Love the approach
Great work, thanks!
As to how rural communities might improve their self-reliance: in Italy we are experimenting with the residency model embedded into the unMonastery. The first prototype is in a small town rather than deep countryside, but we are already developing a fully rural concept. The idea is: most rural development policies (at least in my part of the world) are aimed at attracting investment and business to rural areas. We would like to experiment with a different policy, that aims at attracting people.
This has come up in the context of an area that has become so sparsely populated that the human communities cannot exert proper stewardship over the land. Maintenance does not get done. Clogged ditches and waterways make irrigated fields revert to swamps; unkept woods mean vulnerability to summer fires and landslides. This triggers a vicious cycle in which even more people leave. The question is if the unMonastic dream of living together to attack the hard problems can attract doers and innovators to the rural areas… and we think the answer is a qualified yes.