Mary Louise Penaz's Page

It's a good one!!  Thanks for posting it.

Hi Mary,
Hello from Timor Leste. I am the founder of INSIGHT - a first research institution in the country. We were acted as research community since 2002 and formally registered as an organization with Government in 2005. We now expanding our work in to small business initiatives, mostly with farmers and uneducated one. We are in the process of establishing plastic recycle project which will employ numbers of rural household and targeting marginalized groups, both in the capital of Dili as well as other districts of Timor Leste. We have being in support of providing small credits to the farmers and are planning to initiate a farmers cooperative, jointly with organic farming and self-sufficient programs that aiming at support the circulation of $ within the community. Wondering if there is an opportunity to find any of your links or channel in the region that can support implementing this farmers cooperatives in Timor Leste.

I just start writing up a concept paper for my "organic farming project with Library for farmers' children with an alternative school in rural". This idea based on my recent research work with The Fletcher School. Findings indicated that movement of population from rural to capital, due to lack of jobs and education opportunity will creating more movement of young Timorese to Dili, more jobless, more violence and more victims.

In response to this research, I am thinking of integrating a project for rural farmers where we can create an opportunity for the children of the farmers to do farm and learn at the same time. We would like to incorporate a business that can be done by ordinary farmers which can generate income for their household.

Any suggestion or advice will be much appreciated.

Eduardo Sores

Mary.. I love the garden project. Do you have more details you can email me? We want to integrate a school garden program as part of the backpack farm but need material which targets children. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Mary Louise

Thank you for joining 1BpP. Robert was one of the first members, and now you are the first couple (not to be confused with the Obamas). And last week the Pune, India, chapter of Net Impact emailed me to offer their volunteers to help me with "local knowledge" and offer their complete support for a 1BpP social enterprise there. I suggested that they post their support to 1BpP to provide the leadership that we need to forge a path of support for others to follow - and I am really pleased to see that their president followed through by starting a discussion at our :) group. I'll be in Pune and Auroville (mostly) for about three months looking at the possibility of launching my People Power Stations in India because developing social enterprises that bring bikes (and everything else!) to the base of the pyramid there is of course really essential if in fact social enterprise is going to be a way to a sustainable future for the planet. It looks like India could be the tipping point either way - and I think success there can be viral.

I'm going to be in Pune learning to fly a powered paraglider so i can pilot my People Power Stations Flagship, and then six weeks in Auroville during the hot months that separate the locals from the snowbirds, spending time with their "sustainable community" people to see if we can create a model community that lets the poorest people into the Auroville experiment. I'm pretty excited.

So this starts to feel like a community to me now because people are connected and connecting in the ways that define a real community. So thank you very much.

Kevin

Hey! I just realized that I met you tonight! Check out the post I did on the self-sustainable agricultural school in Paraguay if you want to learn more about it.
http://brittanygoesglobal.com/2009/10/13/the-agricultural-school/

Cheers! :)
Brittany

Hi Mary! My name is Brittany and I am currently volunteering with the Acumen Fund. I saw that you were a member of Professors & The Blue Sweater, and I wanted to remind you that if you haven't joined the Blue Sweater Fan Group yet, please do so by Friday, February 19th! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Best Regards,
Brittany

It's a pleasure Mary.

PS : my first name is Didier.

Thanks for the connection, I appreciate.

:-)

Nice to see you here Mary ...

;-)