| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Lozzie |
Interesting charity?I never in my life would have believed that a downsizer or someone looking for a self-sustaining lifestyle could possibly, in a gu-billion years, have TOO MANY TOOLS.But someone told me about these people: Tools For Self Reliance - http://www.tfsr.org/ - and it struck a bit of a chord with me ... basically they collect and refurbish a variety of tools and ship them over to parts of Africa where people do not have easy access to such equipment, but are desperate for ways and means to become self-sufficient - by metalwork, carpentry, plumbing, even sewing. I had a good old root around in my garage and The Kitchen Drawer (anyone else got one of them??) and discovered, for example, that I posess three claw-hammers  Further rummaging turned up a wide variety of my father's old tools that I know I won't be able to use, or which are duplicated in my own kit. Soon I had 2 big boxes of stuff to offer them!
They're coming over later this week to check it all out. You can also help them by working to renovate old tools (they show you how) or by bog-standard monetary donations to help with the cost of shipping the kit over to Africa. I'll let you know how I get on! L x |
| sally_in_wales |
What a good idea. Will keep that in mind next time we muck out the workshop, we do end up stockpiling good tools and we can never use every last one of them |
| judith |
Thanks for posting that, Lozzie. I know we have a whole pile of my Dad's old tools that I just couldn't bear to part with, but that we don't use. I'm sure I could easily put together a couple of boxes. |
| Bugs |
Very interesting, especially that they don't want English gardening tools, sounds a remarkably sensible charity. We must get them on the weblinks page and perhaps ask them if they want to put up something in trading post on the main site (we like appropriate charities to do this but it is pretty time consuming to do the contacting/explaining/arranging).
We were at a wood fair at the weekend and there were a number of stalls selling second hand tools of all sorts, but even there they didn't seem to be exactly doing a roaring trade. |
| Will |
Excellent charity - the need in most parts of Africa is immense. The church we visited in Rwanda over the summer has lots of small scale projects to give people skilled trades, and the Singer sewing machine (or its Chinese imitator, the Butterfly) or woodwork featured in most of them. |