Bill Coperthwaite: Yurt Builder Extraordinaire

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You see, I'm interested not in just building a yurt, but in using the project to facilitate communication within a group of people. The act of construction puts the builders in a new situation, makes them relate in new ways, breaks down barriers and creates a common goal.

What's more, the project gives me a bridge into the life of that group. If I walk in cold and try to start a discussion, I'll spend a great deal of time and energy just to break down resistance and create the willingness to share ideas. But if I come in to help those same people build a yurt, they're already so excited about that part of our encounter that meaningful communication is reached in much less time. A yurt workshop is simply a more efficient setting than the classic "seminar" for learning and exchanging thoughts.

PLOWBOY: I know that the Yurt Foundation has been raising funds by selling yurt plans and accepting individual contributions . . . but the kind of educational work you've been describing sounds as if it might qualify you for a grant of some kind. Have you applied to the large foundations for money?

COPERTHWAITE: Though many organizations today depend on begging for their funds, I think it would be sad if the Yurt Foundation did this also. To run an educational establishment on grants in this country doesn't prove a thing. People from India can look at it and say, "Sure, you can develop an organization concerned with social design because you've got lots of money." I'd like to show that work like ours can be done anywhere in the world where there are people interested in searching for a better way to live . . . that money matters less than attitudes.

Certainly money can help the work of the Yurt Foundation advance faster, and I'm willing to accept donations, but I'm concerned that we not become dependent on gifts. If we don't have any extra money we can still help fulfill the goals of the foundation by our daily work and experimentation with the knowledge we've already collected. If we have 10 extra dollars, then we can buy a couple of books . . . and if we have $10,000 extra, then we can send more people to work in the field.

PLOWBOY: What kind of fieldwork do you want to do?

COPERTHWAITE: I'd like to send researchers to gather knowledge directly from cultures throughout the world, as well as having the staff at home to coordinate that information once it's collected.

Ideally, I think, fieldwork would be done by teams. If a group of us were — let's say — in Japan, we could spread out to study and meet periodically to share our findings . . . or two or three of us could visit the same place, if need be. When such a team came home it would have enough variety of experience to put together a really useful publication on one culture.

I hope that eventually the Yurt Foundation will have the resources to carry out the whole process: to collect knowledge, think it through, experiment, rethink and finally publish.

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