Growing out of their own ground

Ingenious solutions to simple problems sometimes require sophisticated minds but always require the direct involvement of the communities suffering from problem.

Here we present a new approach to teaching skills, in which the consditions are created for the participants to lean from each other and to develop the vital problem-solving skills.

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The Puzzle Approach

Much like a puzzle, real-life issues are made up of a number of smaller sub-issues and each of these sub-issues needs to be addressed individually before attempting to address the overall issue. More often than not these sup-issues are not representative of the actual issue. Keeping the big picture in mind is necessary to provide the appropriate framework for the different sub-issues that have to be solved individually.

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The constructive effects of destructive disasters

Explore whether disasters can be compared to shocks that dislocate established socioeconomic and political structures (often obsolete impediments to development), allowing an accelerated introduction of desirable but drastic changes at the individual and social levels, changes which otherwise might generations to happen. Some of the positive effects that a disaster could generate include: at the individual level, a willingness to accept radical value changes (role of women, education, relocating..); at a community level, obsolete traditional socioeconomic structures can be more easily replaced; and at the governance level, people's pro-active involvement in the policy-making process can be fomented and the scrutiny of the actions of their governments could be promoted. Much like breaking the chains of a prisoner of his own traditions and circumstances.

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Organized disaster relief efforts

The intention of this project is to optimize use of the often massive supply of resources in post-disaster situations. Pakistan 's 2005 earthquake and Southeast Asia 's 2004 tsunami are two obvious examples of how resources can be poorly managed, especially during the critical initial weeks of the relief efforts. A framework is needed to coordinate the different relief organizations and their resources to ensure their optimal use from the very beginning of the post-disaster relief efforts.

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