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Al-Kaabneh
At Al-Kaabneh on West Bank (Palestine), Greenstar started a solar
health clinic and provided solar power for the school - they now have
electricity for the first time. It powers a water purifier, a vaccine
cooler, and other important medical and educational equipment.
In October of 1999, Greenstar recorded over 20 musical pieces and
helped create a dozen fascinating works of art that are on sale
through their web site www.greenstar.org.
They hope this vision of ecommerce for the developing world will
demonstrate that clean solar energy, advanced technology, and wireless
communications will form a potent set of tools for transforming
the social and economic life of small communities and provide a
model enabling people to leap past the centuries, across the digital
divide, into better lives.
You can hear the results by downloading sample MP3
music from India, Jamaica and Palestine by clicking on: http://www.e-greenstar.com/Music-Sample/
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The Sustainable Village is proud
to partner with the non-profit organization, Greenstar. We help
with Greenstar financing by offering some of our products for sale
on their web site, help sell their CDs through our marketing channels
and promote their work in our catalogs. We hope to introduce some
of our customers in developing countries to the benefits of working
with Greenstar as well as provide engineering suggestions and tools
for their portable community centers.
A small group of people including the head of the US Department
of Energy's National Renewable Energy Lab and a member of the White
House Office of Media Affairs founded Greenstar in 1998. Goals were
to provide solar power, health, education and environmental programs
to small villages in the developing world as well as to connect
people in those villages to the global community. Today, Greenstar
includes twenty Ambassadors with world-class skills in finance,
telecommunications, public relations, media production, international
development, internet technology and marketing, medicine and education.
They work with people in traditional cultures to record the voice
of the community expressed in original music, artwork, photography,
video and other arts - voice connected with respect and dignity
to the land, to families, to language, tradition, to the past and
to a clear vision of the future. Revenues earned from this priceless
"digital culture" are used to fund an ongoing, community-driven
process of literacy, local business, education, training, public
health, and environmental programs.
Greenstar designed a portable community center that uses solar power
for water purification, a small clinic, a vaccine cooler, a classroom,
a digital studio and a satellite or wireless link to the Internet.
We work with the people in each village to develop an ecommerce
web site, employ local musicians, teachers and art professionals
to record the voice of the community. This formula provides new
jobs and skills, strengthens local culture and language, and affirms
people's independence. Villagers own the Greenstar Village Center
themselves, and become shareholders in Greenstar.
Completed pilot projects include installations in a remote Bedouin
settlement on the West Bank in the Middle East, a small community
in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica,
and a village in Parvatapur, India.
New plans include projects in Ghana, Tibet, Peru, and over 60 other
communities on all continents of the world - a network of people,
skills, ideas, tools and cultural voices.
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