Village of the Future

Problem: In the expansion of infrastructure and development to sustain the coal industry, local interests and concerns with the effects of this expansion tend to be seen as being less important than corporate, state and economic interests. The expansion of the coal industry will have significant environmental, social and economic impacts on these regions, particularly those in which the mining industry is in an exploratory phase and is yet to be developed. Increasingly, however, such expansion occurs ...

Action: The Coal Communities Listening Tour is an engagement and consultation project with members of coal dependant and affected communities to ground future campaigning on coal expansion in a thorough and robust knowledge of the concerns, issues and needs of the these communities.   Above all, this project starts with listening.   A team of researchers and students from Six Degrees, Review Group: Conservation Review

Action: Join hyperlocavore.com to find or start a yard share or group garden in your town. CSAs and community gardens fill up fast. Organic is expensive! Form a group with your neighbors,friends and family and grow your own!Our vision: healthy kids who love the smell of dirt, blocks with foreclosed homes becoming vibrant neighborhoods, plates full of delicious food at co...

Problem: Share solutions for building or reconstructing mud, adobe, rammed earth homes or structures.

Problem: Local communities that want to launch ecotourism businesses need specialized training. RARE has created a program, the Nature Guide Training Program (NGTP), to give local community leaders and NGO staff members the training they need to help communities develop sustainable micro-enterprises around protected areas. The creation of local jobs dependent upon the existence of protected areas increases the value of conservation within nearby rural communities. Guiding also represents tourism rela...

Action: The NGTP curriculum (materials available here) is based on a state-of-the-art training methodology in which students live and study with their teachers in an isolated, English-only environment. During the three-month course and one-month follow-up period, students receive more than 1,000 hours of practical experience, equal to more than a year at a U.S. university. The curriculum covers conversatio...