Expert Community
Experts in each field (volunteers, NGOs, businesses, academics, sponsors, etc.) provide the online materials and guides for anything from installing a local biodigester, managing a business startup, applying the best irrigation techniques for permaculture farming to bicycle assembly and repair.
We reach out to various experts in each of these areas (universities, businesses and consultants) and invite them to become part of an online community in their respective discipline (ie: permaculture experts have an online community at Village Corps).
Villagers, (or students), can ask questions online (or via text message) to the community of experts to help them in the design, build or maintenance of solutions they are implementing in their village.
The Village Corps University online community of experts is inherently designed to be an ongoing resource for the villagers once a Village is in the Village Corps network. These experts are not just visiting a village for a day or a week and then leaving – the resource is online permanently.
As villagers become skilled in the various solutions they are implementing, they can be tested and certified to teach a particular skill – to help serve their own village needs and perhaps those of nearby village for which they can potentially earn some income. It is quite similar to how we use the web today to reach out for solutions we seek to our problems.