Lakota Leaders Receive Training in Participatory Practices at CSU's International Insitute for Sustainable Development

Calvin White Butterfly, director of the Wounded Knee Tiospaye project, and Gayle Kocer, Director of Badlands RC&D, recently graduated from a two week intensive training in "Participatory Practices for Sustainable Development." This training is sponsored by Colorado State University's "International Institute for Sustainable Development," a sister organization and training arm of Village Earth. Village Earth provided scholarships to Calvin and Gayle to help advance our collaboration on the Pine Ridge Reservation.


(Above: Calvin White Butterfly explaining community-defined boundaries during a mapping exercise)


(Above: Participants in the training came from all corners of the globe including India, Pakistan, China, United States, and the Pine Ridge Reservation).

Some of the topics covered in this course are comparison of development approaches, basic features of sustainable development, designing a development project, the Village Earth model, community empowerment and mobilization, bottom-up oriented organizational structures, creating resource access structures, identifying and overcoming obstacles to sustainability, selecting appropriate resources, and establishing economic self-sufficiency.

To learn more about this training please visit the IISD website at: http://www.colostate.edu/Orgs/IISD/index.htm