Wherever you are in the world: if you're studying Communications, or wanting to break into the field, and you're passionate about solutions for positive change in the world, then this could be the opportunity for you. Appropedia is looking for interns - one to start in October, another to start in the New Year - to help us communicate and engage with people who might be interested in this project, as well as communicate with and strengthen our existing community.

The work will involve a mixture of interviewing, contacting and/or helping to write publicity materials. You can work part-time, and you'll have a lot of flexibility in how you work, but you'll have guidance always available.

There is a lot of potential to learn and to make a difference. I sometimes say, only half-jokingly, that Appropedia was built by engineers and scientists, so we're much better at doing stuff than at talking about what we do. But we've talked, and got better at it, and become active in social media, as we've taken our message out there. We're happy to share with you what we've learned, but we're also happy to learn from you and with you.

You'll need to take initiative, experiment and report on what's working and what isn't. We have a high respect for failure with enthusiasm, which is often the basis for future success, and even more often the basis for very valuable learning.

This is a virtual internship - you'll be working with people who might be on the other side of the world, but with email, chat and VOIP, that's not such a challenge these days. You can work from anywhere in the world with internet access. That requires you to manage your time, organize yourself and get things done - an online internship isn't for everyone.

If you have any questions or want to apply, please get in touch - email me on chriswaterguyappropediaorg, or leave a comment below, or on my Appropedia talk page. For up-to-date info on these internships, see: For more on all Appropedia's internship opportunities, see:

Want to be a geek for good? Help build a comprehensive database of knowledge for solutions in sustainability and in overcoming poverty - Appropedia.

We're looking for two to three interns with a desire to learn, a willingness to try, and at least basic skills in managing software and accessing a server. You'll be installing, configuring and testing software - focused on MediaWiki, with WordPress to a lesser degree, and possibly some other platforms and tools. Our intern team's tasks will include helping to build our spam defenses, and building features to enhance the community on Appropedia.

Knowledge of PHP and/or Python is a plus (but not essential). Likewise for experience with installing software on a server, and experience with the open source platforms that you'll be working with.

You will work as part of a team, with other interns and with mentors. We've been lucky to have an enthusiastic volunteer, Wesley, for the last few months, who's made a real difference to Appropedia. Now we're expanding the team.

This is a global, online project. Our address is in California but you'll be working with people on at least two continents. You can work from anywhere in the world with internet access. That means you need to be someone who can manage your time, organize yourself and get things done.

Is this you? Get in touch - please leave a comment either below or on my Appropedia talk page, and I'll get in touch.

Chris Sam, a lawyer and teacher in Tanzania, volunteered to translate Appropedia articles into Swahili - or as it is known to its own speakers, "Kiswahili." Starting in February this year, he has translated over 50 pages.

More than 50 million people in Africa speak this language - the potential value of translating appropriate technology information and other development resources is clear. Chris shares the progress so far:

I am very happy to announce that Appropedia's Karibu Appropedia (Welcome to Appropedia) page has hit more than 1000 views. And I am more than happy for the steady growth of our Kiswahili readers. We still need more articles in Kiswahili and what should be put or translated to Kiswahili from you. Kiswahili is spoken in more than ten developing countries, if you have something suitable especially for the developing countries (article or anything that you think belongs to Appropedia) or want your project translated to Kiswahili or you have good Kiswahili content that you think belongs to Appropedia please suggest it here and play your part towards sustainability and richly lives. For Kiswahili help please contact me here or send an email to kiswahili appropediaorg

'Nina furaha sana kutangaza kuwa ukurasa wa Karibu Appropedia wa Appropedia umetazamwa zaidi ya mara 1000. Na nina zaidi ya furaha kwa muongezeko wa wasomaji wa Kiswahili. Bado tunahitaji makala za Kiswahili na nini kiwekwe au kitafsiriwe katika Kiswahili toka kwako. Kiswahili kinazungumzwa zaidi ya nchi kumi katika nchi zinazoendelea, kama unakinachofaa na hasa kwa nchi zinazoendelea (makala au chochote kinachofaa Appropedia) au unahitaji mradi wako utafsiriwe kwenda Kiswahili au unayo maudhui mazuri kwa Kiswahili na unadhani yanafaa Appropedia tafadhali orodhesha hapa ili kufanya kazi yako kuelekea uendelevu na maisha ya kitajiri. Kwa msaada wa Kiswahili wasiliana na mimi hapa au tuma barua pepe kwenda kiswahili appropediaorg

An academic paper in the Journal of Education for Sustainable Development reports on service learning with Appropedia as a platform.

It notes that contributing to sustainable development can be a way of improving students' academic skills - but this is expensive when it involves international travel, and as a result, few students have this experience.

The article describes two learning experiments with service learning programs based at and around the university, These experiments provided...

...solutions to sustainable development problems using Appropedia.org, the site for collaborative solutions in sustainability, poverty reduction and international development. The course successfully used Appropedia (1) as a forum for students who were geographically dispersed, (2) for a whole-class writing collaboration, (3) to coordinate a sustainability-focused outreach campaign to retrofit stop lights in communities throughout Pennsylvania and (4) to review class material with application to technologies for sustainable development.*

*Quoting from the abstract of Appropedia as a Tool for Service Learning in Sustainable Development by Prof Joshua Pearce of Queen's University.

More info about our learning programs:

• Appropedia:Service learning
• Appropedia:Internships

Jatropha seeds are a source of oil. (Source)

One of the practical outcome of the MovementCamp, which finished a few hours ago, formed during the post-camp online discussions. Jason Smithson (who works hard on Appropedia tech) and Darren Hill (years of experience with biofuels) agreed to join forces (cue theme music of Battle of the Planets) and work on a Biofuel Content Initiative, the first of our Content Initiatives. Darren's been working for some time on this, but is now bringing his work and his knowledge to Appropedia.

There's a lot of work to be done, but it will result in an extremely useful resource on biofuels - the good news, the bad news, the little known but important facts - and their relevance for tackling climate change and for international development.

If this interests you, check out that Content Initiative page - or leave a note and tell us what area you'd be interested in helping to build.

Appropedia President, Lonny Grafman, will be available in Brooklyn, New York tomorrow, June 24th, for open co-creation on sustainability topics.

Lonny is the resident artist on the Flock House in the Smack Mellon gallery for June 23rd and 24th.  From 12 to 6pm, he will be hosting open conversations on sustainable design especially for local apartment dwellers, families, change agents and entrepreneurs.

Follow the links for more information on the exhibit and directions to 92 Plymouth Street @ Washington in DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY.

Picture: View from Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, © Smack Mellon 2009

Exploring a lake in the Amazon

In a nutshell, I just graduated from Humboldt State University with a degree in Botany and a passion for conservation and sustainable living. I saved my pennies for quite some time in order to do some traveling in South and Central America; and while I commend those who are able to travel free as a breeze, I come from a world of structure and need to feel that I am on some sort of mission as I wander. This is where Appropedia fits in. Members of the board of Appropedia had already birthed the idea of the "travel intern", someone who would, during their travels, visit and report on successful projects for Appropedia. My internship is the trial run of this idea. I am excited and honored to have this opportunity.

I have begun my adventures and am writing from the rainforest town of Puerto Maldanado, Peru. My dearest friend Kat Fountain has been working on a conservation project in the state of Madre de Dios Peru , deep in the Amazon. It just so happened that she needed a field assistant and I just so happened to be a qualified biologist. What luck! So I joined her at the Sachavacayoc field station, a center for research, education and ecotourism. For a week we rose before the sun and spent the day exploring and experiencing the incredible Amazon rainforest.

This Amazonian hardwood tree named "La Purma" is 500 years old!

I have learned a lot in a week, not only about the local flora and fauna, but also about the situation of the people. Those working to protect and conserve this incredibly rich and biodiverse region of Peru face many threats and obstacles to conservation including (but not limited to): mining and subsequent mineral contamination in the water, logging for hardwoods, cattle farming, drilling for Petroleum, and slash and burn agriculture. The situation is, of course, very complicated and when taken as a whole, has the potential to be a little overwhelming. However, many of the conservationists and scientists I have spoken with here have a great deal of hope.

I personally find a sparkle of hope in this: There are many people and organizations whose sole (and soul) purpose is to protect this precious piece of the world. One of the biggest problems conservationists faced is that the lack of communication between groups and organizations who share the same goals. Call me idealistic, but it is my belief that as infrastructure for communication improves and these groups continue to collaborate and organize, the looming problems I mentioned before are well within our power to change. As we all know, even the biggest changes happen poco a poco.

This is why I am grateful to be a part of the Appropedia community. Every page, and each connection made, is a step towards change. Perhaps some of you have heard the expression “the revolution will not be televised!” I agree. I think it is being documented in Appropedia.org!

Till next time… Isabell

Wouldn't it be wonderful if all the organizations that are working to reduce poverty and help us live both richly and sustainably had the resources to share their best ideas and practices? Of course! (Okay, maybe that was too easy. )

(Port of Callao, Peru by Jim O'Hagan, via Mediawiki Commons)

But we know that most of these organizations are already overcommitted and that thoroughly documenting a project is a big job. Meanwhile, there are lots of folks that want to help make the world a better place, and are quite willing to travel as part of the effort.  But very often the willing traveler is no more knowledgeable than local workers, and so it is hard to justify traveling in-country to lend a hand.

Aha moment.

Juxtaposing these tensions provides a nice little epiphany. Traveling interns can make excellent documenters.  Documenting great projects at Appropedia helps all parties.  The traveling intern learns a ton.  The host project gets some deserved recognition and awareness.  The broader community gets to see well-written, in-depth information that will, ultimately, get categorized, linked and translated for greatest usefulness.

To this end, Appropedia has begun prototyping our Travel Internship program.  Appropedia's first travel intern, Isabell (Liz) Kimbrough, is already in-country in Peru. She has already coordinated with some partners, but still has room in her itinerary to visit (and document) other projects in Peru (June), Ecuador (July), Colombia (July)  and Panama (August).  And so, we hereby launch the Travel Intern Initiative to invite everyone to help make Isabell's trip better.  We also want to prepare for broader participation in (and promotion of) our Travel Intern program later this year, so that you can head for the dock, and get your documentation thing on.

Please take a look at these pages to learn more about the program, and find ways you can help it have the most impact:

• See Isabell's itinerary to learn where she's going, or add a potential project or partner for her or a future Travel Intern.
• Would you (or a friend)  like to be a Travel Intern? Practice writing articles and show your stuff! And check out the application process.
• How can we make the Travel Intern program better?  Leave a note on this page, or a leave a comment on this blog post!
• Visit the Travel Intern Initiative launch page for more details.

Please help us spread the word about this program.  Use Twitter, Facebook or your blog to share it with potential interns or partners.  If you're as excited as we are about this program, and have an hour a week to help out, consider a stint stewarding this Initiative!

Appropedia has grown rapidly in multiple dimensions since our early days, and especially in the past several months.   Both the volume and range of activity at Appropedia.org is up significantly.  We have content translation activity, content porting activity, partnership activity and site technology development activity all expanding in parallel. Twitter and Facebook communities have grown dramatically as well.

In addition to all the active participants, we have a lot of eager supporters that haven’t yet identified the best way to engage. We get notes like “I love what you’re doing!  What can I do to help?”  And for every explicit offer, we know there are many more unspoken.  To make better use of all this pent up energy and goodwill, we are beginning a new program for engaging volunteers, both new and veteran.

And so, without further ado, allow us to introduce <drum roll> Appropedia Initiatives!

The Appropedia Initiatives program is an open-ended series of specific activities that will benefit a lot from community engagement.  Each Initiative will be designed to attract a critical mass of contributions and enthusiasm, in order to build momentum on a particular topic or practice.  We know that our community of supportive people has a great variety of skills, and we envision a broad variety of Initiatives to engage as many people as we can.  Some Initiatives will be focused on the Appropedia.org site (either content or technology), and others will be more community oriented.  Essentially, Initiatives are ordinary Appropedia activities that are likely to have some broad interest. Like most things at Appropedia, users input and ideas will define the path for the Initiatives program.  To get things started we have about three Initiatives lined up, and a bunch of loose concepts semi-identified.

Our first Initiative is very timely.  We quietly began prototyping a “Travel Intern” program a few weeks ago, and there are several ways that the Appropedia community can help.  We will launch that Initiative very shortly and a few weeks later we will launch Number 2.  Each new Initiative will be highlighted on the Appropedia main page, and we will do community outreach in the form of blog posts and tweets to make sure that every gets a chance to see it.  Naturally, we welcome your help in passing the word, and identifying people, partners and resources appropriate for each Initiative.

The goal is for each Initiative to take on a life of its own and to continue for months beyond its initial moment in the spotlight.  To make sure that fledgling Initiatives have a good chance, we’re asking that each Initiative should have some semi-committed support in the form of a “Initiative steward” who will shepherd the activity for at least 3 months.  Through the magic of open collaboration and search-engine-optimization, an Initiative that gets off to a solid start will stand a good chance of gathering other support.  Check out the provisional guidelines for Appropedia Initiatives and see whether your favorite topic or project might be a good candidate for an Initiative.  If so, create a launch page and add your Initiative to the list!

Thank you all in advance for your help and support!

When you contribute at Appropedia you want to be sure that your work is protected and will be available in coming years, regardless of server crash, unpaid bills, tech admin heart attacks or zombie apocalypse... or, to be a little more serious, whatever unexpected event may happen.

What prompts this thought is that a wiki working in a related area (one of the permaculture wikis) has disappeared without a trace and there's no response by email from the site admin. I fear that the work that many people have put in may be lost, and sadly, it wouldn't be the first time I've seen this happen.

One of the key ways we ensure the security of your work on Appropedia is through our publicly available site dumps (see Appropedia:Current dump) which anyone can download. I keep a copy on my hard drive, which is on the opposite side of the planet from Appropedia's server, and you're invited to keep a copy as well.

What I'd really appreciate is if those people here with sites, blogs, facebook accounts or whatever, added a link to Appropedia and encouraged their networks to contribute to a permanent and growing permaculture knowledge base on Appropedia.

Now, what to do if you want to get a backup of a different wiki? With Wikimedia wikis, a dump is available (they're huge, especially the Wikipedias). But if there's no site dump available, you can go to the Special:Export page in any MediaWiki site and list pages to download. (Use Special:Allpages to get page names).

Relevant wiki pages:

• Resilience
• Appropedia:Current dump