15 December 2004
FIRST DECADE SELF-EVALUATION
for Needful Provision, Inc. (NPI)
NPI, a 501(c)(3) charity, was founded on 12 June 1995. The first
decade, for NPI, officially ends 12 June 2005. This first decade
self-evaluation was completed early to facilitate NPI’s
planning for its second decade.
Overall, NPI has been very successful in providing significant help in alleviating human suffering by means of distance education via NPI’s website (www.needful provision.org), and instruction offered at training facilities in the U.S. and Mexico. This early success was made possible by the donation of founder David A. Nuttle’s 63 unique self-help, self-sufficiency technologies he developed over a period of the prior 35 years (during work in 42 Third World nations). NPI has thus continued to research, develop, demonstrate, and teach these innovations to achieve the most effective means for helping the poorest of the poor, worldwide, without discrimination. The most significant self-help technologies, as measured by greatest use or demand, include a ---
1. Solar Water Still: To provide a simple
and very inexpensive means for villagers
to use solar energy to convert polluted water to potable water
using easily obtained local items. This technology seeks to
reduce the numbers of children who die each day as a result
of drinking polluted water that is generally a “cocktail”
of bacteria, viruses, and parasites ---plus chemicals in some
areas. (United Nations data indicates that over 2 (two) million
children each year as a result of drinking polluted water.)
2. Solar Adsorption-Desorption Refrigerator:
To give villagers an inexpensive
means to preserve perishable foods in areas where solar energy
provides to only source of power. The simple design allows most
villagers to construct their own solar refrigerator.
With over 850 million people, worldwide, living on the brink
of starvation, it is critical to preserve available perishable
food items.
3. Indoor Solar Oven & Heater: To provide
an alternative for villagers cooking and heating indoors using
dried manures and/or brush as fuel ---a fuel that causes indoor
air pollution and kills over 1.6 million annually. The solar
collector for this oven/ heater is outdoors, but the actual
cooking oven (used as a heater at night) is designed for indoor
use. (Outdoor solar ovens have not been effective due to problems
with livestock, insects,
wildlife, and so on.)
4. Rainwater Harvesting & Storage: To facilitate
collection and storage of large amounts of rainwater in areas
of very low annual rainfall, where water is typically in very
short supply. (Several areas of the world have high populations
suffering extreme water shortages due to low rainfall.)
5. Community Food Security: To provide sustainable,
organic, low-input systems for the safe, efficient, and inexpensive
production of large quantities of healthful as well as culturally
appropriate foods in areas with food deficiencies. NPI’s
said unique food production is based on aquaculture, aquaponics,
algalculture, as well as crop and special livestock systems.
These new agriculture technologies are also designed to conserve
basic resources while acting to protect the environment.
6. Algalculture for Carbon Sequestration: To
reduce the high levels of CO2 so damaging to the environment,
while using algalculture to produce valuable cash crops such
as lipids, biodiesel, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and polyphenolics
for use in the
improvement of immune response (when consumed as a food/ feed
supplement). The algal crops use carbon (CO2) as 40 percent
of their nutrient requirement. With thousands
of farmers, worldwide, engaged in such algalculture, CO2 levels
may be dramatically reduced while also reducing disease rates
via use of algal-polyphenolics supplements.
7. NEPW System: To make the above technology
available to impoverished villagers, worldwide, NPI has developed
a simple algalculture production kit to produce nutrient supplements
to include polyphenolics ----- while contributing to CO2 reduction.
At the same time, the NEPW (Nutrient Enhancement Potable Water)
unit provides some
food such as quail and fish, and produces potable water by means
of solar evaporation.
In brief, the NEPW technology provides a “package”
of solutions at very low-cost.
8. Microenterprise Development: To provide
income opportunities in areas where
very few jobs exist, and/or where available employment does
not provide a living wage. In brief, this is a “package”
of training materials to teach entrepreneurship, starting new
small businesses, creating value-added products, development
of microlending options, developing markets, and so on. Farmer
cooperatives will be used to help create effective rural area
enterprises, and one of the first projects is based on algal-biodiesel
production
for low-cost alternative fuels.
9. Barter Trade: To give the cashless poor
(over 1 billion people) an opportunity to acquire times needed
for survival, NPI has used improvements in modern satellite
communications to create an efficient, effective, and inexpensive
way for poor villagers to trade surplus items/ resources for
whatever is needed to meet critical needs. NPI’s social
enterprise, Preparedness Systems Intl., Inc. (PSI), will manufacture
self-help items to be used for the barter trade. In addition,
NPI is helping poor villagers identify those items in surplus
that might be easily barter traded.
10. Alternative Energy: To assist in providing
energy needs in rural areas, NPI has
engaged in research on inexpensive options using photovoltaics,
wind generators, micro-hydro systems, thermo-electric devices,
and home production of biodiesel. NPI will use its distance
education efforts to make these energy systems known to those
who need them most urgently.
11. Self-Help Housing: NPI has developed, and
is teaching, a self-help housing technique based on passive
solar design and construction of earth-block. Options may include
a solar attic, alternative energy systems, 12-24-volt appliances,
composting toilets, greywater recycling method, and attached
sunspace or greenhouse --with home
garden area and edible landscaping. Using a hydraulic jack,
earth-block (a mix of clay, sand, and lime) is formed under
pressure inside 6-inch diameter steel pipe. The block
are dry-stacked on a “floating foundation.” Flexible
attachment systems are used for corners and the roof (s), so
that the entire structure will survive major earthquakes of
the type known for many poor rural areas. The outside of walls
is protected with a layer of stucco, and the inside of walls
typically has a layer of plaster. (For some areas, other construction
materials may be used to include straw bale, cordwood, etc.)
12. Sanitation: To help resolve a number of
sanitation issues, composting toilets are
being promoted (as noted above). NPI has developed a special
composting toilet for use by refugees/ refugee camps. Garbage
is combined with compost fertilizer mixes to make organic fertilizers
for crops. Instruction is provided on how to recycle all other
materials.
13. Village & Homeland Security: To help
protect villagers from attacks by any
type of insurgent, terrorist, or criminal group, NPI has perfected
a village defense system.
This defensive technique is based upon the Civilian Irregular
Defense Group (CIDG) Program developed with the help of NPI’s
founder, David A. Nuttle. The techniques used were first tested
in Viet-Nam to help protect 60 Montagnard (tribal) villages
from sustained terrorist attack. Since that time CIDG tactics
have been successfully used to defend other villagers under
attack. (In order to keep subject tactic secure, instruction
must be given directly to villagers under threat.)
14. Protection of Volunteers: To protect volunteers
working in hazardous areas, NPI is preparing to make a “Survival
Encyclopedia” available on NPI’s website (www.
needfulprovision.org). Volunteers are increasingly being kidnapped
and killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and other countries
with high levels of conflict. Organizations like CARE and Doctors
Without Borders have recently been forced to remove all of their
volunteers from hazardous areas. NPI’s staff is working
to increase the survivability of such volunteers. This survival
oriented effort is an expansion of David A. Nuttle’s own
“Universal Survival Handbook” used extensively by
military and police organizations.
15. Radio Schools: To provide relief operations,
self-help instruction, and assist in
redevelopment or infrastructure reformation for high threat
areas (and very remote areas),
NPI has developed a Radio School Program. The Radio Schools
organize and train an assortment of local volunteers in the
skills needed to accomplish the above said tasks. On
a village-by-village level ---or refugee-by-refugee camp level---
individuals are recruited for specific classes and given radios
(with broadcast times) to receive distance education in essential
areas. NPI’s model for this new effort is the famous “Puno
Radio School,” located in Puno, Peru, used to help the
Quechua Indians during high levels of insurgent activity in
that area (in the 1960s). NPI is working with a Turkish broadcasting
company having skills needed for a Radio School for the Kurds
of northern Iraq.
In the final analysis, NPI has been very effective in the
creation and application of unique technologies designed to
quickly enlist help from the poorest of the poor (and most threatened
of the poor) in meeting their own needs. Each day hundreds of
Third World poor receive distance education via NPI’s
website. Most of this work has been funded by NPI’s own
royalty income. To expand application of technologies developed,
by NPI, project teams are being formed for each of the above
named specialty areas. Each team will go after funding support,
for its single project, with a simplified approach to various
prospective donors. We know that NPI’s complex, integrated,
multi-program approach is too complicated for the typical donor.
NPI’s subject efforts act to reduce the incentive for
impoverished populations to provide support for terrorists groups.
Without such an incentive, many of the world’s poor will
continue to hate the U.S. --and many will therefore continue
to help terrorists. In brief, NPI acts to increase security
for every American while also increasing security for all those
we assist, worldwide.