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Women from Purulia

When a child is growing up, it is difficult to determine which events will be the defining ones. For young Maury Albertson, his first-hand experiences with the devastation of the Dust Bowl on his parents’ Kansas farm and living through the ravages of occasional flooding were defining moments. They propelled him into a lifelong interest in the control and conservation of water.

That interest led to a civil engineering degree from Iowa State College, followed by work with organizations like the World Bank, helping people in third-world countries where water is often an issue. Those experiences in rural villages around the world were the underpinnings of his ideas for the Peace Corps. Maury and the Colorado State University committee he assembled competed against prestigious institutions like Stanford Research Institute and New York University for the right to design the corps. They won.

Today Dr. Maurice Albertson is in his 50th year as a CSU professor. He is also president and cofounder of Village Earth (www.villageearth.org), a Fort Collins organization that trains volunteers and nonprofit organizations worldwide to use Village Earth’s model for helping poverty-stricken villagers. The Village Earth model asks questions and allows villages to come up with their own solutions to problems they are facing. This “bottom-up” approach is what Dr. Albertson believes is the missing link that organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank have failed to understand.

Village Earth trains “change agents,” the external activators who guide villagers by asking:
• How do you want your village to look in the future?
• What barriers stand in the way of that future?
• How can you overcome those barriers?
• How will you apply the solutions to achieve your goals permanently?

The villagers must then create plans for health, education, agriculture, business enterprise, communications, water supply, public works, sanitation, social welfare as well as safety and security. Once they have answered all the questions and come up with their plan, they are ready to go to a local service center. Created with outside funding and support, these centers provide access to necessary information and financial resources at a relatively low cost. Dr. Albertson says, “Most villages can become financially independent in a relatively short time. We estimate that in about five years they can be in a position to buy goods and services from outside their village.”

Based on research by Dr. Edwin Shinn, PhD, Village Earth’s executive director, Village Earth suggests that the optimum population for sustainable community development is about 50,000 people. This is not too large a number to be manageable, but is large enough to have some political power. Their project in Purulia, India, fits that model. Located about six train hours from Calcutta, the region is a tribal-dominated, agriculturally based district of 50 villages where nearly everyone lives in severe poverty. Two projects are underway there. The first is the design and implementation of a water-storage and irrigation system that will better manage the area’s meager water supply. The second involves six self-help groups that are creating income-generating activities for women, such as tilapia farming and making and marketing traditional crafts with small microfinance loans.

Another Village Earth project in Nashik, India, is flourishing, with many entrepreneurs creating small businesses with money from a microfinance loan fund. These include an auto/ rickshaw/taxi/ambulance service, three grocery stores, a festival and special events service provider, a sugarcane juice stall, a computer literacy institute, a women’s agricultural trading cooperative and a drinking water delivery business. These successful business men and women have returned all the money loaned to them two years early, including the 5 percent interest charged.

Village Earth’s experiences indicate that their “bottom-up” model can reduce poverty for as little as $5 per person per year. Assuming 4 billion people could be reached during the next 20 years, they believe that world poverty could be eliminated for about $100 billion, considerably less than the $2.3 trillion the World Bank, USAID and other well-meaning nonprofits have poured into third-world nations aiming for the same goal.

Dr. Albertson and his wife, Audrey, and Dr. Shinn and his wife, Mimi, continue to travel the world, training and consulting with Village Earth projects in Guatemala, Peru, Cambodia and the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. “The prevailing thinking among many nonprofits is that the locals aren’t smart enough to solve their problems,” says Dr. Albertson, “but it’s not true. They can do it! They just need some guidance and a little bit of money to get started.”

Jacque Haines is a California native with a background in public relations and politics; now happily retired in Fort Collins enjoying family, freelance writing, gardening, reading and traveling the U.S. along the blue highways.