January 2003 Edition of Grassroots Good News

["Burkhard Luber" <luber@dieschwelle.de>]

January 2003 Edition of the Grassroots Good News

Table of Contents:
1) Training on the Job in Cameroon
2) Promoting Fair and Ecological Daily Diet
3) Hope for Albania
4) Pedal Energy
5) Youth Competition against Fascism and Violence


1) Training on the Job in Cameroon

Since summer 2002 the Threshold Foundation funds a job training
project for young people in Cameroon. In Bafoussam, a district
capital, courses are being arranged in which jobless young people get
a training in house building and refrigerator maintenaince. Other
course subjects like tailoring and hairdressing are planned. Most of
the labor market and the economy in Cameroon takes place in informal
channels since there is no normal job market like in US or Europe. So
this project gives a new perspective for young persons who mostly can
only hope for ad hoc jobs or - worse - become criminals. The project
started 2001 by Bafoussam Jules Boum when he brought together a group
of young people with only part-time jobs and started an association
with the double aim of being a company itself and offering training
for young persons.

The main aspect of this initiative is to combine practical work and
study, two fields which normally are far apart in Cameroon. For the
practical training and to get income for the company the association
makes efforts for orders, not an easy task in Cameroon. The study part
takes place in a separate training room where relevant topics are
taught mainly by the active members of the association. The training
period is very flexible. There are short trainings like an internship
with some study days. In the summer time there also longer training
courses because during the long summer vacations young people have
more time to join for such a job with qualification opportunity. Funds
of the The Threshold Foundation have helped the association to furnish
the education room, bying work tools and teaching material and
completing a work room where a self-help group executes a banana
drying and selling project.


2) Promoting Fair and Ecological Daily Diet

The primary aim of the "Aufgeschmeckt"  campaign
(www.aufgeschmeckt.de) organised by the evangelical fund "Brot f¸r the
Welt" (Bread for the World) is to open the eyes of children and young
people to regionally produced, ecological products that have been
fairly traded. It aims to create an awareness of healthy food as well
as the ecological and social background to its production. It also
targets kitchen staff that prepares meals for children and young
people, as well as parents, teachers and others involved in education.

Here is an example of alternative "marketing" for chocolate: "Iím
called Coco because of the cocoa that gives me my nice brown colour.
It comes from hot and humid west Africa, where cocoa flourishes best,
through a process of fair trade. But as a sweet temptation, I also
contain a whole lot of sugar ñ cane sugar, in fact, from the
Philippines. If you also count the milk that comes from German
farmers, Iím a real multicultural product. Do you buy a lot of
chocolate with your pocket money? Fifty years ago you would have had
to have saved for quite a while because chocolate was still a real
luxury then. Today world prices for sugar and cocoa are pretty much
rock bottom and thatís why we Westerners can afford loads of
chocolate. Each person, whether granny or child, buys 8.8 kilograms of
chocolate on average every year. Many cocoa farmers in west Africa, on
the other hand, have never seen a finished bar of chocolate, and it
would also be much too expensive to eat. At least the farmers that
market their cocoa via fair trade get a better price for it. This
means that they can afford vegetable gardens or health centres, for
example. As well as chocolate, you can get fair trade cocoa powder and
hazelnut spread ñ itís not even that much more expensive, and at least
as tasty as the major brands at that.


3) Hope for Albania

That is the motto of "Intelektualet e Rinj Shprese" (Irsh), a small
NGO working in Northern Albania (mailto:irsh@mail.albnet.net). Irsh is
a partner of the Threshold Foundation. The cooperation with Irsh
started with a Fundraising Training Seminar by Burkhard Luber for NGOs
in Northern Albania in Autumn 1998. In spring 1999 the Threshold
helped Irsh to acquire basic office equipment. After the Kosovo war
Irsh could purchase a house for Kosovo refugee families in Shkoder
(the town where Irsh is located) due to a special fundraising appeal
by the Threshold in Germany. During the last two years IRSH has
published ìIdentityî, a monthly magazine for NGOs in Northern Albania,
arranged two special education programs for marginalized Roma children
in Shkoder and actively explores possibility of alternative tourism in
the mountain region of Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro together with
other NGOs in these regions. The former refugee house is now used for
special courses (like a small business training program for local
women), as a PC ressource place where young people of the town can
write job applications and CVs and as meeting place of the various
departments of Irsh.

Albania has faced a decades-long dictatorship where the county was
almost closed from any international links. After a huge mismanagement
of saving funds has ruined high proportions of the income of the
people in the country in 1996/1997 the population seized thousand of
firearms from the military arsenals and the country was paralyzed in
civil war. Still the blood feud is an enormous societal problem in the
Northern part of the country. So Albania has to make up for a number
of aspects: foremost civil society establishment and human rights
promotion but also to take an active role in the future international
stabilizing process of Southern Eastern Europe with the still
undecided final status of Kosovo and a huge number of Albanians living
in Macedonia.


4) Pedal Energy

Students at Humboldt State University in northern California have
devised a system for powering their dormitory with a blend of solar,
wind, and pedal power. The Campus Center for Appropriate Technology
(CCAT) not only taps the power of sun and wind but also uses a "Human
Energy Converter" to link a fleet of stationary bikes to small 12-volt
generators, which in turn power laptops, TVs, washing machines, and
other home appliances like drill presses, grinders, sanders,  blenders
and power generators. So when students want to hold a rock concert or
political rally, they hop on the bikes and power the sound system.

For the Pedal Power Project promoters at the CCAT pedalling is not
only fun and sport but they also believe in its high relevance for
economy and society and define it as the most healthy and highest
non-machine energy generating activity of the human body:

"Pedal power uses the most powerful muscles in the body: the quads,
hamstrings, and calves. When pedaling in a circular motion at sixty to
eighty revolutions per minute, with the use of toe clips, almost every
muscle in the human legs can be used to make energy. Ninety-five
percent of the exertion put into pedal power is converted into energy.
The average rider at a continuous road speed of twelve miles per hour
can produce a quarter horsepower, or enough energy to light two, one
hundred-watt light bulbs.

In this day and age, with the over abundance of automobiles and
powered machines, pedal power can still take a place in the lives of
the earth conscious. Pedal power can be applied to a tremendously
large variety of jobs besides the most familiar form, transportation.
Tools that can be operated by pedal power are the bandsaw, meat
grinder, wood carver, stone polisher and buffer, jewelers lathe, and
pottery wheel. Appliances such as a juicer, potato peeler, meat
slicer, cherry pitter, or a butter churn can be used with pedal power.
On the farm, pedal power can pump water, plow, and clean grain. The
list of applications that pedal power can be incorporated with can go
on and on. Here at CCAT, pedal power is used to run a drill press,
washing machine, grinder, TV/VCR, generator, and a human energy
converter.

Pedal Power is an excellent source of energy. Pedal power can be
applied to a wide range of jobs. Pedal Power is a simple, cheap, and
convenient source of energy. With the human population at six billion
and growing, pedal power can be incorporated in the lives of families
living in third world countries to improve the quality of their lives
while being friendly to the earth. Pedal Power is an appropriate
technology for now and for the future."
(quote from the CCAT web site
http://humboldt.edu/~ccat/energy/pedal-power.html)


And here two examples how CCAT implements pedal power:

The Human Energy Converter
is a series of exercise bikes that are individually hooked up to small
12V generators that are about the size of a car alternator. They each
put out about 50-100 Watts, depending on who's pedalling, and we
connect them in series and in parallel to make a 24V charge. We have
eight matching bikes mounted to a flat bed or just lined up on a lawn,
and people line up to pedal the power for the event! It's a great hit
among all party-goers, usually affording a great view of the stage as
well as fun for kids and the kid within the adults.

The Pedal Power Washing Machine
Operating the pedal powered washing machine is the perfect way to get
a workout and be productive at the same time. This pedal powered
washing machine has been built using an exercise bike and an antique
Maytag wringer and washer. As can be seen in the Pedal Power Washing
Machine Diagram, and read about in a longer description, the bike uses
a chain driven flywheel that has a belt attaching the flywheel to a
pulley and another belt attaching the pulley to the drive shaft. The
drive shaft is where the motor originally was attached to, but is now
spun by pedal power. A person can wash their clothes and with a flick
of a switch, hook up the wringer to dry them, all from the seated
position of the exercise bike.

Sources:
http://humboldt.edu/~ccat/energy/pedal-power.html where you can find
an essay by Ben Erickson "Pedal Power: Spinning for the Future". The
Campus Center for Appropriate Technology can be reached via
ccat@humboldt.edu. Maria Opitz: Watt by Watt. Saving Energy is fun
when you do it yourself. Essay in Utne Reader, September 2002 Edition,
Page 69 (www.utne.com) with more examples.


5) Youth Competition against Fascism and Violence

The German Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) is running a competition
to show young people how the Internet can be used against violence.
Entrants are asked to tackle a topic such as National Socialism or
extremism in detail and design a website about it, which can go on to
win a prize. ´The idea is that young people learn how to deal with
these issues and at the same time learn how to spread their message of
opposition to violence, also through this medium. ª says Ulrich
Duetemeyer, director of the KAS in Hanover. Competition winners will
be awarded prizes which include trips to Washington and Amsterdam.

The 27th January, the day of liberation from the Auschwitz
concentration camp, is a day of commemoration for the victims of
National Socialism. To mark the occasion of this remembrance day,
young people are invited to design their own website, which will be
put on the Internet and can win a prize. The website should contain a
historical evaluation of National Socialism and should focus in
particular on issues such as violence, extremism, xenophobia and
anti-Semitism. For example, the site could feature: accounts of a
visit to a memorial, interviews e.g. with contemporary witnesses, book
reviews, pictures, stories etc.
Source: www.denktag.de
______________________________________________________________________

Grassroots Good News come to you from The Threshold Foundation

Editor:			Dr Burkhard Luber
Contact:		mailto:Luber@dieschwelle.de
English Website at 	www.dieschwelle.de

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