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Lift Kids Village

Written by Lift Kids

Thursday, 24 April 2008

It takes a village to raise a child, but what is a village? It's a place we all need consisting of food, clothing, shelter, education, love, family, health care, recreation, and small businesses that keep it all financially viable. That's a village.

The Lift Kids Village is an integrated puzzle with pieces fitting together for empowerment opportunity and hope for kids, their parents, adults, families and communities. We focus on kids because they define the future of the village. We want to keep them on the farm, in the village, where they can be productive human beings rather than ugly statistics of rural exodus and suburban slums.

It also takes a village to create a village. The Lift Kids Village is a meeting place, physically or in cyber space, where thoughtful people gather to exchange ideas, designs, solutions and concepts to jointly create the best village humanity can offer humanity.

The Lift Kids Village consists of social entrepreneurs and innovators who contribute their expertise to constantly improve Sustainable Value Added per Child (S.V.A.C.). We work together with people and “villages” of all origins, professions, faith and colors. The values we share are peace, harmony, and continuous evolution in providing for kids and our planet. Please join us and benefit from our “village” of caring people who are creating a better world and Lift Kids Villages for all in need.

“There is only one revolution tolerable to all men, all societies, all political systems: revolution by design and invention.” --Richard Buckminster Fuller

Water

The most important aspect of a Lift Kids village is the availability and use of good, clean water. Without this, a village can never become self-sustaining. There are approximately 1.1 billion people in the world that do not have access to safe water. Water covers about 75% of the earth, yet only 2% is suitable for drinking as 98% is saltwater.

Fresh, potable water is a scarce and indispensable resource required for sustaining humans, livestock and agriculture. Developing countries can benefit by exploring sustainable water technologies such as rainwater harvesting, gravity flow, boreholes, wells, filtration techniques and solar powered pumps. Water is an essential component to sustaining a village and is one of Lift Kid's main focuses.

Education

At Lift Kids, we believe that education should be thought of as applied learning, or the acquisition of skills that will contribute to the sustainability of a village. This belief translates into both a short-term and a long-term investment for the village people. Skills in the areas of health, nutrition, social, and emotions have an immediate and life-sustaining impact on the children and adults that make up the village. The long-term investment in education consists of practical topics such as: reading, math, basic business principles, and job skills that can be applied to the various enterprises adopted by the village. Finally, by affiliating with local resources such as businesses and schools, Lift Kids works to build a support network that includes mutually beneficial opportunities for internships and mentoring that will help the village grow and become self-sustaining.

While schools in remote impoverished areas, such as Tanzania and Kenya, do a sufficient job teaching students mathematics, science, and English- vocational and practical business training is lacking. The curriculum in the schools is rich in academic subjects like calculus and physics. Lift Kids wants to teach students how to create a business plan to capitalize on the village's unique resources while doing so in an earth-friendly manner. Lift Kids is working towards enabling individuals to use their education to help their village achieve sustainability.

Energy

To further ensure that the villages are able to be self-sustaining and have the energy that they need for years to come, Lift Kids works to find alternative energy sources for them to utilize. These sources include solar panels and windmills, but are just a few of the alternative energies that Lift Kids uses to help build a village.

•· Solar panels have become extremely cost efficient in third world countries and many of these countries have a considerable amount of sunshine each year. Solar panels in the early 1980's that cost $100/watt are only $3/watt today. This price will continue to go down as technology increases and are projected to be $2/watt within 2 years.

•· Windmills provide another inexpensive means for generating power. These windmills are roof top units that are designed to power a single building, i.e., a school or recreation center. Wind also provides power in the evenings after the sun has gone down. Combining wind power and solar power together provides these villages with long-term sustainable power sources that are virtually free.

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Agriculture

Farming is not only a major source of income, but also provides food, raw materials, and a way of life for families. In an effort to produce successful villages and combat the ever-increasing reduction in worldwide food supply, Lift Kids is focused on creating training projects to educate villages on efficient means of food production. By upgrading infrastructure, offering technical assistance to agriculture-based activities, and identifying alternate agricultural methods, the village will be able to improve nutrition, fight starvation, and provide a sustainable source of income for their people.

The following are examples of the projects Lift Kids is leading within their villages:

•· Raised bed farming: This method ensures that water and other nutrients required from plants are used efficiently.

•· Nursery: Indoor nurseries can grow seedlings of various crops. These seedlings are sold to farmers for transplantation when the field is ready.

•· Drip irrigation: This is an effective technique in areas where water is scarce.

•· Organic vegetable garden: This allows the villagers to take advantage of the nutrients in the rich soil in their areas. This is significant as it incorporates the worldwide trend towards healthy eating.

Livelihood

Livelihood is the means for a person to attain self-sufficiency and achieve economic stability. The combination of livelihoods across a community will result in the community's long-term sustainability. The word livelihood suggests something more than the word job. Having a livelihood implies that the root of a person's life depends greatly on what she or he does for a living. Livelihood is an essential ingredient for a person to be independent and provide for all his or her material needs.

Lift Kid Villages promote livelihood through volunteer participation and grants. Lift Kid's philosophy is to lend a helping hand to the people of these villages to set-up and achieve self-sufficiency through enterprise development. Other businesses tend to be created around a successful "seed" business and promote the livelihood of other villagers.

It takes a village to create a village. It also takes a village to sustain a village. Seed businesses within a village create opportunities for further growth and therefore provide livelihoods for the people of the village itself. A livelihood isn't just a job, it gives one self-meaning and a purpose within their community, or village, and Lift Kids promotes this concept. In our case it offers hope.

Egg Module

Greenhouse

Technology

Technology is often times taken for granted in our communities. It consumes us and we look forward to the next new revelation that will make life easier. It is not, however, always having the latest in technology that puts you ahead of the pack, but rather knowing how to use it for your advantage. Sustainable communities know how to best use the technology that is available to them and Lift Kids is working to bring that to its villages.

Lift Kids has begun implementing such ideas as receiving a weather forecast on a cell phone, learning new water filtration practices, using alternative fuels, and receiving medical treatment through the web in the villages they have helped to make sustainable. While inexpensive computers and free software can provide a technological advantage to a village, Lift Kids focuses on how the technology can be used to provide tools to sustain a village in the long-term.

Essential technologies that assist in the sustainable villiage include:

Wind Technologies
Water Technologies
Sun/Solar Technologies
Agriculture Technologies

Health

Many areas of the world lack an adequate number of trained medical professionals. This can lead to health issues of a whole population in a poor rural area that could be producing food through agriculture. A systematic approach to the proper training and education of some villagers in medical care could help to alleviate and provide relief for villagers caught in this cycle.

Creating a model by which a high academically trained person could continue or re-direct their educational training to an abbreviated program similar to that seen in emergency medical technicians (EMTs) or in licensed practitioner nurses (LPNs) could raise the level of basic healthcare in Lift Kid's villages.

Lift Kids village model is trying to offer basic short-term education to an appropriate villager or team of villagers. The education would assist a villager in becoming a resident medical generalist. A basic starting village program would entail educating other villagers about sanitation and hygiene, and other health issues. Nutrition and awareness of food sources would also play a major role in this program. Immunization and medical records keeping would be established to ensure the future health of the people in the village.

For most people, the diagnosis and treatment of a condition is only a first step in the lifetime of healthcare. Therefore, having a staff that can only provide emergency healthcare is not a full resolution. Follow-up care and the education of medical generalists is a critical offering for an organization like Lift Kids that is focused on empowering people and creating healthy villages.

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