My approach to both personal and world problems is to grab the bull by the horns and to try to figure out a way to fix it, especially through networking and community building.  I am an idea person.  Some become reality, some get tabled.  Right now I have two tabled ideas that seem to be worth keeping as they might lead to something some day.

The Peace Villa is a huge project.  It came as a vision and is really a dream, a marriage of all my interests wrapped into a really cool community effort.  It grew out of my distress at seeing so much violence based on cultural, religious and environmental intolerance, out of my passion for handicrafts, sustainable development and nature.  The overall approach is to use tourism and art as a way to initiate problem solving for how we can live in peace with each other.  I am not an expert at all the needs a venture like this would have, but I did some research and wrote down what I found out.  A good team can make this happen and could be one more little band aid on the gaping wounds that tear up our earth.  This vision has been tabled for several years now and the data here is outdated.  I figured I would leave it up in case someone else wants to take elements from it for their own projects.

The second idea is still in my head.  It involves training low income women in Paducah how to run their own businesses.  They would learn through sewing various products and the structure of the program would be modeled on similar projects that have shown success in developing countries.

Do contact me if either of these imaginings strike your fancy!

Rachel Biel