Having been involved with a couple of social and economic projects in Ecuador, I have some limited experience in planning and executing a couple of projects, one of which is a “fix-it-shop”. The differences, I see with my experience and your development model, is most of the communities I have dealt with, have electricity to some degree and are able to import on a limited basis tools and supplies.

I have a question. If your model is to maintain only a self-supporting (in terms of a village) operation, should you not first look to what the community has already in place? For the village to even have some degree of organization to exist, they would have already had to have a natural evolution of local trades, using nearby natural resources. If the goal of your model is to allow the community to grow, without the importation of a resource, then they must have natural resource that can be “harvested” in substantial quantities.

There are many communities around the world that are self-sustaining. However, these communities either succumb to the “comforts’ of the modern society, their culture and means of maintaining a stable community or are self-limiting/maintaining.

There are a number of resources (both books and magazine articles) on “primitive” forging, pottery making, spinning and weaving (textile development). A quick search turned up the following. I do not if they would be helpful or not. Pet

http://www.backwoodshome.com/

http://www.backwoodsmanmag.com/

http://www.primitiveways.com/

http://www.tribaltek.org/lifeskills.html

http://www.countrysidemag.com/

http://ambilac-uk.tripod.com/safesurvival/id11.html

http://www.keenjunk.com/index.htm

http://www.anvilfire.com/

http://www.hollowtop.com/plinks.htm

Making the Best of Basics by James Talmage Stevens
Self-Reliant Living by Dr. James Mckeever
Back to Basics from Readers Digest