Volunteers in Technical Assistance

Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA) was a United States-based private, non-profit international development organization that worked for over four decades helping people and organisations in developing countries select, adapt and build small-scale technologies suited to their own circumstances. Its worldwide roster of volunteer technical experts answered thousands of technical enquiries each year, and its publications — above all the Village Technology Handbook — were used by development workers, Peace Corps volunteers and do-it-yourselfers around the world.^[1]

VITA concentrated on practical, workable technologies for agriculture, food processing, renewable energy, water supply and sanitation, housing and construction, and small business development.^[1] Rather than shipping equipment, it moved information: needs-assessment and programme-design support, by-mail and on-site consulting services, information-systems training, and management of long-term field projects.^[2] Drafts and enquiries passed through volunteer experts with practical experience in the relevant field, so that what circulated had been checked by practitioners and not only by editors.^[2]

• The Village Technology Handbook, first published in 1963 under the auspices of the U.S. Agency for International Development, reprinted eight times, and issued in French and Spanish as well as English. It gathers designs for water resources, agriculture, construction and small industries, including such long-lived devices as the chain-and-washer pump, the evaporative food cooler and the haybox cooker.^[2][1]
• The "Understanding Technology" technical papers — short, practical introductions to a single technology. Understanding Solar Cells, Understanding Solar Stills, Rural Electrification Systems and House Wiring are all on Appropedia today.
• Technical Bulletins, presenting plans and case studies of specific technologies.
• The Appropriate Technology Library, a large body of village-level technology texts that VITA distributed on microfiche and CD-ROM, and which was used in more than 130 countries.^[3]

VITA was founded in the late 1950s — the physicist Robert M. Walker was a founder and its first president^[4] — and worked for some 42 years.^[1]

• In 2005 VITA merged with EnterpriseWorks, a Washington DC-based non-profit working on small-business development, forming EnterpriseWorks/VITA (EWV).^[1][5]
• In 2009 EnterpriseWorks/VITA merged with Relief International, which continues to hold the rights to the VITA publications.^[1][5]

Much of VITA's output is still in circulation:

• Appropedia hosts a growing set of VITA publications — see Category:VITA and VITA document and link list.
• ECHOcommunity has re-published 137 VITA documents in six languages.^[6]
• Scans and second-hand copies of the Village Technology Handbook and the "Understanding Technology" series remain widely used by makers and by appropriate technology projects.

The VITA papers were written by volunteers who donated their work to VITA so that it could be shared as widely as possible. After the 2005 and 2009 mergers, Relief International holds the copyright and its position on redistribution is still under discussion; Appropedia therefore marks those pages with a VITA copyright notice and asks users not to alter the body text. See Talk:Volunteers in Technical Assistance for the discussion.

• ECHOcommunity – VITA collection
• Journey to Forever – VITA publications list