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abhijit
7 months ago about CopperWiki
CopperWiki is a collaborative platform to share information, create awareness and offer choices for leading a balanced and sustainable life. It focuses on local practices, green and organic living, traditional knowledge, scientific research, and global issues at regional level. The idea is to familiarize individuals with the lifecycle of their actions, the cost and impact of each decision, and the choices available to them.
Dive right in, or start exploring at CopperWiki Guide To First Timers. Remember, you can always share your questions and comments with us at copperwiki@copperstrings.com.
CopperWiki gives us choices for living a healthy, responsible and sustainable life. Most of us are aware of the importance of conscious living and the urgency of making this concept a way of life. The CopperWiki world informs, encourages, and shares the best practices for living responsibly as individuals, community, society, nation and as a planet. It is a fast conductor for information—which otherwise exists piecemeal at various places.
Purpose of CopperWiki
Now you know what you should keep in mind while writing a CopperWiki article. Also see What not to write in CopperWiki before you start writing. Before you start collecting information for writing/editing an article, you should know the purpose of CopperWiki. I hope the following lines help in giving a clear idea about CopperWiki articles. You could also look at our Star articles to get a better picture.
CopperWiki is all about creating awareness
- Awareness about existing practices and products; their benefits and harmful impact.
- Awareness about choices.
- Awareness about effectiveness of various options.
- Awareness about myths and facts.
- Awareness about traditional knowledge.
- Awareness about the impact of our actions.
- Awareness about dying species, depleting resources, deteriorating environment and disappearing cultures, traditions and art forms.
It questions the established practices of our time
- Research is conducted to see impact of existing products.
- Research is done to find the efficacy of the existing practices.
- What do experts say in this regard?
- What do the non-conventional schools of thought say about it?
- Do these products and practices deliver the promised results?
- What is their impact on us, our planet and our environment?
It informs the reader about the choices available
- What are the choices available to us?
- What is the positive and negative impact of these choices on us/our environment and our planet?
- Why are people choosing these options?
- What can we do as individuals and communities to protect the dying species, depleting resources, deteriorating environment and disappearing cultures, traditions and art forms.
- If we ignore this, what do we stand to lose as individuals, self and society – the impact on us and the environment at large?
Best practices of our times
- What are the best practices being followed in various parts of the world?
- What are the benefits of these practices?
- What are the negative impacts of these practices?
- Are there any factors ( local/ regional/seasonal/beliefs etc) that guided the adoption of these best practices in a particular area/areas.
Useful tips
- How to select a particular product?
- How to read the fine print on the labels?
- Are there any certifications/ bodies/ researches available on this subject that I can refer to for making more informed choices?
- How do I ensure that my green fabric is actually green or my organic egg is actually organic?
- How to use the product/ apply a practice to gain the maximum benefits and minimize the negative impact.
- What can I do to protect dying species, depleting resources, deteriorating environment and disappearing cultures, traditions and art forms.
- A complete did-you-know about things that matter to the majority of us.
Your Local Guide to Conscious Living
CopperWiki will emphasise on local knowledge, local products and practices because by using local products we can directly reduce our carbon footprint.
CopperWiki is a collaborative writing project where anybody can search for an article, write a new article and edit an article. While writing or editing an article, a few things should be kept in mind.
It is an ‘editable’ platform
CopperWiki strives to improve the quality of already existing articles. Anybody can edit any page barring a few exception such as semi protected pages and protected pages. These pages pertain to administration, policy and guidelines of CopperWiki.
It is advisable to discuss the changes and additions you intend to make on the discussion page of the article and make the changes after arriving at a consensus there. Remember to mention the purpose of your edit in an edit summary. This reduces the chances of your changes being reverted.
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This is a story about CopperWiki
Other recent stories about CopperWiki
- Barefoot College
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When Chennamma and Yelamma “enrolled” in the Barefoot College they were stone crushers. And Kalavati and Zayda were house maids. Today they are barefoot solar engineers who have learned to fabricate, wire, and set up solar energy systems and have helped 124 households in nearby villages in Andhra Pradesh, India, obtain solar power, while earning a better living for themselves.
They are among the group of “barefoot engineers” from poor rural backgrounds who have been trained in construction, installation, and maintenance of everything from solar panels to rainwater collection tanks at the Barefoot College and are now harnessing solar power to electrify villages in India, Afghanistan and Ethiopia.
Barefoot College was set up in 1972 in Tilonia, a village in one of India’s largest, driest and poorest states. Its success has prompted the Asian Development Bank and other organizations to fund barefoot startups in African countries such as Cameroon, Gambia and Sierra Leone.
The Barefoot Revolution
The origin of the barefoot revolution can be traced to the early 1960s when the Mao Tse Tung administration in China sent groups of medicos to work in villages as ‘barefoot doctors’, in a bid to use professional skills in the rural health sector. Barefoot revolution is grassroots and cooperative innovation at its very best. It is based on the belief that the key to alleviating rural poverty lies within communities themselves and do not necessarily come from urban professionals, government intervention or big foreign aid packages
Confidence-Building Methods and Hands-on Training
The Barefoot College identifies the poor, rural jobless and unemployable youth who have been unable to finish their formal education and have returned to their villages as dropouts. These very individuals are trained to be “barefoot” doctors, teachers, engineers, architects, designers, metal workers, IT specialists and communicators. This system does not consider educational degree important when it comes to developing people. Simple confidence-building methods and hands-on training are relied upon to achieve results.
Barefoot college is based on the belief that rural communities posses the wisdom and skill to identify and solve their own problems. The Barefoot College sets out to impart informal, non-structured, on-the-job practical training till such a time that the community develops the confidence and competence to handle their problems without outside help.
The man behind this growing grassroots movement is an Indian visionary, Sanjit Bunker Roy, whose efforts have earned him awards and praise worldwide.
Teacher is the Learner and Learner the Teacher
The Barefoot College, where, according to Roy, the teacher is the learner and the learner is the teacher, encourages people to make mistakes so that they can learn humility, curiosity, the courage to take risks, to innovate, to improvise and to constantly experiment.
The College is fully solar powered. The installation, fabrication and maintenance of the entire system are in the hands of rural youth who have not gone beyond primary school. With solar energy Tilonia became the first village in India with access to e-mail.
Using local skills and local material the college’s rooftop rainwater harvesting program has constructed more than 1,000 collection structures in 17 Indian states, benefitting more than 220,000 people. And at its 200 health centers trained health workers can aid in emergencies and teach about health issues such as hygiene, vaccinations, and other preventative care. The success of rainwater harvesting in recharging groundwater in Tilonia led to its adoption as state policy in several parts of India.
Five Principles
The Barefoot College is founded on five principles:
- Equality:The program treats all members as equal, regardless of sex, class, education, or caste. - Collectivity: Collective decision-making practiced by one and all. - Self reliance: Members are helped to work together to develop the community. - Decentralization: The program is committed to local decision-making, and grassroots level. - Austerity: The staff members lead a simple life committed to generating a close community and a stimulating, creative environment.
Where Such Colleges can be Set Up?
- Where there is extreme poverty. - Where the neglect of the rural communities reaches such proportions that they are forced to develop and depend on their own knowledge and skills. - Where people depend on each other and not on outside help. - Where the oral tradition is high because of greater illiteracy. In such societies knowledge and skills are traditionally passed down from one generation to another.
Who can Participate?
School drop outs, and those rejected by society because of their academic failure. Those who do not stand a chance of getting even the lowest government jobs.
Reference: http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php/B… [read more]
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