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## MODEL FOR SELF-FINANCING ECOLOGICAL SUSTAINABLE INTEGRATED RURAL AND POOR URBAN DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

## FOR THE WORLD'S POOR.

Sustainable fully ecological poverty alleviation in rural and poor urban environments, incorporating an innovative package of social, financial, and productive structures, with basic services necessary for a good quality of life for all, a leading role for women, and renewable energy applications.

"Money is not the key that opens the gates of the market but the bolt that bars them."

Gesell, Silvio The Natural Economic Order.

Revised English edition, Peter Owen, London 1958, page 228.

Edition 31: 22 July, 2007.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Licence

(EN FRANÇAIS)

### 03.01 PROJECT BACKGROUND

Basic hygiene education, sanitation, waste recycling, and clean drinking water are fundamental to healthy life. A third of the world's population still lacks access to clean drinking water. An even larger number lack reasonable sanitation.

Improving the health and quality of life of those living in poor communities depends on improving their basic community infrastructure. Better technology now allows users living far away from their traditional water sources to have clean drinking water, sanitation, hygiene education, and on-going local development at low cost.

Yet much of the world's population is still without safe sanitation and drinking water. Supplying such basic life needs warrants top priority within the framework of foreign aid programmes for the benefit of the poor in developing countries.

Development of local production and services is hindered by a chronic lack of money. Local economies have long since been "drained" of the formal money needed to exchange goods and services in the present market economy.

The little money there is leaks from the local economy to national, or more often, international, havens

The project will permanently improve the quality of life and stimulate on-going local economic development of people who live in the beneficiary communities. It will establish local exchange trading (LETS) systems for the exchange of local goods and services and provide interest-free seed money to fund micro-credit loans. It includes hygiene education, sanitation, clean drinking water, lighting for study, efficient cooking equipment and means of producing bio-mass to fuel the stoves as well as a system for recycling non-organic solid waste. Services include rainwater harvesting and may in later project phases be extended to the formation of self-terminating cooperative interest-free purchasing groups for the installation of selected consumer products, such as Solar Home Systems.

The (project area) comprises (number) communities (description of communities) for a total of about (number) inhabitants. They live in about (number) households. They have no sanitation, drinking water supply, or hygiene education. The local authorities are the (Regional) Government of (host country), the Local Council of (project area), and the (national) Tax Department who all offer their full support to this project to improve the quality of life in the project area.

The proposed hygiene training, sanitation, and drinking water systems must take the social structures of the communities into account. They must all be self-financing and remain financially viable and sustainable. (Where the project is financed by interest-free seed loans instead of a grant, the structures must remain financially viable and sustainable without the need for further seed money once the initial (interest free) loans have been repaid.)

### THE PROJECT

The project is centred on basic hygiene education, on the installation of sustainable sanitation, distributed clean drinking water, PV lighting for study, for all of the people without exclusion in the project area, and on the supply of efficient stoves for cooking, the production of bio-mass to fuel them, and recycling at local level and disposal of non-organic waste.

The project includes setting up Community Health Clubs for hygiene education and hygiene education courses in schools. It provides sustainable toilet and wastewater facilities, wells (wherever necessary), pumps, and water tanks. It establishes local exchange trading (LETS) systems to promote local exchange of local goods and services. It implements an interest-free revolving micro-credit system to help users pay in formal currency for items and services originating outside the local communities.

The project also refers to PV (photovoltaic) lighting for study and in clinics, and PV refrigeration for medicines. Any PV lighting needed for separate local production initiatives will be brought under the micro-credit scheme. PV operated TV sets for education can be included on the decision of the local tank commission. Private Solar Home Systems (SHS) may be financed under cooperative interest-free purchasing structures where users are able to sustain those obligations as well as meet their normal monthly contributions to the Cooperative Local Development Fund.

High efficiency stoves for cooking will be produced with 100% local value added as will the bio-mass necessary to fuel them.

Where daytime cooking is not in conflict with local customs, local manufacture of gypsum composite solar cookers will be set up under the LETS systems.

Recycling centres will be set up to recycle non-organic waste within the local currency systems.

Small-scale rain-water harvesting to increase agricultural production and the general quality of life is promoted.

The project cost is typically about Euro 5,000,000, of which 75% is either provided by a grant or financed through an interest free loan with a 10 year repayment time.

The remaining 25% is contributed by the local people, who are themselves responsible for most of the project execution. The people who do the work are fully paid for their work within the framework of local money systems set up during an early phase of the project. Local money debits are distributed amongst the beneficiary population in the project area. The 25% local money contribution is usually converted into Euros for the purposes of calculation of the local share in the costs, at the rate of Euro 3 for each full eight-hour working day. However, this rate may be substitute to variation in agreement with donors and financing bodies.

Details of a typical budget document.

The project will be continued for at least a further 8 years beyond the initial two years' start-up period. After the initial two years, further development will be generated by the communities themselves under the supervision of the Project Coordinator.

The initial project will take 24 months from the date funding is approved, more particularly:

- Phase 1 : preparation and submission of the basic project.
- Phase 2 : final project preparation, arrangements with tax authorities; final project approval; formation of Health Clubs and starting hygiene education; setting up the social and the financial structures (local currency LETS groups and micro-credit structures): 6 months.

- Phase 3 : continuing hygiene education; installing wells hand-pumps and washing places; starting the organisation of gypsum composite production units;

tank installations; start building the sanitation services; starting cooker production, organising bio-mass production, setting up the recycling centres : 18 months.
- Phase 4 : installing water purification units and PV lighting systems for study purposes; continued production of cookers and of bio-mass to fuel them. Rain-water harvesting.

From the third year onwards local development will be continued and extended to optional phase 5.

- (optional) Phase 5 : Extension to Solar Home Systems, water harvesting, and soil conservation and reforestation projects.

Forward : 3.02 : Drinking water in the project area.

Back : 2.03 : List of villages in the project area.

Menu group 3 of work files : The present situation in the project area.

Main menu for the project work groups.

Complete index of the project work files.

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