Working Villages Blog

Hello all,

Well, it’s actually happened, and we’re almost at the end of 2009. What a year! We have had unprecedented growth, and feel very grateful as we enter this season of giving thanks.

For those of you who missed Alex’s presentation at the Frontier Café, you can catch him giving a talk for Transition Towns at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick at 7pm on Tuesday, December 1st. The focus will be on community sustainability and post-petroleum as we head further into the 21st century.

Many of you have already received the annual holiday mailing, but for those of you who are primarily online supporters, here it is – our year in review!

2009 has marked substantial growth for Working Villages International, both in terms of outreach and in terms of program development at our Ruzizi Valley Project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We feel very fortunate as we look back over the past year.

The year started off with a bang, as we were able to fulfill the generosity of numerous donors and put our new rice huller into full production. The rice huller can process over 160 tons of rice a month, which enabled us to process not only our own rice, but also the rice of several thousand small farmers in the surrounding area. This had a dramatic effect, as the farmers were now being paid significantly more for their rice. Since farmers are now guaranteed a good value, more people are growing rice.

The importance of increased rice production became clear this year when a white fly infestation came through central Africa and destroyed the cassava crop, an important staple of the local diet. In the past, such blights have caused widespread starvation, but our rice program meant that local farmers produced enough rice to prevent famine in our area. Our Project Manager, Fiston Malago, is now growing various resistant strains of cassava. In the meantime, our program has ensured that the people of the Ruzizi Valley have a stable source of food.

Our agricultural production has exploded this year, from about 50,000 pounds of rice per month in January to about 100,000 pounds of rice per month in August. In August we also harvested 220,000 pounds of corn, and large amounts of seasonal produce such as cabbage, beans, melon, squash, eggplant, cucumber, lemons, tomatoes, lettuce, and onions. Our staff has stayed at about 600 people since 2008, but our crop production has greatly increased. We are producing more than twice as much food as last year because the labor originally used for infrastructure improvements, such as clearing fields and digging irrigation, is now focused on crop production. The massive food surplus and our large staff have both acted as stabilizing forces in the region, as there is now a consistent source of both food and work.

One of the most exciting projects of 2009 came as a byproduct of our rice production. The small husk around each grain of rice is inedible, and difficult to compost or burn. We were able to obtain a design for a rice hull stove which would burn the hulls by creating an intense updraft. During our summer trip to the Ruzizi Project, WVI’s blacksmiths expertly built a rice hull stove, and everyone cheered as the previously incombustible rice hulls burst into flame and boiled a pot of water. This stove will have a dramatic effect on our reforestation efforts in the valley, by reducing the need for firewood in cookfires. By the time we left, Hortense and Toiye, two of the ladies in the kitchen, were already making delicious meals with the new stove.

The July trip to Congo was a success on many fronts. Alex was able to oversee the ox training, and the animals had their first session in a yoke. Our staff teamsters, Toiye and Live, were calm and masterful with the animals, and it was clear by the time we left that the oxen could be plowing as soon as we can obtain suitable equipment. This was exciting progress, as animal traction will be an important component in the next stage of village development. Toiye has been with WVI since we first started working in the Ruzizi Valley, and she is now not only an amazing cook but also an amazing teamster!

Alex was extremely busy all summer and was in high demand both in the states and abroad. He was chosen to be a TEDGlobal Fellow, which meant speaking at the July 2009 TEDGlobal Conference at Oxford. TED is an elite international organization of innovators and entrepreneurs, and it was a huge honor for Alex to be at this convention with such luminaries as Stephen Fry and Gordon Brown. After his talk at Oxford, he stopped for a day or two in Maine to speak at the Greaterthan>Conference in Portland before flying to California for a series of engagements in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. He made his way to Washington DC and New York before finally returning to Maine for the 2009 Common Ground Fair in Unity.

As we head into 2010, Working Villages has never been so strong. Thanks to the generosity of donors all over the world, in September we were able to raise enough money to buy a truck for the Ruzizi Project. This will allow our staff to transport significantly more grains and agricultural produce, eliminating crop waste and providing more food for the region. 2009 also marked an important milestone for us, as the first year that our agricultural surpluses provided enough money to pay all the monthly wages for our agricultural workers. This is a very important step forward, as it allows us to redirect our funding to the next phase of development: buildings and infrastructure construction.

This summer we completed several beautiful model houses, made of brick, tile and thatch. The houses have been a big success, and there is a big demand in the valley for more building. But there is a challenge which is currently keeping us from increasing our rate of construction: with gasoline at $12 per gallon, the cost of transporting materials from outside vendors quickly mounts up.

Our next goal, therefore, is to raise money to build kilns for brick, mortar and lime. With the cost of transportation eliminated, the kilns will enable us to produce beautiful and long-lasting buildings using local clay, sand, and lime for less than $1000 apiece. The construction of houses, barns and infrastructure will serve two purposes: not only will it provide badly needed buildings, but it will also create jobs and skilled job training in an area that has been ravaged by war. Job creation is fundamental to building more stability in the region, and we look forward to 2010 as a time when we will take some very important steps in building our village of peace.

If you would like to help us in this next step, we appreciate contributions of any size. You can make a secure online donation here, or, if you would like to make a seasonal Gift of Peace donation in honor of a friend, you can download our Gift of Peace form here (right click). Thank you so much for your support over the past year, and have a wonderful holiday season!

Cheers,

Laura

Hi everyone!

A quick announcement for all our New England supporters: on Tuesday November 3rd at 7:30 pm, Alex will be giving a slideshow presentation called "Building a Village of Hope: Bringing Sustainable Peace to the Democratic Republic of Congo" at the Frontier Cafe in the Fort Andross Mill in Brunswick.  The event will be co-sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, Maine; Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space; PeaceWorks; Veterans for Peace; and the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom.

The presentation will show some of the recent accomplishments of WVI as well as where the project is heading in the near future.  As many of you know, this is a turbulent time in DR Congo, and this is a good chance to get a picture of how things are on the ground.  So, after you vote, please head on up to Brunswick and enjoy a fantastic presentation in an exciting new venue!  The website for the Frontier Cafe is www.explorefrontier.com if you’d like to check that out.  The suggested donation is $10, but the most important thing is that we’d love to see you there.  If you have any questions, as always feel free to give me a call.

Cheers,
Laura

207-607-1367
kahnwvi@gmail.com

Well, it’s been quite a summer, but it’s officially fall now and things are as busy as ever! Harvest season is always an exciting time for WVI, and it looks like this autumn is shaping up to be a great one.

Our great news from Ruzizi is that, due to some amazing supporters in the US, we will finally be able to buy a truck! As many of you know, the need for a truck has been a major impediment to construction progress, and having one will drastically increase the speed with which we can build houses and storage space. Our record-breaking crop yields of more than 150 tons of food per month have been overflowing our storage capacity, so the increased infrastructure will allow the project to grow in a much more stable and efficient manner. The truck will also enable us to transport more food to market, which will act as a further stabilizing force on the region. Everyone in the Ruzizi Valley is glad to have a reliable source of food and employment during these uncertain times, and the incredible community support has protected our crops and buildings better than any fence ever could. Fiston, our project manager in Ruzizi, has been watching the truck markets carefully, and expects to buy one soon. You can see our most recent pictures from Ruzizi at our community webshots page.

The exciting news on the US end of things is that we moved offices, and are now officially operating out of Fort Andross, just over the bridge in Brunswick. We are in the lovely and sunny Suite 216E, and once we’re unpacked I’ll be here about 11-5 every day if you’d like to drop in. It’s exciting to finally have a more permanent home, and we hope all of you in the area get a chance to come by.

We’ll be tabling at the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine on September 25-27. This is an incredible annual event that has an array of games, rides, events, speakers, crafts, food, produce and livestock, and I would highly recommend you come up for at least one day. You can find directions and information on their website at www.mofga.org. We’ll keep you posted about other events as we head boldly forth into October!

Well, we’re back from a summer trip to Congo, and I can tell you it was a busy one. The farm is enormous! Despite the dry season, crop production is through the roof, and it looks like we’ll be harvesting even more than we had previously estimated. With about 250 acres now under cultivation, we are currently harvesting around 40 metric tons of rice each month, and expect to harvest 100 metric tons of corn in August. The warehouses are bursting at the seams, and I can personally testify to the sheer legwork it takes to manage so much production. Fiston, our project manager, showed us around the farm, leading us through endless fields of tall green stalks separated only by long irrigation canals. After walking for what seemed like hours, he turned and shouted back, "Don’t worry, we’re almost halfway to the middle!"

We’ve also begun cultivating new crops, including palm trees for oil and a new parasite-resistant strain of cassava. Our massive output has made us now the largest food producers in Eastern Congo, an area half the size of Western Europe. Our crop production has become a stabilizing force in the region, allowing people to eat even in times of turmoil.

This trip was also particularly productive in terms of technology. Some of our friends at Cal Poly Tech sent us the blueprint to make a cooking stove that can burn rice hulls, which we were able to build and start using while we were in Ruzizi. Rice hulls are generally a worthless byproduct, being inedible and not good for compost. Ordinary cooking stoves are not hot enough to burn them, but the stove we built has a special design that creates enough heat and vacuum to burn rice hulls. This puts a previously worthless resource to use, and will propel our reforestation projects by reducing the need for firewood in the valley.

The other technological progress we made was in ox yoke training. Two of our workers, Toiye and Live, have been working with a team of oxen for the past year, and have a strong rapport with the animals. They were masterful in their ability to calm the oxen as the two young animals adapted to their first time in a yoke. By the end of the session, it was clear that the oxen could be trained to plough within a few weeks. This will significantly reduce the amount of labor it takes to plant and harvest the abundant crops of the Ruzizi Valley.

It was also clear, while we were there, that the incredible amount of agricultural produce is a responsibility as well as a blessing. Our storage space is overflowing, and some of our harvest has already spoiled because we don’t have the means to transport it, or appropriate facilities to keep it in. The vast quantities of rice and corn require a scaling up of transportation and storage infrastructure, but barns and trucks are expensive. Our goal is to raise money for these things over the rest of the summer and fall.

Since we left Congo, things haven’t exactly slowed down. Alex gave his talk at TEDGlobal, and had a great time alongside such speakers as Gordon Brown and Stephen Fry, and then came right back to speak at the greaterthan > conference here in Portland, Maine. For those of you in Maine, you can come see him give a presentation at the Georgetown Historical Society on Thursday, August 13th at 7 p.m. The Georgetown Historical Society is at 20 Bay Point Road in Georgetown. Alex’s sister will be making her famous cookies, so we hope to see you there!

Hello everyone!

My name is Laura Kahn, and I’m very happy to have re-joined WVI recently as the Director. I’ve been traveling for the past year, first with the Obama Campaign, and then teaching abroad in the Middle East. It was a great year, and educational in many ways. One of the things I realized while traveling was how important WVI’s work is. Working on the Obama Campaign and teaching in the Middle East were very different, but they both reiterated the need to be building a world founded on reasonable expectations and sustainable progress. From the foreclosed-upon homeowners in Nevada to the Syrian veterans I was teaching, everyone I spoke to recognized that the global situation has become untenable. We have to find a more rational, sustainable way of life, and it was gratifying to feel that WVI has been on the right track the whole time. I felt a bit like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz; after traveling the whole world wide, I found there’s really no place like home! I’m thrilled to be back in Maine and working again on the most relevant and important work I can find.

Spring always brings a lot of growth to WVI, and this spring has been one of unprecedented expansion. Since January, our amazing staff in Congo have harvested the largest amount of rice any producer has ever grown in the Ruzizi Valley, bringing in an astonishing 100,000 pounds of rice each month. Interestingly, this has presented a challenge to the Ruzizi Project in the form of storage space. The first barn we refurbished has already been filled, and we’re now racing against the clock to raise the money to build more storage space before our record harvests are damaged by the elements.

This spring has also seen the fruition of a rice-buying program which has changed the lives of 27,000 farmers in the surrounding areas. Prior to our program, the local small farmers had no way of hulling their rice crop, and had been forced to sell their rice unhulled to war profiteers at far below the market price. The profiteers would then hull the rice, hold it until the market was desperate for rice, and then sell it at an enormous profit, forcing both the farmers and the local villagers deeper into poverty. We obtained a rice huller last fall, and since then have managed to start a rice-buying program, paying the farmers over twice what they received from the profiteers. We buy 160 tons of rice each month from the outlying farmers, and sell it at a fair market price to the people of the Ruzizi Valley. This program is proving extraordinarily successful, and has helped to empower the larger Ruzizi community to work for peace and independence.

The other big news around here is that WVI’s founder and President, Alexander Petroff, was chosen as a TEDGlobal Fellow 2009, and will be speaking at the TEDGlobal 2009 Conference in Oxford. TED is a remarkable international community of thinkers and entrepreneurs, and we’re thrilled to be part of this innovative global fellowship.

I’ll keep you posted as seeds take root and grow here at WVI. Our next trip to Congo is coming up, and we’re looking forward to the amazing challenges and opportunities that always await us at the Ruzizi Project. If you’d like to get our newsletter, sign up in the box in the left column, or feel free to email me with any questions at. I look forward to hearing from you!

Best,

Laura

In 2008, Working Villages International (WVI) celebrated its second anniversary in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Much has changed since we began two years ago with the donation of a decrepit plantation house and a few acres of scrub land. And now there can be no doubt that this change has been the direct result of WVI’s actions.This past year has been a particularly hard one for South Kivu province, for Congo, and for central Africa in general. In both the spring and the fall, a crippling drought decimated the area’s harvest, while a terrible blight virtually eliminated the manioc crop, the staple food of the region. This food crisis combined with high oil prices and the rising cost of world food prices, (the price of rice and corn have doubled in the past year alone) led to food riots in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, in the midst of this crisis, WVI’s Ruzizi Valley project is an oasis of prosperity that is anxiously yearning to explode across the region.

In November and December of 2007, WVI began an ambitious expansion of its farm project in order to meet the challenge of the food crisis. In a massive irrigation project, our workers pulled water 4 km to our fertile Lubarika farm, allowing us to grow crops year round, and in massive quantity on nearly 100 acres of land. To farm this land, WVI employs 400 workers, making it the largest employer in the province, and providing a livelihood to over 350 families. However, the greatest benefits began to be seen in April, when WVI celebrated its second anniversary. In the month of April, WVI harvested 25,000 pounds of rice, as well as a huge quantity of fruits, vegetables, and legumes. Through staggered planting, we are now producing 50,000 pounds of rice every month. This makes WVI the largest producer of rice in South Kivu province. All this production is destined for local use.

WVI is building a new model for economic development based on Gandhi’s teachings of swadeshi (localized economics) and building peaceful community. Every day, WVI’s new model of economic development is proving itself. It’s the right answer to the growing oil crises, and – by building the employment base – it’s the best antidote to war, violence and poverty. This particular fact is rewarding to me personally, as it is something I have been working on for as many years as I can remember. However, what is most inspiring is the knowledge that this is just the beginning. With the proper funding, WVI can pull this devastated region of Africa out of poverty forever, and in the process it can give the world a model of development that actually produces sustainable results. Here is our plan.

WVI’s model breaks economic development into four distinct parts, and addresses each of them rigorously. The components are:

* Capacity
* Productivity
* Efficiency
* Distribution
 

Up to this point, most of WVI’s efforts have been in the realm of Capacity building, that is to say, commodity production. To lift the population out of poverty, there must be a dramatic increase in value-producing sectors of the economy. People must be productively employed if they are to get out of poverty. The results so far have been huge; however, this is just the beginning. There is a lot more we need to do in capacity building, and not just in the agricultural sector. We need to produce all, or as many as we can, of our non-agricultural commodities, such as bricks, tiles, cement, paint, furniture, clothing, art, etc.

After we have built our capacity to produce commodities, we need to increase our worker Productivity. By increasing worker productivity, we mean making improvements so that the average working person can produce greater output in the same amount of time. We have already begun this process, through our irrigation program. For example, when our farmers plant in irrigated land, they produce more crops for the same amount of work. But that increase in productivity will be even greater with the ox power program we have just begun. In April, we began teaching villagers how to train oxen using voice commands. Because using voice commands emphasizes building loyalty and trust with the animals, less strength is required, so we have women as well as men teamsters. This is important in a country where women do about 50% of the work in the agricultural sector. It will take about a year before they are fully trained and big enough to work, but once our oxen complete their training, they will dramatically increase productivity, not only for farmers, but also for people engaged in the non-agricultural sector, especially by hauling goods for village trade. This will be immensely important in an area where gasoline now costs $12 per gallon, but annual income is only $100 per person. Following WVI’s model for sustainable development, our long term increases in productivity will be linked to a wide range of appropriate technology.

Next is the need to increase the Efficiency of production and distribution. This involves arranging things so that the various factors of labor and materials can come together easily. It involves building roads, storage facilities, market places, biogas infrastructures, and even new villages, etc.

Finally, WVI’s model addresses the problem of Distribution. In particular, the focus is on the control over distribution, and structuring it in a way that benefits the average villager and commodity producer.In just one year, WVI has moved from producing no food and paying high prices to feed our staff of 20 people, to today producing enough food to feed over 1000 people sustainably! With the introduction of oxen, I hope that by June 1 of 2009, this number will be many times greater. Our next challenge is housing. Currently WVI is building a model block of sustainable housing. Like our agricultural program we need to establish capacity. This means to produce our beautiful brick houses, we need to build kilns for bricks, roman tiles (for roofing), floor tiles, white wash paint, and cement. We need to expand our raw material production, of wood, clay, stone, sand, limestone, and bamboo. For this WVI will need to raise $100,000. After we increase our capacity in terms of industries and once we complete a model block of housing (12 sustainably built brick houses) WVI will have the capacity to finish 1 house per day – that means 30 houses per month – with a staff of 100 workers. We will be able to build for our workers 365 beautiful, sustainably built, and permanent houses per year.

With the housing and agricultural sector under way, WVI’s goal of a peaceful, self-sufficient and sustainable, eco-village in one of the world’s most troubled countries will begin to take shape.

What once seemed impossible is now looking tangible. I want to say thank you very much to all of you who have made this possible through your support, and welcome to all of you who are ready to help change our world.

Alexander Petroff
President

Please view more exciting photos
of our project at
Community Webshots.