Appropriate Technology

Appropriate Technology encompasses technological applications that are small scale, energy efficient, environmentally sound, locally controlled, and people centered. Mahatma Gandhi is often cited as the “mother” of the movement because he advocated for small, local and predominantly village-based technology to promote self reliance in Indian communities. He believed that technology should benefit a minority of people and not be supplied for the profit of the majority. Village Volunteers believes this too.

• Drip-Irrigation-Bucket-System
  Learn how to set up an irrigation system for a garden and find online resources for troubleshooting and monitoring.
• Solar Food Dehydrator
  Using the sun and a solar collector, you can build a functional food preservation system for little work and even less money.
• Solar Cooking and Water Purification
  Solar cookers are an easy and affordable method to cook food and purify water without requiring the use of wood, coal, or dung. This reduces deforestation, CO2 emissions, and does not cause respiratory health problems.
• Fuel Briquettes Training Guide
  Sustainable sources of wood fuel have diminished and deforestation has become a worldwide epidemic, therefore, success in fuel briquetting depends on understanding its benefits for the community. Successful training takes 6-8 weeks in order to be able to produce a smokeless fuel briquette. Learn how.
• Hand Powered Water Pumps
  The bush pump has become the world’s most robust and widely used locally made hand pump. It can be made locally with ease. Parts can be modified to what can be found locally and any one can use it.
• Bamboo House Building Manual
  Learn how to construct low-rise, earthquake-resistant housing. The design plans produced by the Engineering Structures Research Centre at City University require only basic construction skills and tools. The materials are sustainable, durable, and can often be locally obtained in most regions in the global south.
• How to Build a Rocket Stove     A rocket stove is a cooking stove that achieves efficient combustion of fuel. It has been used for cooking purposes in many energy poor locales (notably Rwandan refugee camps) as well as heating water.

Cultural Preservation

Cultural preservation celebrates and records the heritage of a people. This can be accomplished by collecting photographs, cultural stories, family genealogy, or by learning and teaching traditional songs, stories and dance to new generations. Below you’ll find various tools to preserve family histories for children whose parents are taken by disease and to record those cultural beliefs eroding away through inundation of western civilization.

• Ethnography
  Learn about ethnography, a qualitative methodology whereby the researcher seeks to understand a culture from the standpoint of a cultural insider, learning what it is truly like to exist within a particular framework of ideas, customs, taboos, religion, thoughts, and all of the  institutions that come together to make culture.
• Ethnographic Research Strategy
  To undertake an ethnographic investigation, equipment as simple as a pad and pencil can be used, or as complex as digital cameras and special effects. Whatever you choose, learn what guidelines to keep in mind when in the field.
• Memory Box
  In Kenya alone, 890,000 children have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS. Memory Boxes are physical objects created by families with the assistance of a volunteer, in which they store family memories in the form of letters, photographs, stories, advisement and objects that have significance for a family and its history. These have proven instrumental in assisting grieving orphans by preserving memories and offering hope for the future.
• Memory Box Interview: Suggested Questions
  These questions may be useful in preserving a family’s Memory Box history for those children who have parents with HIV/AIDS.
• Traditional Healers: Working and Learning
  The spiritual and medicinal healing arts of the traditional societies in Kenya provide remedies for common ailments and also demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the environment, concern for conservation, and the sustainable use of medicinal plants. Learn to preserve the great store of indigenous knowledge held by traditional healers which is in danger of extinction with the current generation.

Economic Development

Economic Development is a deliberate intervention to foster a healthy economy through the allocation of land, labor, capitol and entrepreneurship. The goal is to positively impact business activity, employment, and income distribution patterns by enhancing existing businesses, attracting new business and encouraging the growth of start-ups. The following resources offer support for rural business development in developing countries.

• Basic Bookkeeping
  Bookkeeping is the practice of keeping track of your money through a formal system of records.  Recording how and when money is spent and made helps to keep an overall view of how your money is working for you

•  Business Planning and Basic Bookkeeping PDF VIEWING” Please do not use this one to print because the booklet will not have the pages in the correct order. The resolution has been optimized to view it fast on the screen so printing quality will be low.

Education

Education is an integral tool in the development of a human being’s potential. Whether teaching a child or an adult, learning enhances innate talents and teaches useful skills that are important to life’s success, from nurturing the sense of self through accomplishment to bringing out exceptional abilities. To teach is to enable. The following guides help to make that happen.

COMMUNICATIONS

• Active Listening for the Facilitator

CRAFTS FOR CHILDREN

• How to Make Corn Husk Dolls
  Corn husk dolls are easy to make and fun to play with. Start a business making corn husk dolls in your village!

ENGINEERING and SCIENCE

• Basic Mechanical Principles
  For those of you who are interested in mechanical devices, I’d like to introduce to you the six simple machines: The lever, wheel & axle, pulley, inclined plane, wedge and screw. It is helpful to understand how all of these things work as it will help you to understand how complicated machines work using the same principles.

•  An Introduction to Electricity and Circuits
•  An Introduction to Flight

TEACHING ENGLISH

• Teaching English as a Second Language
  Teaching English to non-native speakers is a challenge that can be daunting, but it can also be incredibly rewarding. Learn helpful tips to make your teaching experience a success for both you and your students.

• ESL Lesson Plan: First Day of Class
  With beginners, mime and movement are essential. Speak slowly and use lots of body language to convey instructions. For beginners, understanding and conveying basic meaning is much more important than using perfect grammar. The following activities will get you started.

• Intermediate English Lesson Plan: Worm Composting
  The objective is to learn command verbs for giving instructions, understand and appreciate the principles of worm-composting, work as a group to better communicate in English, and contextualize the language to improve retention.

• ESL Group Games
  Learn to play and teach games that enhance English vocabulary and comprehension. Included are Guess the Word, The Alphabet Game, Run for the Answer and Race to Re-order Sentences.

• More ESL Group Games
  To Market teaches numbers, food or object vocabulary, past tense and repetition. Other games include Ball Game, What Am I?, Whisper Circles and more.

Environmental Conservation

Our environment supports us through the  air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink. Our lives depend on supporting our environment in return. These documents bring environmental issues to light, educate on how best to conserve the natural world that we all share.

• Environmental Stress: The New Leading Cause of Human Conflict
  An editorial piece written in Uganda on how people struggle to gain access to clean water and non-contaminated soil to grow food.
• Environmental Youth Action Corps Manual
  An environmental curriculum to train stewards to raise awareness in their community on methods to decrease or eliminate behaviors that can negatively impact both people and the environment.
• Guide to Proper Battery Storage and Disposal
  Batteries contain materials that are hazardous to the immune system, such as mercury, which can lead to health damage or lead, decreased intellectual capacity. Learn to properly dispose of batteries and how to store them to prevent leakage into soil and water.
• Water Hyacinth: An Invasive Aquatic Species
  Removal and uses of Water Hyacinth.

Gender Equality

Gender equality imparts confidence so young girls are afforded opportunities and believe they can achieve anything in life. These documents provide insight into the lives of young girls in developing countries and offer ways to empower them.

• Female Genital Mutilation
  In some areas of sub-Saharan Africa, over 96% of women and girls have undergone the procedure. In Kenya, over 70% of females have experienced FGM. Halting this practice cannot come from top-down organizations, but from the unified decisions of the communities where FGM is practiced.

• Gender Equality Camps and Workshops
  Learn how to instill confidence in girls, push the boundaries of tradition gender roles, and create camaraderie and support for girls who need to believe they are equals.

• The Experience of Being a Girl
  These essays were written by 39 girls from Pirrar Girls’ High School in Transmara, Kenya, as they reflected upon their lives and found their own voices.

Performing Arts for Development

Performing Arts employs interactive theater to communicate important social messages. This type of engagement stresses the equal input of all parties involved while encompassing strong cultural traditions of teaching and disseminating important information throughout communities.

• AIDS Education in Africa Using Traditional Performance
  For two decades, forum theater has been used as a popular means of community development in West Africa and Kenya to bring healthcare and other social development messages to rural people.This two-way communication permits audience members to act out and hopefully internalize concepts such as healthcare, nutrition, sex and AIDS education, and family planning.

Public Health 

Clean Water

Malaria

• Growing Artemisia: Used in treating Malaria
  Artemisia is a large, diverse genus of plants with between 200-400 species belonging to the daisy family Asteraceae. Learn how to grow and prepare Artemisia as an anti-malaria.

HIV/AIDS

 Other

• Germs and Staying Healthy Germs are tiny organisms that cause disease. Learn how to stay healthy by avoiding them.
• The Effects of Cooking Indoors on Women and Children  Three billion people rely on biomass for their source of domestic cooking fuel resulting in a health crisis in developing nations that is little known to those in the developed world – indoor air pollution (IAP). Learn more about this issue to better educate those who are exposed of the dangers.
• Oral Health – An Oral Health Curriculum for Future Mothers and Their Young Children
• Stretches for Spinal Health  Whether you are farming, carrying heavy loads, cooking, or on a computer, stretching will keep your back healthy and you out of pain.

Sickle Cell Anemia

Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) is a largely neglected risk to child survival in most Sub Saharan African countries. SCD is an inherited form of anemia – a condition in which there aren’t enough healthy red blood cells to carry adequate oxygen throughout the body.  Normally, red blood cells are flexible and round, moving easily through blood vessels. In SCD, the red blood cells become rigid and sticky and are crescent shaped. These irregularly shaped cells get stuck in small blood vessels and can block blood flow and oxygen to parts of the body.

The probability of early death among children born with SCD in sub-Saharan Africa might be as high as 90% in rural areas where access to health care is limited, but closer to 50% in populations with better access to health care and lower exposure to infectious diseases.

If you are a Public Health, Global Health, or Medical student, internships are available.

Sickle-Cell Anemia 

Sickle Cell and Maternal Mortality

Belly Breathing

Aerobic Exercises

Strength and Breathing

Strength TrainingStretching

Stretching

Sickle Cell Anemia Folate Nutrition

Youth Counseling and Development

Young people benefit from the guidance of counseling and development in order to conquer stereotypes, believe in possibility, take concrete action to achieve their goals and provide leadership in community projects. The following resources encourage students to explore their potential and provide them with leadership skills.

• Planning for Your Future
  The purpose of this curriculum is to help children begin thinking strategically about what they want to do when they grow up and how they can begin planning now. Planning strategically makes it possible for students to recognize problems, obstacles and weaknesses ahead of time, then to plan around them or find ways to minimize their impact. It also helps students to focus their efforts on their goals and be more effective.
• Leadership-Activity-Workshop
  This workshop is based on the premise that each student will face a variety of leadership challenges in life. The way in which these challenges are met, whether as a formal leader or a member of a team, can have a significant impact on the individual and the community at large..
• Leadership Activity Learning Workshop
  This workshop is designed to foster leadership skills through teamwork for students ages twelve to fifteen. Because the discussion is a main priority, the teacher will be in the classroom as a guide: leading students to learn from one another by asking questions about the words they have chosen.
• Principles of Leadership
  Read excerpts from The Tao of Leadership that inspire thought, discussion and reflection among students.