Sunday, July 5, 2015

17. Proposed training for pioneers


Switzerland can not only select the refugees with the right skill sets to start a pilot pioneer community, but train refugees for the right skill sets they will need as pioneers to be successful.

In order for the pilot pioneer settlement to be successful, the refugees that want to become pioneers have to be trained. The refugees selected to partake in the pilot pioneer settlement are carefully selected according to the skills they already have. Much of the training is done “on the job” at the communal center and on the homestead by “doing and learning” with the guidance of pioneers and volunteers who are ready to share their skills. The local native Indians teach the pioneers how to fish, hunt, and use the locally available plants and herbs. Canadian businessmen teach the pioneers how to manage their communal cooperative settlement. Volunteers, in the spirit of “peace corps”,offer their services as teachers for other needed skills as required.  The more trained the refugees are, the more chance they have of becoming successful pioneers.

Canada and Switzerland have a great deal in common, despite their superficial glaring differences.  Both countries have a history of having successful immigrants. It is no wonder that both countries are regarded and respected by the international community as being tolerant, generous, and trustworthy. Both countries share similar geographies, despite Switzerland being about 240 times smaller than Canada. This makes it perhaps the best country to train the refugees for life as pioneers in Canada.

Switzerland has a long and a high reputation for training children of the world`s elite in exclusive private schools. Switzerland has maintained, into the present, the time proven system of apprenticeship programs to train their citizens. It is proposed that Switzerland promotes and subsidizes their apprenticeship programs to train refugees for the following skills they would need to succeed as pioneers in Canada:
  • Farming
  • Mechanics
  • Healthcare providers
  • Cheese making
  • Chocolate making
  • Constructing trails
  • Making roads
  • Making campgrounds
  • Felling trees (lumberjacks)
  •  Lumberyard working
  • Building houses (Swiss Chalets)
  • Gravel and stone workers
  • Tourism industry
  • Setting up and running apprenticeship programs
Once there are a sufficient number of skilled pioneers, the pioneers can take over the job of training any newcomers that need to be trained.

Canada and Switzerland despite their obvious differences have a lot in common. They can work together to provide a dignified solution to many refugees.

Friday, July 3, 2015

16. Proposed reward system for pioneers to motivate them to work without pay


Working for someone else without a salary is not very motivating. Working for yourself and your family without a salary is very rewarding. 

Escape from persecution, war and famine and the search for freedom in a new land is one of the main reasons for refuges wanting to becoming pioneers. Another reason for many is the freedom to work and prosper with the hope of being able to help their family members and their friends left behind. Many also have high hopes of eventually becoming wealthy. Providing basic facilities for tourists seeking wilderness will not get anyone wealthy, no matter how hard they work. But with enough time and dedicated work, serving tourists can grow into profitable family owned businesses.

The question arises as to how homesteaders could be motivated to work without pay.

In the very beginning, the new pioneers are members of a communal community, living in a communal center. The communal center is set up as a non-profit organization working as a cooperative. Any profits are handled and managed by this organization and are used to grow their community, to set up new ones, to pay off any loans, and to sponsor new refugees to become pioneers.  Homesteaders receive building materials from the communal community. They work without pay to support and grow their community and to further develop their homesteads to be self-sufficient. Once the pioneers are assigned homesteads, they spend more time working on their plot of land and less time working on communal projects.  Their work remains unpaid.

It is recognized that people need motivation and incentives to work without pay. The main motivation comes from the guarantee that they are working on land that they will eventually own. Once the facilities are built for paying tourists, incentives need to be given so that the pioneers continue their hard work to ensure that they have more and more tourists to serve. Because the money received from the tourists are paid to the community, incentives to motivate the homesteaders to work hard and satisfy tourist so that they return and recommend their friends to come is in the form of merit points.

Each homesteader is responsible to serve tourists that are accommodated on their plot of land. The amount of merit points that they receive are determined by the following: the number of tourists that they accommodate and the quality of the feedback the tourists provide. With accumulated merit points, the homesteaders can sponsor relatives and have free time for paid vacations. 

Homesteaders who have become citizens can sell their homesteads and family businesses to anyone who is willing to join this non-profit cooperative and abide by its rules.

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

15. Proposed work projects for pioneers


Pioneers can build trails, roads, campgrounds, tourist facilities and offer tourist activities. 
Once the pioneers have a homestead, they can move from the communal center, and work on clearing their plot of land.  The pioneers who are still living in the communal center waiting for their homesteads to be built work on community projects like the lumberyard, gravel pits, stone cutting plants,  community farms and greenhouses and the construction of homesteads. They provide the homesteaders with products like food and building materials.

The homesteads are built on plots of land carefully chosen to be attractive to develop for tourism. As the pioneers move into their homesteads, they clear the land and provide the communal center with raw products such as timber for the lumberyard, stone for the stone cutting plants and rock and gravel. They are not paid for the work they do. They work on their own land and invest with their labor for the promise of benefiting financially from it from the tourist industry they help develop.  Building materials such as timber and gravel are supplied by the communal community. Local, provincial and federal governments provide support in the form of training, guidance, management and machinery. These governments benefit from free labor to build facilities and infrastructure for the tourist industry that will eventually pay taxes.

Trails for hikers and horses are constructed to tourist attractions like waterfalls and scenic outlooks. The first trails built are along the shores of lakes where supplies are brought in by boats. Campsites are built along the trails on the shore and eventually cabins are built for the tourists. Facilities such as wharfs, beaches, swimming areas, and boating facilities are built to allow tourist to fish and enjoy the nature. Further trails are built going inland to tourist attractions such as waterfalls and viewpoints.

The trails are eventually widened to allow mountain bikes in the summer and snowmobiles in the winter. Dirt roads close to the trails going around the lake are built next.

Youtube videos on how to build trails:





Youtube videos on building a dirt road:



Youtube videos on how to build wharfs: