Greenstar continues its mission: to demonstrate that clean solar energy, advanced technology, wireless communications, the Web and ecommerce form a potent set of tools for transforming the social and economic life of small communities in developing countries. Our overall aim is to be pioneers in building a new world, enabling people to leap past the centuries, across the digital divide, into better lives.

To that end, our demonstration project in the Middle East continues to show great progress, and unexpected results.

Two weeks of productive activity in the West Bank were completed in October, with over 20 musical pieces recorded, a dozen fascinating works of art created, and the first of Greenstar's digital culture programs completed.

You can get a real feel for what it's like in this isolated Palestinian village by viewing the panoramic photographs that we took there in late October. These special movies, which you control with your mouse or keyboard, allow you to pan, tilt, zoom at will from a stationary viewpoint, through a 360-degree view of the village and its solar array.

The panoramas give you the sense that you're right there; you can almost feel the wind in your hair, the sun on your face.

The first panorama may be downloaded here; it shows the head of the Village Council, Odeh Nasser Al-Najadeh, on the top of the school and community center of the village. The solar array can be seen, along with the desert leading south to the Sinai, and east to the Dead Sea. (436K)

The second panorama may be downloaded here; it is shot from a lower spot, in the middle of the solar power array, and has been enhanced with labels to give you a sense of direction. (444K) Both animations are best viewed at double-size.

These images are in the form of a QuickTime Virtual Reality movie, an exciting new medium that facilitates exploration of remote sites on the Web. To view them, you will need to download and install QuickTime, if you don't already have it. This is a free and extremely useful program, available from http://www.apple.com/quicktime/. (Windows 95, 98, NT and Macintosh).

Digital music was recorded live in the village, and we have a wonderful free track available online now, with several other tracks for sale at $2.00 each. A full-length 60-minute music compact disc is also available, for $11.95. The sessions were recorded live in the village, using solar power from the roof array on the school, and featured musicians from the village and their 5000-year-old tradition of Bedouin music and instruments.

Listen to the free MP3 track, and get more in-depth information, at:

At the same time we were making music in Al-Kaabneh, we were encouraging the people to create artwork based on a number of universal themes. We supplied them with colored pencils, watercolors, pastels and charcoal, along with fine art paper, and showed them some examples of other art created by Palestinians. Then we stood back, and wondered what would happen

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A group of both adults and children produced dozens of drawings and paintings, and we have the best 12 of them online now, for your enjoyment. A hi-res download of each picture is available for $10, which provides you with an original image for printing on your own color printer. The art produced was amazing for its originality, its crisp vision, and the quality of its rendering.

You can see the complete Al-Kaabneh gallery collection, and download your own images, at:

Greenstar is proud to announce that a distinguished expert in international affairs, Jonathan Lash, has joined our Board of Directors. Jonathan is best-known today as the President of the World Resources Institute in Washington DC. His public-service post include co-chair of the President's Council on Sustainable Development, and member of the US Trade and Environment Policy Advisory Committee. The World Resources Institute pursues the study and practical implementation of new ideas in the fields of ecosystems, climate change and economic activity.

Jonathan is an attorney specializing in natural resources, and a former Peace Corps volunteer. You can read more about the World Resources Institute, which is active in 50 countries around the world, at http://www.wri.org.

The San Jose Mercury-News ran a story in its October 30 edition, which came from a press visit by a reporter and a photographer who travelled with us from Jerusalem to Al-Kaabneh for a half day, met the village people and interviewed many of them. The complete text of the article is available at:

TIME Magazine, in its October 11 International Edition, ran a feature that mentions Greenstar, and takes a broad look at the field of bridging the digital divide on a global level. See this article online, at:

Jock Gill co-hosted a session of the Lunar Society at Harvard University, discussing the impact of the current wave of high-tech innovation on developing countries. A brief account of this meeting can be seen here:

When the Al-Kaabneh project has been fully installed and ecommerce revenue is flowing to the village, we are preparing to scale this model to other countries in the Middle East, and to other regions of the world. Expressions of interest in partnering with Greenstar have come in from over 20 countries, including Mongolia, Tibet, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Burkina Faso, South Africa, Somalia, Madagascar, Nepal, China, Thailand, Ghana, Samoa, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Haiti, Honduras, Brazil, Ecuador, Tanzania, Uganda, Lesotho, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, and many others.

The Greenstar ecommerce website is operational, and you can participate by going to our site and looking at the great products there, by doing some holiday season shopping for you and your friends, and by sending the URL along to your friends: