Grass Roots
The purpose of the Grass Roots initiative is to work with those in our Open Source community that are struggling with poverty, hunger, deprivation and exclusion (the plight of the majority of the world's population) by channeling Pay It Forward funds, technical support and guidance to help families and communities onto a path to a prosperous and sustainable future. This is to be accomplished by assisting those who are motivated and take initiative to build residential Garden Villas?, Solar Greenhouses?, rural Eco Villages and urban Eco Communities? using our DIY methods and with support from our global Sola Roof Community. We will adopt and enhance the success formula of Habitat For Humanity? and mobilize the power of the Gift Economy to empower have not communities with Pay It Forward cash flow directly to families and communities that have a Grass Roots Projects plan in place.
Wealth creating, renewable resources will thus become freely available to these families and communities and the application of our Open Source methods will release the abundant natural energy that is harmoniously amplified by the Sola Roof "living structures". Our Blue Green shelter system mimics nature and is based on ecological life support systems that are building integrated. People will be equipped to rise up out of poverty and build a self reliant and ecological lifestyle that will generate sustainable livelihoods of great diversity. These communities will be set free from the impoverishing effects of globalization and will avoid the consumption treadmill but they will pioneer the self reliant Eco Life Style?.
The Knowledge Communities all around the world that have the material means must undertake to learn how to implement new patterns for sustainable living and quickly take action to propagate these patterns widely and freely so that the damage (the majority of harm originating from the so called "developed" nations) to the planetary ecological life support system can be alleviated and the probable future of carrying capacity collapse and a massive "die off" of humanity will be avoided. (See http://www.dieoff.org/)
In other words we do not want to look at poverty from the outside but rather establish an economy of communion that builds a global community that is truly united. This effort is just as urgent on both sides of the wealth/poverty gap, since both the rich and poor will be adjusting to a resource depletion era. If, in future, poverty is approached in a conventional AID style then failure is assured since there will no longer be local surplus resources to shift to regions of crisis. The carrying capacity of our planetary ecology is already in advanced stages of collapse and while some may still be convinced that the situation is under control, this illusion will soon be shattered.
We have perhaps less than one decade to act in an effective manner that will remove the fundamental causes of poverty. Our community will unite the have and have not communities, since in respect to sustainable living we all on the learning curve; and we are all found to be in dire need. In fact low consumption communities will back track less then the so called “developed” world. A new concept of true wealth must be born and this is most likely to emerge from cross cultural collaboration that can reveal the richness of social diversity as a source of future prosperity. But this prosperity will be distributed and will remain largely in the hands of end users. The monopolistic and exploitive business and economic models are avoided; profits are not concentrated in Command Economy? centers of power.
Grass Roots Projects are a manifestation of the Gift Economy and will go a long way to establishing a stronger and more equitable Exchange Economy? that is less susceptible manipulation of resource supply. These Projects will emerge in all countries and regions and those in need of support will set goals and publish their Project profile on our Grass Roots Projects index so that they can team up with the necessary human resources, Pay It Forward funding and Social Enterprise Investment? to move their project along and achieve their goals.