Home-Workers, working their way into Sustainability

The field of Homework, which is currently characterized by lowest level income can provide an solution to problems of sustainability at short notice. This is Demotech's proposal to make use of this market to achieve sustainable goals.

Concept
Homeworkers: those people who produce and manufacture goods from their homes with little or no manchinery. Homeworkers earn a living by performing production tasks, that factories find profitable to outsource. Though homework is characterized by poor manual work unfit for "production workers", in principal home work has the potential to produce useful high quality products with little or no investment. Furthermore, due to the lack of capital input(?), it has the potential to do so sustainable, meaning with an acceptably small " ecological footprint", thus making an important and immediate step towards true sustainability. Demotech will provide support to enhance home work by informing potential homeworkers, teaching them about producing some original high quality goods, and selling + distributing those goods in the market effectively.

The Three Steps: Informing, Producing, Distributing

Informing:
Potential Homeworkers need to be informed about the opportunity to do home work, and the implications therein. Rather than trapping homeworkers into unfavorable agreements with factories, Demotech will facilitate their setting up of independent entrepreneur-ships, with the entitlement and capacity to produce and sell. This means: Engaging teaching methods and models, providing rights to produce, establishing cooperations between homeworkers, designers and other actors in the economy.

Producing:
Demotech's core competency over the past thirty years has been in producing original designs which are available for production without capital investment. These designs are available under an open source policy(1) and can be taught to homeworkers in a matter of days. Each design has to be worked to a very high quality and functionality by designers of Demotech. This means:

• providing instruction about currently available designs such as: DemoCamp-Units, DemoSticks, StorageStools. Engaging new design students to prepare more designs for homeworkers.
• Distributing: Homeworkers should be provided with the opportunity to engage in their own marketing, finance, accounting and management practices. Rather than engaging them in the service of a factory or firm, they are given the freedom and independence of a self-guided entrepreneurship.

Therefore, education and assistance can be set-up to provide homework education for people already in the fiel This means: Gathering student educators who are able and willing to hold courses on how to manage an independent organization, introducing workers to the Demotech Accounting System design, gathering knowledge resources on entrepreneurship for homeworkers to take advantage of.

How can we put this into action?
Current resources: Demotech and the Workforce Demotech and the Demotech Workforce are well placed to begin working immediately on this assignment. The Demotech Lab provides an ideal place for refining and testing old and new designs, as well as space for offering courses and keeping close track of results. The Demotech Workforce, a team of active students, already provide workshops, organize international exchanges, and do conceptual and hands on work within demotech. The skills and competencies held by these students will provide as a basis for piloting this project.

A Plan of action
Demotech will need to gather new personnel to work specifically on this project. These will be students: interns gathered from local universities and technical schools who are eager to learn new skills, apply their educations, and assist in real steps towards sustainability.

Three Interns or groups of interns will be required for the project:

• Coordinator(s): People who will arrange contacts, keep schedules and budgets, make real cooperation with all partners possible and be responsible for the project as a whole.
• Designer(s): People of a technical background who are able to advance designs and refine production methods to make them increasingly attractive for homeworkers.
• Trainer(s): People to prepare, arrange and hold education on who to do homework, how to produce designs, and how to arrange distribution of products and manage an independent organization. All of these interns can be supported from the expertise already present in the Demotech workforce.
• Partners will have to be found and engaged: Local Government, Private enterprise in the area,

Employment agencies, University Research and Technical assistance, and funders in order to ensure full involvement in the local society and market of these new homeworkers.

An important reminder
All of these arrangements are made so that homeworkers are able to start producing things that the society needs in a fully sustainable way. By engaging homeworkers, we can provide employment for unskilled, poorly educated workers, an already noble accomplishment. Doing so in a sustainable way can provide an opportunity to test a new form of sustainability: one where everybody is included, new ideas are brought to light, and people are given the dignity of work.

(1)- All designs produced by Demotech are protected under an Open Source licence. Thus, they are available for all people to use, produce, and adapt, and may not be patentedor licenced by any market actor other then under the licence given by Demotech. This policy assures that hte intellectual ownership of these designs is not in the way of genral use.