[Stoves] VITA's origins
Ronal Larson
rongretlarson at comcast.net
Tue Sep 24 22:19:37 CDT 2019
List, cc Kevin, Richard and Crispin. (And adding another current AT leader - David Bartecchi)
The primary purpose of this note is to further assist Kevin, who started this thread with a question about VITA. Kevin’s interest in stoves is unique on this list - being on zero and extremely low cost improvements to 3-stone cook fires,
I am going to break my response up into several responses - since they cover different topics - but trying to tie all in to the work Kevin is doing on stoves.
See inserts below
> On Sep 23, 2019, at 9:49 PM, Richard Stanley <rstanley at mind.net> wrote:
>
>
> Let me chime in here with bit of history about VITA in the early years; Volunteers in Technical assistance was founded by a one Dr. Beno Sternlicht in the ?? late 60's. It was initially based in Schenectady New York ( the then home of General Electric corporation, where Sternlicht worked. I joined them fresh out of peace corps in 1970 and worked for a year before realising that the salary would not get us very far. The initial crew consisted of about ten staff in a quonset hut on the campus of Union college in Schenectady but it had incredible outreach. by the time I joined, there were already several thousand technical assistance "Vita Volunteers", spread all over the US. VITA did not operate in a vacuum, as the interaction and outreach exposed it to a far wider world. It borrowed heavily on the information provided by missionaries, aid workers, development organisations all over the world. several of these were recent and others longer-established if less formally known. Schumacher's, Small is Beautiful sprung UK's own ITDG, BRACE arose out of, if not in parallel with, the work of Dr Tom Lawand in McGill University in Canada).
> SKAT out of Switzerland, TOOL emerged out of several universities in cooperation with the Royal Tropical institute in Holland, as did others out of Germany, France, and India. As a request coordinator, the incoming "mail" (then the only known form of mail) was loaded with a huge variety of needs and resources one would rarely find in any conventional research organsation, The problem was not finding a solution for the overseas missionary or aid worker or local cooperative etc etc., but rather, how to track and condense it for easy application to a subsequent request from anywhere else.
[RWL: I met Richard maybe 20-25 years ago - but had no idea that Richard's VITA background is almost half a century old. Amazing.
Especially a note to to Kevin - note that Richard is probably the world’s best expert on low cost pelletization - which we should all be paying attention to - especially those working on char-making stoves.
The names Schumacher and Lawand are familiar on this list - but I now need to check out SKAT, TOOL, and the Royal Tropical Institute. In today’s review, I found a few others.
Richard’s final sentence question of tracking is key in this response, and covered next.
>
>
> And those were the heady days of file index cards and snail mail and corded phones. A parallel effort was put in place to extract and compile organised manuals from all the technical advice being offered, henceforth, the Village Technology Handbook. ITDG was undertaking a parallel effort as was Brace, Tool, Skat and others. The Village Technology Handbook was suceded by the TAICH directory, (Technical Assistance Information Clearinghouse). VITA subsequently moved its operation to Washington DC as part of their not untypical unending search for operating funds. I doubt whether the politics and the culture of that arena were as much sought after, as VITA suffered from the ensuing Daniel Websterian soul challenging machinations as an unintended consequence. That you are writing about it now suggests they have survived somehow.
>
> Since I left in 1971, for grad school and a long sought return to work in international development, I have had only very intermittent contact with VITA but those early heady days in the quonset hut remain a memorable experience indeed.
[RWL: Richard's new name above is “Village Technology”.
I talked today to David Bartecchi - who heads the group that has ended up with much of this AT (=Appropriate Technology) literature (called Intermediate Technology in the UK’s ITDG (DG for development group). I strongly urge all interested in AT to look up David’s work at https://www.villageearth.org/ <https://www.villageearth.org/>. He/they are located in Ft. Collins, Colorado (home of CSU). A major reason for the existence of Village Earth there is the work of (now deceased) CSU Prof. Maury Albertson - often given primary credit for the US’ Peace Corps. I worked with Maury briefly in the early days of this group; he was a very forceful character. Not pertinent, but he was particularly fond of hydrogen when we worked together. (His main technical background was water issues).
I was quite surprised and delighted today to find the this “Village” work is still alive - pretty close to me.
I urge looking at their multi-book AT library preserved on a thumb-drive ($69). “Guaranteed" to not include TLUDs and biochar - but I would love to hear of any new information anyone might divulge who has this repository relevant to Kevin’s work.
I also intend to send another note soon on NCAT, whose origin I also saw up close. (Dr. Jerry Plunkett residing in Denver - also now deceased).
And more.
Ron
>
> Richard Stanley
>
>
>
>
>> On Sep 23, 2019, at 2:57 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com <mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Volunteers in Technical Assistance.
>>
>> The head was Don Feil for some time recently. I am not sure if he still is. His phone mailboxes are full.
>>
>> US-based people volunteer their time to solve problems encountered by overseas people. It did a lot of positive things. They produced the first (rather defective) WBT test, with them mediating three organisations, them, plus one in France and one in Germany. They put out a number of publications including the VITA Technology Handbook and the microfiche library of everything the Village Technology Sourcebook. Back in the early ‘80’s that was the basis of any good appropriately technology centre library.
>>
>> Cecil Cook and I co-founded the Transkei Appropriate Technology Unit in 1982 and there wasn’t all that much to go on, besides the ITDG publications.
>>
>> So, there is some discussion of water storage here.
>> https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0006364 <https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0006364>
>>
>> Conclusions
>>
>> <>“All five water treatment methods can remove or inactivate cercariae in water, and hence produce cercaria-free water. However, reliable design guidelines for treating water do not exist as there are insufficient data. Overall, the review found that cercariae are inactivated when storing water for 10–72 hours (depending on temperature), or with chlorination values of 3–30 mg-min/l. UV fluences between 3–60 mJ/cm2 may significantly damage or kill cercariae, and sand filters with 0.18–0.35 mm grain size have been shown to remove cercariae. This systematic review identified 67 studiesabout water treatment and schistosomiasis published in the past 106 years. It highlights the many factors that influence the results of water treatment experiments, which include different water quality conditions and methods for measuring key parameters. Variation in these factors limit comparability, and therefore currently available information is insufficient for providing complete water treatment design recommendations.”
>>
>> I think that is information enough to start.
>> Regards
>> Crispin
>>
>>
>> From: Stoves <stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org <mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org>> On Behalf Of K McLean
>> Sent: Monday, September 23, 2019 5:39 PM
>> To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org <mailto:stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>>
>> Subject: Re: [Stoves] Water Disinfection - Mix Boiling Water and Unheated Water to Pasteurize
>>
>> I searched for a couple hours and found nothing. I'll keep trying. What is VITA?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 5:13 PM Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com <mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com>> wrote:
>> Dear Kevin
>>
>> I support your support to support those who have nothing. Better is something.
>>
>> Is it possible that VITA has done work on this?
>>
>> It is so essential that it seems unlikely there is no work on it. It is not something I follow closely.
>>
>> Perhaps a brief search will turn up someone who knows someone who knows.
>>
>> Regards
>> Crispin
>>
>>
>> Your disinfection by darkness method should be easy to test in a lab. If successful in the lab, I can think of many ways it might be easily implemented.
>>
>> Despite decades of effort, 2.2 billion people (67%) in the 60 developing countries analyzed in this study <https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fpmc%2Farticles%2FPMC2813171%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Ce77646a3b4294635280508d7406eb909%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637048716599620717&sdata=8OVLb4C1zwMF%2BCKrxGfjqGWDWjG6fYdcfOOpCIv8UX8%3D&reserved=0> do nothing to treat their water. Of those that treat, 500 million use adequate methods.
>>
>> If you think your disinfection by darkness method has potential, help find a lab and I'll pay for the testing. It doesn't have to be the best solution, just a good method that can be quickly disseminated. Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
>>
>> Kevin
>>
>>
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