Areas of interest & research

Since working at Earthwise (in Subiaco, Perth) I have been interested in sustainable food systems, permaculture design, sustainable technologies,urban agriculture, community development and related topics. Rather than getting into design I fell into the community education field, working on projects to promote sustainable behaviour through campaigns and social marketing. The purpose of this trip for me is to get back to hands on work that is practical and local, rather than top-down and remote.

If you are interested in finding out more about any of these areas, here are a few links to get you started; there really is a massive amount out there. I have downloaded about 3 phd's worth of reading material to take with me, plus stacks (like 30 gb worth) of useful articles that I can share with people over there on subjects from biogas to beekeeping, water filtration to wind power. This is of course in contradiction to the previous paragraph about being practical rather than theoretical - but most of it is reference!!

Permaculture: start with www.permaculture.org.au
Urban Agriculture: www.cityfarmer.org; www.ruaf.org; www.idrc.ca

Appropriate Technology: AT Library - http://www.villageearth.org/pages/AT_Library/ - over 1500 texts across a variety of topics (intro to Appropriate technology; water & santiation; agriculture; aquaculture; forestry; agricultural tools; crop storage & preservation; health; construction & building; education; energy creation; transport and more)

and 3rdWorldCD, which has 13 gb of useful info to download as a torrent - www.cd3wd.com/

Community development texts: www.idrc.ca - they have lots of ebooks on comm dev, evaluation, gender issues, economic development.

Stacks of useful stuff through the UN's FAO, i haven't even started on it yet.

There are also plenty of files, videos and audio through torrent sites, scribd, youtube and elsewhere.