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Home Living Revitalizing Rural Towns by creating Micro Villages using Japanese One Village One Product Principles

Revitalizing Rural Towns by creating Micro Villages using Japanese One Village One Product Principles

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Revitalizing Rural Towns by creating Micro Villages using Japanese One Village One Product Principles
Design for Micro One Village One Product Village in Freedom Village Georgia

Master Designing a small town is a long and on-going process. Here is a current shot of our master design for what we call a OVOP Micro-Village in Freedom Village. We hope to see the first one of this design up and completely functioning in 2020. The methodology behind it is the cornerstone of our efforts and design methodology:

The One Village One Product Micro-Village (Micro OVOP)

In 2017, Faruq Hunter traveled to Oita Japan to analyze the model of the One Village One Product initiative founded by the former governor of the prefecture, Mr. Horimatsu in order to reduce economic decline of the rural towns in Japan. The basic structure of the model is to focus the efforts of a single village on the unique production of a product that is derived from local materials and produced at international standards and to do so in a village that has a high level of design appeal as to attract tourism and provide a high quality of life for the residents of the village.

The OVOP Micro-Village runs on three under lying principles. 1) Self-Reliance and creativity 2)human resource development and 3) thinking locally but acting globally. Freedom Institute develops local groups that take the lead to make unique products from local resources for their own use, the use of other micro-villages and to capture markets external to their locality that are identified and developed by the inventory bank.

The Micro Village centralizes the work of an exceptional leader and master of a specific skillset known as the Freedom Master. Freedom village creates initial housing for the Master and coordinates with him to offer skill based classes through the centralized Freedom institute as well as through the Freedom Institute International Learning Centers and online. As the students seek to increase their proficiency in a particular skill they are drawn closer to the Freedom Master who uses the micro-village to create a community around his skillset and the need to provide value to the larger village and the outer market through the expansion of his skillset.

The Micro-Village is therefore designed to house an ample amount of students with an emphasis on dignifying the Freedom Masters living quarters as the focal point of that Micro-Village. Each micro-village must also be capable of accommodating changes in skill and family size as a means to facilitate the growth of the student’s families and to dignify their advancement in skill.

Micro-village integrated work/live/play/collaborative areas

The Micro-Village is designed to be a small community in and of itself. With activities that are common in the daily life of a family, being centralized in the micro-village. To achieve this, each Micro-Village is built in a polygonal shape around a courtyard. The courtyard houses a playground, common areas for socialization and small events and mailboxes. Intentional effort is made in order to increase the interactions between the inhabitants using known, successful methods of creating intentional community.

Collective Marketing and Sales for Micro-Village OVOP products

The program is supported via a network of marketing efforts from marketing and distribution organizations that are outside of the village and in most cases, centrally run and/or supported. In the case of Freedom Village, a secondary lesson has been adopted from the Mandragon models in the Basque country of Spain, where the Marketing, research, funding and distribution for the OVOP micro-villages is handled as the function of a centralized bank called the inventory bank. In order to sustain the functions of the micro-villages, the inventory bank provides an internal funding mechanism based on the inventory output of the micro-villages. This funding mechanism can be utilized to purchase raw materials, products and services from local businesses located throughout the village. These local villages offer ample services and products to provide a healthy and high quality of life to the inhabitants of the micro village and the collective of micro-villages that is Freedom Village.

About Freedom Village

Freedom Village is a 205 Acre Maker’s town built exclusively for makers, innovators, artists and creatives by makers, innovators, artists and creatives. 1 hour from the 3rd largest port in the US and the busiest airport in the world, Freedom Village is set in a county that has created the legal leeway that makers need to live a lifestyle of experimentation, growth and freedom. The entire town produces its own electricity, water and natural gas on an internally developed distributed energy production Smart Grid. to learn more, please visit the Freedom Nation website and complete a Freedom Citizen profile at http://www.freedomnation.me/apply

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