Date of Award
2009-01-01
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Environmental Science and Engineering
Advisor(s)
Charles D. Turner
Abstract
This Dissertation describes a sustainable development extension plan (Sudex Plan) to help communities in developing countries achieve Goal 1 of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Goal 1 focuses on reducing poverty and hunger by 50% by the year 2015, but all the MDG are interrelated and one can not be achieved without considering the others, and to attain any is an empty accomplishment without ways to ensure that they can be sustained and continuously improved with the means to pass on the information, knowledge and lessons learned from community to community, generation to generation. The Sudex Plan is a comprehensive participatory synergistic partnership between a community and Sudex to develop and implement a strategic master plan integrating engineering and scientific methods, and business management and socio-economic practices with public affairs and community planning strategies and tactics. The community provides the direction, management and leadership; Sudex provides the nexus of consilience and information, facilitation and coordination. Together through collective learning and innovation extension through continuous improvement and progress toward self sufficient sustainable development is achieved. The various methods are tried and true, drawn from their respective tool kits; it is the integration, wholeness and conditions to which the Plan is to be applied that are unique. While initial stages of the Sudex Plan have been initiated in Ghana, Thailand and Cambodia with enthusiastic support and participation by the communities, the Plan has yet to be fully implemented, but applying proven techniques in an innovative manner should yield positive results and there is no reason to assume the application will prove to be the exception. We learn by the doing; the community's welfare improves; success within a community leads to passing on the knowledge and lessons learned to the neighboring village, the momentum leads to continuity, which leads to sustainability and through geometric progression the vortex uncurls outwardly, its radius of influence forever expanding as each level of poverty is consumed until its only relevance is as a comparative measure relative to wealth. This is the essence and promise of the Sudex Plan.
Language
en
Provenance
Received from ProQuest
Copyright Date
2009
File Size
223 pages
File Format
application/pdf
Rights Holder
Stephen Forbes
Recommended Citation
Forbes, Stephen, "Sustainable Development Extension Plan (SUDEX): Community Mobilization Through Proactive Participation and Synergistic Alliance to Alliviate Poverty and Achieve Sustainable Self Sufficiency" (2009). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 258.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/open_etd/258