liberia sustainable village model economic program by monica leslie

8/8/2019 Liberia Sustainable Village Model Economic Program by Monica Leslie

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y how to harvest and spin cotton tree fibers (for shading, mosquito nets, pest free hoop houses &

textiles)

y paper making (to supply schools & general commerce)

y natural building techniques (making clay bricks, building reinforced bamboo structures)

y industrial retrofits (bamboo rainwater catchment & bamboo charcoal filtration for bottling water,

earthen rocket stoves with water carburetor flues)y earth works (drainage for irrigation, filtration & to preserve earthen structures, making aggregate

& mortar for roads)

y methane harvesting & compost (for fuel and agriculture)

y permaculture farming methods

Economic education will provide the villagers with the skills to create capital for products that can be sold

in order to bring more money into the village and its households. This education will also give the

villagers access to crucial economic skills that can be taught incrementally and used as they accrue

additional capital to expand their market scale. Basic economic skills can be taught through local trade

and provides the villagers with an opportunity to learn how to locally source materials. By learning how

to identify and manage their local resources, the villagers can fashion these resources into tools that will

make their work easier, education more affordable and give the villagers more free time to explore more

economic interests through education and vocational training. The villagers will also increase their

production output so that they will be able to buy and trade for better tools and products much sooner than

if they had to start by paying for foreign sourced goods.

Phase II: At this stage the villagers may want to know why they¶re only doing menial tasks and it is

important for them to understand that in order to be successful they must have the right tools before they

can move ahead. This would be a good chance to introduce folklore or readings of classic literature such

as Alexander Dumas¶s The Count of Monte Cristo. Just as in tribal culture and later adopted by religious

organizations, storytelling, pictures & crafts are a simple way to convey important ethics in a way thatkeeps the villagers inspired, but also in a manner that they can identify. Once this is done, the villagers

can begin to move beyond the fundamentals of economic resilience and begin to learn crucial skills that

will allow them to move from menial tasks to higher paying enterprises that require more in-depth skills.



Image taken from UNDP

One Liberian in work supports up to 50 others!

Educational Topics:

y How to learn & How to share knowledge

y Drawing, Story Telling

y R eading, Writing & Arithmetic

y Critical Thinking

o Business Strategy to expand the basic knowledge of the skills they learned in

Phase I to identify target demographic groups who may want their products

and how to create successful partnerships.

o Basic Macroeconomics & why re-localization is importanto Business & Interpersonal Ethics

y More Bamboo Craft

y Tile & Pottery Making

y Construction

y Small Scale Manufacturing of supplies for Hospitals & Schools

It must be the responsibility for those who have learned new skills to teach other villagers what they¶ve

learned. Finding a way to communicate this information, either with a hands on approach or through the

integration of storytelling verbally and through craft would be an excellent way to pass on this

information. Integrating the villagers¶ stories would also be a great way to add value to the community in

the richness of culture and marketability of locally made products to those who live outside of the village.

This will help increase production and manufacturing yields so that you can increase the revenue brought

to the village. The improved method of farming will also free up time so that not only will the villagers

have the supplies they need to build their businesses. Once the villagers are able to bring in enough

revenue, they will be able to afford to pay teachers to come and teach. At this point the villagers will

want to make more money, but may be unsure of how to expand their enterprises, manage workers and



produce new/additional products. Teaching these skills can bring in more income and increase the

availability of local jobs. Doing so will make it more likely also that more households will be able to

afford to send their children to school. At this point the villagers can trade their knowledge about the

forests; i.e. plant species, uses, etc. with teachers and researchers interested in learning about the region in

exchange for rent and education. This would also be a good time for the villagers to negotiate the

supplies they make in exchange for new vocational methods to manufacture new uses of these products.The villagers must understand that issues like maleria and clean drinking water may not be a big deal to

them, but if they learn the proper way to address concerns from those who would otherwise want to teach

there and can be sold to westerners who have a high demand for items such as bottled rainwater and

locally woven mosquito nets and could create many more jobs for the village of Duayee. For example,

learning how to recognize and to use various species of cotton trees, cork oak or bamboo could serve as

an economic driver to teach villagers how to recognize the benefits of some of their local resources so that

they can be replanted and cultivated in their optimal forest growing conditions or alley cropped to be used

for manufacturing. This education would be crucial if the villagers want to expanded into new industries

by understanding how the simplest tasks such as making textiles, bamboo water bottles and medical

treatments (ie the bitter orange¶s use to treat diabetes) can be used to expand the variety of high yield,

readily available cash crops they can sell.

Phase III: Once the Villagers become more familiar with the process of identifying opportunities, the

villagers must ensure that this knowledge is passed on by learning how to catalogue and document their

findings. This will ensure that the villagers are learning the skills not just to impart knowledge to future

generations, but also to protect themselves from business misdealing in the event of any

misunderstandings that could lead to a potential legal dispute.

Educational Topics:

Printmaking & Publishing

Accounting

Bookkeeping

International Trade Policy

Civil & Legal R ights



Computer skills

During this time the villagers can learn how to catalog their local resources, learn basic bookkeeping

skills, and be able to keep logs of what they¶ve learned so that the information can be passed on and

replicated (also very profitable). This would also be a great way to document business dealings with

investors, teachers and researchers that can be reviewed to ensure that the villagers are getting a fair price

for their transactions and that investors aren¶t violating international laws. The researchers can be used to

help the villagers gain support of the international community in their development efforts to encourage

new sources of revenue (ie botanicals for pharmaceuticals), provide safe and humane investment, improve

the safety and quality of their manufacturing, and provide training for new and sustainable methods for

business, construction and technology. At this stage, it also becomes crucial that those who have reached

this stage of education begin to learn how to use the computer on their own in the event that they would

like to go off to college or vocational school so that they can learn and bring back broader range of

teachable skills.

Phase IV & Beyond: At this stage, the villagers should have enough information to take charge of their

own learning based upon their individual interests and needs of each chiefdom and clan. The purpose of the incremental economic education that the villagers receive is to impart the importance of each stage of

education by giving them an interactive way to experience everything that goes into learning how to

shape a business and a future. But the education will also keep the villagers grounded in the

understanding that in order to be successful they must first understand how the process works in order to

understand why it is important.

Ideally, at this point the villagers must also be able to understand the responsibilities and ethics in the way

that they supply their products. Historically lacking this education has made it difficult for the Liberians

to recognize when larger vendors or international purchasers are taking advantage of their limited

knowledge. By going through this process of developing business expertise from the ground up, the

villagers will have the advantage of understanding the interpersonal skills that are necessary to conduct

business intelligently and ethically. And this knowledge can be used to set up partnerships with more

reputable and fair trade organizations who can get them better prices for their products overseas. This

will help the villagers be able to afford better quality teachers who can teach them to become well trained

in how to make better quality products so that they can sell the products competitively to elites and

influential buyers in foreign markets. As the villagers learn how to make commercial grade products or

develop specialized expertise, the villagers will also need to learn how to negotiate deals with potential

investors so that they can contract labor in a way that is more beneficial for the village as a whole.



Outcome: The creation of village cottage industries could be used initially as capital to finance the

immediate need for goods and services and to generate individual and communal revenue. Those funds

and services could be used to pay teachers, provide amenities for future educators, researchers and

investors or be used as leverage for negotiation in the expansion of new and existing industries.

By learning to negotiate with foreign corporations in exchange for educational opportunities; such as

funding for schools, computers, communications and training programs, the village will have access and

be paid instead of charged to receive a higher standard of education and job training through employer

benefits, just by being a cheaper source of semi skilled labor than their international counterparts. This

way, the village does not have to worry that if someone chooses to leave Duayee for better job

opportunities (with the company or otherwise), that are higher paying that they are losing a community

asset. Through this process, those who leave the village will be prepared educationally and economically

to demand higher wages abroad so that they can send more money home (if they need to) and a skills base

can still be kept within the village and cultivated to serve the village as a whole.

liberia sustainable village model economic program by monica leslie

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