Thread: East Timor Needs Help

teaching the temoreise timberworking skills is a great idea but turning probably isn't a priority.
basic furniture construction would probably be great. probably working green wood by hand would be helpfull.
I would expect even what we would consider basic furniture would be in short supply.
Electricity would be far from universaly available so traditional hand tools would be the go.
I am sure there would be enough people interested if the oficial stuff was handled.
You may even find some of the tool suppliers willing to contribute

Unfortunately I guess they're going to have to go through all the painful stages of development that any under-developed nation goes through. It starts with frenetic selling off of their resources, followed by a bunch of multinationals moving factories in there to exploit cheap labour.

Of course they start up the ladder when they start developing local companies - usually relying on the trade from the multinationals initially.

I'm sure they have many talented people who could begin to develop woodworking skills and on to cottage industries - but without the infrastructure, business & marketing skills they are destined - in the short term anyway - to be little more than cheap labour producing low value products.

Seems to me the best thing we could do for them would be to encourage whatever local skills they already have. Helping them to commercialise that which is already part of their culture would seem to me to be the best way forward initially.

My 2 cents anyway