made in August of 2014. (link) During the coming months I will make road trips to 5 cities and 3 countries as the founder of Our Stewardship Community to enroll support. Part of that support includes advice from experts and the public. Besides the advisers I meet with face to face I will also connect with many more online and using Skype. I will use their inputs to make improvements to the detailed outline.

That outline will be used as an organizational skeleton for the links in our five services of: Networking Hub, Wiki Plus, Educational Modules, Think Tank and Research & Development Lab. During the coming months and years the volunteer college students, advisers, paid staff and others will flesh out that skeleton.

The contents and structure of the initial outline was made based on my personal research that I conducted sporadically over the course of many years. That first draft I call version 1.0 and it is essentially my best guess of how to effectively serve those in severe poverty in remote villages in developing countries. I expect that the inputs from the advisers will confirm some of my guesses and correct some errors. They will bring fresh perspectives based on their backgrounds and experiences.

CROSS CULTURAL

I am just one man who grew up in an upper middle class family that was in a suburb of a large city in the USA (Houston, Texas). Most of the people I have known these 61 years are very much like me. I briefly visited a few other countries on vacation (Mexico, Canada and Bahamas). I worked 12 years at a seminary where I especially enjoyed socializing with international students and missionary students.

Given this background I am well aware that there will be many cross cultural challenges that will arise as we reach out around the globe. So I will be deliberate in enrolling advisers that will guide me with these issues. Not only will advisers be assisting me with the design, planning and management of Our Stewardship Community but the Think Tank service will bring together the best minds from around our shared planet. We will pioneer many ways to help each other solve the problems that have been plaguing the severely poor.

AUTONOMOUS

The intention from the start is for each community centered library to be autonomous.

The local library board governs the library and that includes:

what is included and excluded from the collection

what activities are permitted and not permitted in the meeting rooms

the ways the library is operated, promoted and grown

the selection and management of the personnel

The guidelines OSC provides initially include possible ways to raise funds. Then as many community centered libraries apply those guidelines they will be revised using their inputs. Also fund raising methods that have worked in the region or anywhere in the world can be used. Plus the local library board members or others could experiment with all kinds of creative new ways to raise money.

It is acceptable with me as the founder for the local library board to seek and use funds from outside the community. Only let me exhort that there be clarity about any conditions attached to those funds.

PAY IT FORWARD

Let me say from the beginning that Our Stewardship Community is privileged to be able to work together so we can provide our products and services free of charge to the end users. These are gifts from those that have been fortunate to have more than enough. We seek to facilitate education so that fellow members of our human family will improve their lives. There is zero debt owed.

Let me state again clearly that no money is required or requested from the community centered libraries. However I will encourage the library board to find ways to pay it forward. There has been a movement called Pay It Forward http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_it_forward

LONG TERM

Realistically I can know today that some of the Community Centered Libraries will fail. There will be a variety of reasons for those failures. And we will be careful to study why each one failed. We will not fear failure but learn useful lessons so that other libraries do not fail.

That being said I cannot imagine a good reason to shut down a Community Centered Library that is led by a local board. The guidelines we will provide the board will assist them to be aware of the needs of the community they serve and responsive to meet those needs. There will be communication systems developed so they can ask for assistance from Our Stewardship Community. We will be glad to research and create educational modules best suited to the needs of their patrons. We will connect them with experienced library leaders who can give advice on internal matters.

So having laid that ground work let me invite you to imagine with me what the future might look like for the communities that the libraries serve.

Every community will have a unique story to tell. But generally we can imagine today what it might be like for the subsistence farmers to have greatly increased the harvests of their crops. As they had more produce and products from the livestock then there would be prosperity. The surplus would be sold for a higher income. Some of those additional dollars could go to buy needed medicines and improve housing for the family. More children attend school because they are not needed as much in the fields and the parents can afford the tuition, school supplies and uniforms. With more students from prospering families then the schools will improve. The prospering farmers will be able to hire people. As many subsistence farmers prospered in a region then there would be more taxes paid and that would lead to improved roads, bridges and other infrastructure. Or in some more remote areas they residents could just cooperate to improve their common infrastructure. Sooner than later solar power will become available in these communities and Barefoot College (link) is paving the way for that to happen in remote villages. Then the farmers who are no longer just barely surviving can afford to take advantage of the many ways electricity transforms a lifestyle.

ORPHANS

Our shared planet has a super abundance of orphans. These children do not have parents due to wars, famine, AIDS and other causes. They are helpless and often hopeless. A small percent of all the orphans live in orphanages. Some of these are sponsored by the government and some are sponsored by nonprofit organizations. Some of those nonprofits are Christian. As I read the Bible it seems to tell me that God has a very special concern for orphans.

I have seen short videos of orphanages all around the world. The living conditions there are very basic. The funding is small, so they need to keep the costs low.

It is my understanding today that some orphanages have a school on the premises and in other cases the orphans go to the school in the area. I suppose that some do not offer any schooling.

My main concern is for the long term future for each orphan. There will come day that is the last day for each orphan to live at the orphanage. Then they must find a way to earn a living on their own. If they cannot earn a livable income, then the typical alternatives are prostitution or crime. There are pimps, gangs and drug dealers in every part of the world.

I know today that one of the most valuable skills that an orphan can have is the ability to read. Reading can open pave the way to more learning and to better employment.

Deep in my heart is a super strong desire for orphan children and others to be able to read.

I heard a report of a person that works for a State government. They learned that the best predictor of the future demand for prison beds is how many fail to pass the standardized reading tests for fourth grade. If they are not reading by 9 years old then it is probable they will not graduate from high school. Many without a basic high school education will become involved in crimes that will require that a prison bed is available. What that tells me is that we need to do our best to help all children before fourth grade or 9 years old to have good reading skills.

The education for orphans that we will provide will go wide and deep into the best possible ways for them to learn how to read. It is my strong conviction that when they can get to that level of competence then they can continue to learn to read better and learn other subjects.

Our educational modules will emphasize up to what is fifth grade just to give them an extra margin and boost. Then we will point to other providers of educational resources to carry them through to high school graduation.

Long ago basic education for children was referred to as the 3 Rs. That is what they called it back in the 1800s reading, writing and arithmetic. Our Stewardship Community educational modules will emphasize these essentials for the orphans. Reading will always be number one priority.

Then later after we have built a solid base of reading, writing and arithmetic we will venture into STEM that stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. This is what is being emphasized in the USA to prepare students for high tech jobs of the future. That will be the second major batch of lessons. After that time we will have had plenty of contact with those on the front lines. We will have been asking them what kinds of lessons they want most. Then gradually and gracefully during the coming many years we will do our best to provide excellent educational resources for them.

The beauty of this kind of work is that it remains mostly the same. A second grade teacher has a huge challenge the first year. But then by the third year of teaching the same subject then most lessons could be reused and improved. Likewise our educational modules will be challenging to create initially. But because they are stored digitally they remain the same. They do not dissolve, expire or go out of date. We will gradually develop systems for those on the front lines to make recommendations for continual improvements.

I consider that learning to read English is surely very much like learning to read most other languages. A child learns the alphabet by associating each letter with familiar pictures. Like A is for Apple, B is for Banana, C is for Cat, etc. That is used to learn not only the letters but also the colors and basic words like car, bus, ladder, etc. Our Stewardship Community will ask volunteers to draw lots of simple illustrations and take photos of such objects. Plus we will find and catalog those online that are licensed for us to reuse.

Then when preparing the lessons for Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, etc. we will match the beginner vocabulary to the suitable images in our database.

This can be used to help children learn 2 or 3 major languages. By becoming bilingual and trilingual they will increase their value in the marketplace later.

It is common for children to speak several languages in many places around the world before 10 years old and we are just facilitating their ability to also read a few languages.

TEACHING TEACHERS

Paul told Timothy to teach teachers that will teach others. That is a wise stewardship of time and talent. When a teacher is taught how to teach better, then the ripples of those lessons will have continual impacts for a very long time. So one way for us to best serve the orphans, is to provide resources that will teach the teachers. Most of these teachers are in a very primitive setting contrasted to the classrooms in the USA. But still there are principles, guidelines and teaching aids that will help them. Also as the recording studios operate in the Community Centered Libraries the teachers in the region, province and nation will be able to equip and guide the front lines teachers.

Let Us Envision a Bright Future

ARTIFACT

I saw an interview of Buckminster Fuller. He said something like; the best way to make a difference in this world it is best to create an artifact that will continue to serve others long after you are departed.

That stuck with me. And the artifact I choose to leave future generations are Community Centered Libraries located in remote villages of developing countries. That is the lasting legacy I deeply desire to leave for future generations. And in order to do that I must work with many other people all around the world. So I have begun to enroll a Launch Team that is made up of intercessors, advisers and donors.

CAST THE VISION

Part of my job as the founder of the innovative educational nonprofit is to cast the vision. I need to present a compelling description of how things could become. The vision needs to be how the world will be a better place because we worked together. I need to get others to imagine how our products and services were effective to achieve our long term goals. I need to lead others to see in their mind’s eye how lives of people were transformed in ways that led to continuing improvements.

CONTRAST

Here in the West we are used to having running water, electric lights, flush toilets, well stocked kitchen pantries, easy access to medicine, lots of entertainment options and more. Our basic needs are met. We seek to satisfy our many wants. Our lifestyles are characterized by conveniences and comforts. We were fortunate to have been born into the top 1 billion. But those in the bottom 2 billion do not have any of the previous blessings.

By contrast those in severe poverty must work hard in their struggle just to survive. People who live in remote villages rarely travel farther than the marketplace. They do not have time or money to do what is not necessary. Most remote villages do not have electricity so there is no radio, TV or Internet. They continue to use the farming practices of their parents, grandparents and ancestors going back for untold generations. They only know to do what has been modeled or they have learned from their neighbors. Most of them have not seen or heard of different ways to work on a farm.

SOLUTIONS

Yet farming has been happening for thousands of years in all parts of our globe. For every single kind of problem that a subsistence farmer faces today, there are proven solutions to do it better, faster, easier, cheaper, etc. that some people know about somewhere. The challenge is to seek, find, gather, organize, illustrate, translate, store and distribute the workable solutions to those who will use them.

These farmers do not have electricity or machines fueled by gasoline or diesel. Yet before Edison and Ford that is how all farming was done. Anything published before 1923 is in the public domain. We can use parts or all of it without asking permission or paying royalties. The volunteer college students can research these materials and then catalog, keyword tag and review them. They can be put into PDF formats that take up a tiny amount of digital memory. I have seen hundreds of pages excellent illustration in those old manuals for farmers. We can reuse those to serve our neighbors on the other side of the planet.

The Amish presently do farming without electricity. Hopefully we will work with some of them to make easy to understand educational modules.

We can dispatch our volunteers to research and create basic lessons about how to make such things as root cellars, barns, silos, windmills, cisterns, latrines, chicken coops, water wells, irrigation canals, goat sheds and more.

There are many government agencies and nonprofits overseas that currently have educational resources for subsistence farmers. And they have been doing a good job of reaching those in their sphere of influence. My plan is to approach them and ask them to give us those resources. I believe they will contribute them to us when we promise to give them full credit as the originator. We will tell them that these resources will be cataloged and translated. Some will be made into audio and video files. They will be distributed through the Community Centered Libraries. Our volunteers will study their lessons and the lessons of many others so that we will create our own sets of lessons. That way for example, the solutions that have been working in the south of India, will also be used in parts of Africa and Latin America.

SOIL

During my research online I discovered how vitally important the soil is for the quality and quantity of the harvest from the crops. We can research and create educational modules to guide in the basics of how to improve the soil quality. One way is to rotate crops. And another way is to allow livestock to graze on the field after it is harvested because their dung becomes natural fertilizer. Another way is to use composing piles with discarded vegetation, kitchen scraps and animal dung. These interact to create a super-rich byproduct that is full of valuable microbes. This composting can be accelerated by introducing the right kind of worms.

CONTAINER

During my online research I notice that in the USA there is a shortage of space in the backyards of those in suburbs. So they have developed clever ways to optimize the space for their vegetable gardening. I have seen container gardening where the clay pots of all sizes were used. I have seen vertical gardening using small containers hung in the window or on a wall outside. There are raised bed, drip irrigation and other methods. Yet in the videos and pictures of Africa and India I do not see that. The natural fertilizer from composting can be used in containers. Then it would be less likely to be washed away by the rains. We will offer a wide range of options. They will be invited to adapt, experiment, improve and report back to us. We want to know what did and did not work in each setting so we can better teach others.

SEEDS

Another essential factor is to obtain top quality seeds. Online there are videos that show how just using better seeds suited to that setting can greatly increase the final harvest. Here are seeds that are resistant to drought, diseases, pests and other factors. The processes of researching and selecting the best seeds can become an educational module. Then it is a matter of how to best obtain seeds for the next season and how to best store them.

SYNERGY

Let us consider that there is a natural synergy between farming for crops and raising livestock. This has been happening for thousands of years all around the world. Farm animals like goats, cows, pigs, ducks, sheep, mules, cows and others are common on most prospering farms. Each of these animals has a lifecycle. There are proven best practices in how to raise, breed and butcher them. Many of these animals provide byproducts like milk, eggs and wool. Milk will spoil but it can be made into cheese or yogurt to last longer for the family of the farmer as well as to be taken to market for additional income. Those who grew up on farms learn many of these practices as children. Plus there are county agents and colleges that teach advanced techniques.

Some of the subsistence farmers we first encounter will already have some domestic livestock. I hope that our resources could be used to help them learn how to take better care of them. That might lead to a longer life for the animal and more productivity while alive. I hope that some farmers will excel at farming crops and then be able to afford to purchase livestock. It might be the first time for their family. I want to have lessons available about the basics of animal husbandry in the Community Centered Libraries. Each kind of livestock will have beginner, intermediate and advanced educational modules. These lessons will range from the basics of feeding, sheltering and breeding to the solutions to common illnesses and injuries.

Just as it is possible to greatly improve the final results by wisely selecting suitable seeds for the crops the same is true for wisely selecting the suitable breeding stock for the area. It is my dream that over the course of many years the farmers will consistently prosper and they will use part of their profits to improve both their seeds as well as the quality of the livestock.

MACHINES

Besides the plants and animals on a farm there are also machines. Those in severe poverty will not likely have access to electricity or petroleum based fuels for machines. So what we can offer are human and animal powered machines. For example a plow pulled by a donkey or water buffalo instead of a tractor. I read that a farmer will be able to harvest 3 times as much when using a water buffalo than just by hand. Plus more products can be carried to market with such a beast of burden.

When I did my online research I came upon simple machines made from the parts of bicycles. These used pedal power to operate such devices as a simple pump or grinding stone. There are many clever machines like that used around the world. We can seek, find and gather links about them. We can form teams to create user manuals and blueprints that will be used to make, operate and repair these. Plus there can be a manual on how to make a small business from making, selling and servicing them. This is called appropriate technology. Honestly there is a part of my heart that strongly resonated with this small part of the whole vision for how we could serve subsistence farmers.

SEASONS

What I know about farms is that the workload is controlled by the seasons. The winter, spring, summer and fall have different kinds of tasks that suited to the lifecycle of the crops and the weather. We can learn the best ways to optimize those activities based on general guidelines and specific suggestions from those in the area. For example during times of heavy rains or snow what activities can be done in a barn or shed? What kinds of construction and repair projects can be done while waiting for the crops to grow? Are there profitable projects to make products for the marketplace that might be based on arts, crafts or what the groups like Amish have been doing? For example they could make the following: hand crafted furniture, tools to sell to other farmers, durable clothing, soap, candles, souvenir kinds of items if there is a way to get them to tourists. Then when there is a peak times of planting or harvesting how can that be done effectively?

EMPLOYMENT

There is another huge long term benefit for the community. After the subsistence farmer has learned how to raise more crops and better manage livestock then there will come a time that others need to be hired. The prosperity of the farmer over the course of many years will result in employment for many others as seasonal workers. Just as we hear of migrant workers in California and elsewhere the farmer may need to hire lots of people for short intervals when the workload is at a peak.

Besides seasonal workers there could be long term part and full time helpers. This is a reasonable expectation that we can imagine as a blessing that goes beyond just the farmer.

PUBLIC WORKS

The Community Centered Libraries will mainly have lessons for individuals and families but some of the resources offered will be aimed to serve the community. The reason the cities are able to prosper is that the common infrastructure challenges have been met. There are shared matters that facilitate commerce, transportation, public health and more. So I suggest that we also gradually include lessons for the villages that they can adapt. I refer to such public works projects as improved roads, bridges, drainage of rainwater, disposal of garbage and human waste, security from wild animals, levee, water wells, cisterns, etc. Surely we can seek and find villages that have addressed these issues and pass along the lessons. That will include how to plan, prepare, fund and service such public works.