Chapter 5: Specialising to making a living from AL services/products
Making a profession out of a specific skill to help others to live their life appropriatly is as mentioned before possible. In order to do so, one must offcourse attain the required skills, experience and/or qualifications. Appropedia has herefore a list composed from the educations given in different subjects, tought at the appropriate technology villages. Another possible option is the taking of a volunteer work to become skilled in a profession, or one of the other suggestions noted at page 7. Depending on the profession, set up of a shop is also again possible trough these AT villages. Another approach could be of learning a profession trough an unpayed, short-term job. Young people, in the years just after graduation, often feel the need of stopping for a while and help out in environmental initiatives at the same time. This approach will provide schooling and introduce change and environmental advantage aswell, while often also being more in line with a student's after-school vision of not making things too complicated and/or costly. Trips as these can be easily set-up trough the help of organisations as Treehugger, Worldchanging, Aida, ... , in addition things are quite cheap as the places where the student goes to work (ecocities) often provide cheap stay and may already have the materials required for the environmental projects.
Once one harnessed the required skills, one can set up his shop or project at the appropriate technology villages, or anywhere where your newly aquired skill can be used most efficiently. For environmental projects as coral reef repairs, or reforestation projects, obviously a suitable geographical location needs to be found. Funding is often available from environmental organisations as the Global Environment Facility (GEF), Gaia Foundation of Western Australia, or from specialist organisations as designated national authorities (DNA) for the flexible mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol.