eco-solutions promotes and demonstrates community focussed initiatives in water-, soil-, sanitation- and health-security. We believe that development initiatives that ignore the importance of the community and household-centred approaches are unsustainable. People themselves are the primary energy for change. Women particularly are endowed with generations of knowledge and skills in nurture, household survival and environmental sustainability. eco-solutions listens to and works with such people. By adding the extra building blocks of skill and know-how that may be absent, due to lack of exposure and education, eco-solutions strengthens people's power to build sustainable solutions for today and the future.
eco-solutions is an initiative by Paul Calvert who has more than fifteen years experience in gender aware and culturally sensitive community development work in Asia and East Africa. Having first trained as an officer cadet in the merchant navy he obtained an honours degree in Engineering in Sheffield and spent two years in the manufacturing and construction industries in the UK and Iceland. In 1985 he joined the Intermediate Technology Development Group (now called Practical Action) UK. He has experience as a project officer and programme manager on projects ranging from small-scale sugar processing to fisheries, boat building and artificial reef construction. He has work experience in East Africa, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. He recently led an FAO project in Andhra Pradesh on Sea Safety and Cyclone Disaster Preparedness and has also undertaken work for UNDP and the SANRES programme of SIDA. His work in Ecological Sanitation began in 1994 when, in response to the poor sanitary conditions in local fishing communities, he began building ecological toilet and waste water systems in Kerala, south India. He currently spends much of his time in India and the South demonstrating and promoting the ecological sanitation approach among communities, government and non-government organizations.
See also[edit | edit source]
- Compost toilets (original), a technical brief published by Practical Action and written by Paul Calvert
External links[edit | edit source]
- eco-solutions official site