One Earth Designs helps Himalayan communities achieve their unique visions of sustainable living through science/engineering education and infrastructure development.
Description
Innovation: We believe that communities hold the key to the problems they face and that motivating peoples' self-confidence while making crucial resources available to them unleashes their ability to turn problems into profit, sickness into health, and lacking education into educated opportunity. We are determined to empower communities so that they can innovate their own sustainable solutions.
Follow-through: One Earth believes that follow-up and monitoring are crucial components of any project. We will continue to support our community partners long after the completion of a project.
Healthy Environment: We believe that everyone deserves to live in a nutritious, sanitary, and nontoxic environment. We believe that this is achieved through universal access to adequate supply and quality of: air, water, soil, and biodiversity. Because we believe that this situation will only be achieved when each individual acts to preserve healthy resources and to remediate unhealthy ones, we provide educational and brainstorming sessions which emphasize the relationships between: humans, the environment, and health.
Improved Living Standards for All: We believe that tension and conflict arises when individuals are excluded from or oppressed within their local social and economic systems as a result of their identity. In order to create positive peace, we work to help marginalized populations achieve economic stability by providing them with niche knowledge and skills through technical training sessions.
Gender Sensitivity: We do not wish to say that we support gender equality because we believe that cultures can develop a sense of gender which is not equal but in which both genders are equally respected for their roles and contributions. We seek to help communities find this balance and to support the voices of those who feel mistreated.
Connectivity: We feel connected to the Earth on which we live, to the animals and plants who share it with us, to the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the soil in which we grow our food. We believe that these elements have value beyond the goods and services that they provide and that their current place within our economic, political, and social paradigms threatens our ability to live healthily and happily. We are committed to living within the natural cycles of the earth and to helping others towards the sustainable practices appropriate for their lives and livelihoods.
Our Community: Our definition of community includes all people who feel connected to one another as well as the other elements of the earth to which they feel connected. We hope to facilitate the expansion of communities towards a global community which contains a rich diversity of cultures, ideas, and species and in which each individual feels a deep rooted, respectful connection to each other element of the Earth. We hope to facilitate this by offering our own knowledge, resources, and friendships in exchange for that of others across the globe.
