July 2010 marked a momentous occasion as a dream of Dr. Conrado Valdez, Dean of the University of Los Banos College of Veterinary Medicine, came true. TGRI facilitated the donation and delivery of a vehicle to the University to allow students and faculty to conduct rural veterinary practice, disease surveillance, research projects and community outreach around Los Banos in Central and South Luzon.
I hope you enjoy watching the video below of this exciting event.
On April 24th 2010, TGRI participated in the Tahoe-Truckee Earth Day Celebration. We set up a booth and were represented by the Director, a Program Manager, and two volunteers. The video below is a highlight of some of our photos and videos taken during the event. I hope you enjoy them!
At long last our Director has finished creating an overview video for The Global Resource Initiative. Please take a moment and watch. The video was allot of fun to create. Enjoy!
I’ve previously posted a photo montage of my October 2009 visit with Gil Carandang of Herbana Farms at the Makati Farmer’s Market and a tour of his teaching farm. On our return visit to the Philippines in February 2010, I again met with Gil and captured an interview of him on video, talking about his methods, background, and the philosophy that drives his passion of organic farming.
I hope that you find Gil’s interview informative, enjoyable, and entertaining. You can help share the wit and wisdom of Gil Carandang with farmers, gardeners, and people all around the world by supporting The Global Resource Initiative.
In October of 2009 a small team from The Global Resource Initiative traveled to Southeast Asia and met with numerous groups and individuals. While in the Philippines, I had the pleasure to meet Gil Carandang, owner and Director of Herbana Farms. Herbana Farms is both a working, certified organic farm and a hands-on teaching farm.
Just a short distance south of Manila Gil grows lush, delicious, and health-packed organic produce and fruits while also cultivating wisdom in the fertile minds of his farm apprentices. Gil also occasionally travels to conduct seminars on organic and sustainable farming practices around the Philippines and even to San Francisco, California. TGRI is working to help spread the wisdom of Gil Carandang to even more farmers and gardeners around the world and we need your help.
I invite you to enjoy the short video of Gil’s market stall in the Saturday Makati Farmer’s Market and our trip to Herbana Farms.
The second in the series of TGRI ClimateCast videos is now available. In this episode, Maureen McCarthy conducts an interview with Dr. Geoff Schladow, Director of the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC).You can subscribe to the ClimateCast video podcast series through iTunes by just clicking here.
The Global Resource Initiative has a begun a project called ClimateCast as a part of the Sister Lakes Project and here is the first video from this project. We hope that you find this interesting and informative. Remember, you can help to support this effort with your donation to TGRI.
The Global Resource Initiative (TGRI) is accepting donations through PayPal! Please help us to improve the productivity and livelihoods of people in the developing world through access to information, expertise and technology by making a donation now.
Help support The Global Resource Initiative with every purchase! Please visit our new store and help us to improve the productivity and livelihoods of people in the developing world through access to information, expertise and technology by purchasing one of our custom designed products and proudly displaying it.
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Over the past few weeks, I have been testing mobile-to-web applications for use in our agriculture knowledge system and disease surveillance pilot in Tanzania, including FrontlineSMS, RapidSMS, and SMSFoxbox. During my research of these apps and other ICT tools, I discovered an excellent e-agriculture resource produced at the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) by Mucemi Gakuru, Kristen Winters, and Francois Stepman called Inventory of Innovative Farmer Advisory Services using ICTs (PDF Link).
According to the report, the inventory lays the groundwork for more extensive research of innovative farmer information systems that FARA is planning, which they indicate will include more detailed analysis of project successes. The inventory provides an overview of various services provided and contains around fifty projects in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Example projects include the First Mile Project and Esoko (formerly Tradenet) and projects are organized into four categories including:
