Country Partners are
groups who are committed to the oneVillage Foundation
mission and who seek to implement this on a practical
in their home countries. They facilitate the development
of Cross sector partnerships at the local state and
national levels in their countries.
By
allowing others to freely express, we allow our
own freedom of expression.
Vision
Culture and tradition is the essence of any society’s
identity and it is also important to the development of a
healthy community spirit. Within the cultural and social experiences
at the community level there emerges the well rounded individual.
It is through the evolution of culture that our society’s
distinctiveness emerges. Traditions help to connect us with
our culture, its past and the natural environment that surrounds
it.
Current
Reality and Challenges
Loss of cultural and biological diversity is a major issue.
Conventional approaches tend to support the continued decline
of indigenous culture and ways of living seeing them as obsolete.
The solution according to this model is for local regions
to emulate modern practices and cultural values. The challenge
is to get people to understand that protect their natural
heritage is very much tied to their own survival and success
- and identity. Many people have lost, or stopped practicing,
the knowledge of sustainable living.
Global economy has promote cultural and aesthetic homogenization
- a monoculture of the collective human mind now infects
the global consciousness:
News is increasingly homogenized -
80 percent of images are taken from just three image
banks
The consumption of information and cultural goods
according to the same logic that that led to success
of Coke, McDonalds and Kraft singles
Competition for finite resources is now further
reinforcing this process of cultural homogenization
to part of the world that until recently had intact
local cultures
Many of these societies which we are focusing on or were,
communal in the sense that the members of communities worked
together on common projects such as irrigation, harvests,
and building maintaining houses and agricultural buildings.
How we can use this sense of community to bootstrap these
communities?
The challenge is to use technology to empower people at
the local level. This is paradoxical because technology has
been key to disrupting local cultural vitality and the co-opting
of indigenous values with modern ones. Can Unity Center ecovillages
utilize Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to
chart a path that enables local cultural reconstruction?
Approach
Our method is to connect art, science and education with proactive
actions on the ground that promote more sustainable ways of
living. Another important part of this process is to build
relationships between developing and developed parts of the
world. We see ICT as an important tool in enabling people
to share stories with others, and to feel connected.
We see a powerful connection between the loss of species
and the loss of cultures:
Traditional indigenous cultures evolved
with the natural world around them, in direct response
to its demands and opportunities. They often know
the most about what is necessary to protect species
and habitat, and they make critical choices about
survival that can be influenced by empowering them
to succeed without damaging their environment, where
their success or survival is presently threatened.
Presenting stories about people who live dramatically
different lives thinking through the issues, resolving
them, and taking action to protect the beings they
share the world with, can be a powerful, compelling
source of insight and motivation.
Culture is an important of local indigenous community that
western people could learn from. We see one example of this
in the form of the drumming that is an important way of life
of many indigenous cultures including for example the Yoruba
in Nigeria.
Objectives
Redevelop authentic cultural identity
at the local level seeing it as the cultural to effective
and sustainable economic development
Promote knowledge sharing and cultural exchanges
through ICT and fellowship programs
Highlight Value of Indigenous culture through the
promote and sale of art and crafts from these regions
Promote storytelling as well to preserve culture
and to share between people of different cultures
