1.6 Supporting Evidence

I consulted with the Mayor of Romainmôtier, Switzerland to set-up an oven course. This consultation was through my friend Sylvan who lives in Romainmôtier. It was a lot of back and forth about the logistics. Below you can see the project proposal, my oven course design cycle and the SWOT analysis I made. Sylvan and my wife helped me to translate the project proposal. We consulted with the mayor and he told us some other things that the town council would want to see and we added those things. After a month of this back and forth including a site visit the mayor informed me he had too many other projects and not enough funds for the oven project. 

Working in a country where you are not fluent in the language is very difficult. You must rely on others for a lot, if you don't have a budget this can be a big road block. If I had had the ability to source and price out materials, the host might have gone through with hosting the course. From his price assessment the cost of materials and the labour to building the foundation and roof where more than they could afford. If I were to do it again I would have looked to get as many other potential hosts as I could, and consulted all of them at the same time. This redundancy would have given me the possibility to continue with the course if one host fell through.

The host was the mayor of a small village who wanted to build it in a communal gathering space. He gave the impression from the beginning that they had the resources and the project was sure to happen. Because this was implied and I felt quite confident that it would happen, I didn't seek any other hosts. This was a mistake, I should have had as many potential hosts as possible. 

Below are most of my journal entries covering the time period I have been working on this OP4 (auto-retracted click title to reveal). To see a journal entry click the title name, this will bring you to the documents information page (opens in the same window, use back arrow to return here), then click the title again and it will open. 

I captured this video during an Activity Hub Hangout meeting. Ava speaks about the different features of Scrivener writing software➚ and how it helps her organize lots of text and different elements for the book she is writing. This would have been a perfect tool to help me write my oven facilitation manual.

Below are two other projects I actively engaged in as prospects for my OP4 project.

The first being the Saha Astitva Farm outside of Ganeshpuri, India. I connected with the founders of the farm prior to arriving in Ganeshpuri and arranged to be brought to the farm. On arrival in Ganeshpuri I made the connection and was able to visit the farm, meeting with the managing director and workers. I found out that the founders had put five years into establishing this organic farm and had recently left it in the hands of the three young men who were working it. One became the manager. I was surprised to see that it was just these three young men who spoke no english, their website shows something very different. There is great potential for this farm but due to several factors, I realized it would not work for my OP4. It would have required at least a six month commitment to get to a point of any completion. It was a bit sad to see such a project left in the hands of the workers who had little management or design skills and spoke no english. I think the founders are still trying to help them from abroad. I heard the founders are now starting a new project in Hawaii. This project did not fit the time or the level of commitment I was ready to invest. They did have some great designs implemented and growing diversity of plants. There is still plenty of room for improvement if someone is interested in a long-term project.

• Photo album of my visit to the farm ➚

The second project was a reforestation project for a friend of mine in Govardhan, India just south of New Delhi. You can read more about my experiences below.

I was traveling southern India and had posted a few photos to my FB page of some forestry practices I was observing. I got a message from Vallabh Das (who saw them) a good friend of mine who spends much of his time in Northern India and who is the director of the Shyam Das Foundation. He started the foundation to continue the work of Shyam Das who died in a motorcycle accident a couple years ago.

• Shyam Das Foundation website➚ 

He asked me if I would consider coming to Jatipur on the Govardhan Hill to help him with a reforestation project for the foundation. My wife and I were headed in that direction so we agreed. I thought this could possibly become my OP4 if it met my learning goals but my intention was to go and see how I could help. I started to collect as much information on the area that I could including maps and species lists and details. We arrived in January and it was quite cold. Vallabh Das welcomed us and made us feel at home. I shared the information I had gathered and spoke to him about the importance of choosing a diverse variety of species. He agreed that he wanted to have a wide variety of tree and even some shrub species. We walked the site several time speaking about the land forms and some possible improvements and solutions. We also toured some nurseries selecting a few trees as a prototyping test to try several different ways of protecting the trees from grazing (monkeys, cows etc.). We also met and spoke with some of the local tree planters and stewards. Below is a video which explains the reforestation project.

• Simha's tree and plant species document created for Shyam Das foundation➚  

The other main dynamic of the project was a composting toilet, see the image and description of this below. After nine days of being there I learned that they were not going to start planting until I was out of India. I decided that I had given all the help I could for the time being and decided to move on. It was a great experience yet I knew it did not fit my learning goals and so continued the search for my OP4. 

• Photo gallery of my time at the project➚ 

The Shyamdas Foundation site chosen for reforestation on Govardhan hill was directly adjacent to a very low income community. The community must have had no septic infrastructure because they all used the site as their open toilet. It is a quite public area but this didn't stop the residents from walking out and squatting down. Vallabh Das thought a solution would be to build a composting toilet for the community. There are many constraints to make this toilet successful, which I am not going to get into all the details (if you want to know more about this project you can contact me). I decided to build some models of possible designs on Google SketchUp. The image below is one of the designs I made. I have built a similar toilet in Mexico but this design needed a lot more features because of all the constraints. Having the toilet managed was one of the main obstacles. We had a quote from a local builder that put the cost at about $1000. I am unsure what they have decided to do.  When I left they were talking about going with the more traditional tank and leach field design.

• SketchUp models of composting toilet (must have SketchUp to view)➚