OVF Multipurpose Community and Unity Centers

Vision/theme: Create a new approach to development that empowers local people through a bottom up economy. We envision ecovillages as eventually linked enough as part of a global network of locally based incubation centers. Places where people (particularly those in underserved communities) can get hands on help and assistance in bringing the various tools, knowledge-sets and human networks together to realize their dreams. Our goal is to involve people from around the globe to support the formation of sustainable communities.

OVF-Unity Centers (UCs) will be places where people can get hands-on help and assistance bringing the various tools, knowledge-sets and human networks together with an ambitious plan of establishing sustainable communities all over the world. Its about bringing people together in a community setting to see how through cooperation people can augment their individual efforts and create more complementary relationships at both the local and global level. The goal is to create a new globally linked but community based bottom-up economy. Through the effective use of best practices this network will promote and facilitate this process.

Rationale: The Unity Center vision will be carried out through the implementation of the oneVillage Initiative (OVI). OVI is a holistic framework for deploying motivated change agents in underserved communities.

ICT when properly and appropriated towards social enterprise oriented community development can augment existing networked efforts. We also believe that by bringing information affluence into each village, the global village will be enriched and strengthened by all-hands participation in the knowledge-based economy.

Project Design: Unity Centers will serve as prototypes for integrated approaches to sustainable development rapidly replicating sustainable solutions throughout the world. This project will integrate the various oneVillage Initiatives in the form of a tech incubation and local service center that will also provide eco-living solutions to surrounding regions. Field agents and other support staff will live in the Unity Center Ecovillage developing appropriate technologies suitable for regional implementation.

Activities at Unity Centers will use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for rural economic development and integration to ensure AIDS Relief and community empowerment promoting:

The plan is to address the poverty cycle proactively by promoting sustainable development by building model ecovillages specifically designed to accommodate the needs of those struggling to deal with AIDS and other challenges on an everyday level and the communities of people that surround them, while addressing critical sustainability issues applicable to humanity at large to develop a approach that is proactive and whole system oriented.

1.	Demonstrate the economic viability of sustainable development, promoting a variety of appropriate sustainable technologies and approaches suitable to local conditions and preferences.
2.	Expand economic opportunity for local communities, improving the everyday economic reality of the people in these regions through the creation of small business and local initiative incubators within or integral with UCs
3.	Provide a comfortable stopping point for those traveling in oneVillage Ecotourism adventures
4.	Serve as the base for Rapid Response Teams that will trained to rapidly respond to the immediate needs of people in these underserved communities
5.	Serve as anchors that will help to ground the OVF projects in the practical aspects of social change, acting as communication and coordination centers for OVF's integrated development model.
6.	Serve as a knowledge and learning hub for builders and global citizens come to learn, share, develop and test new sustainable technologies and techniques