Crafts and Skills

This is a very simple way of making a tool to scrape the scales off a fish before cooking. It just needs a piece of wood and some bottle tops.

This describes how to make leavened bread using flour and yeast.

This explains how to make a simple chicken feeder from a plastic bucket or similar container.

How to make a doormat from bottle tops.

How to make a fly trap for the home from two plastic bottles.

Another Way to Preserve Fruit: Make it into delicious squashes

How to construct a water pipeline from bamboo.

This booklet describes how to make banana chips using either fried or dried banana chips.

How to put oil on the right places and prevent a bicycle becoming rusty.

Mending a flat tyre.

All about the chain.

How to adjust the brakes.

Safety, comfort and light repairs.

Building blocks made from sand and cement can be used as an alternative to bricks. They are known as "Breeze Blocks".

How to build using bricks or breeze blocks and mortar. It includes instructions on making mortar, concrete and the necessary tools.

This book describes how a candle works and specifies the materials and methods needed for small-scale production of candles.

How to turn woody waste into charcoal briquettes.

Collecting rainwater is important where rainfall is infrequent or sparse. Here you will find several methods.

Compressed Earth Blocks

Changu Changu Moto (Fast Fast Fire): Fuel-efficient cooking stoves

Fireless Cookers: A simple way to help cook your food and also help the environment

Making a One-Door Two-Hole Mud Stove. This book explains how to make a mud stove to control the heat and help with your cooking.

Two designs for a simple oven using old oil drums that will use fuel much more efficiently than an open fire.

If you are short of space, a few old breeze blocks can be put to good use by building a vertical garden for flowers, herbs or vegetables.

Inexpensive fridges to preserve your fruit and vegetables. 

How to Make a Zeer Pot Fridge.

How to build a static, cooling chamber.

This describes a method of knitting woollen yarn with a single needle to form stitches in a chain and create crochet work.

The first part of this book describes simple knitting methods. More difficult stitches are described at the end of the book.

Delicious snacks that you can make at home. This book explains how to make fruit leathers as a way of preserving a plentiful harvest.

How to make a bicycle trailer

This provides a detailed explanation of how to build a donkey cart or ambulance.

A pom-pom is a decorative, fluffy ball made from wool or other material.

A simple rat trap made with a bucket, wire, a corn cob and peanut butter.

This book comprises a step-by-step guide to making skirts in three different styles: gathered, circle and maxi.

How to make a simple filter to give clean drinking water, using locally available materials.

This booklet shows you how to make a woodworking bench without the use of steel parts.

This describes how to make bricks from clay, water and other materials using a wooden or metal mould and how to build a kiln or pit and bake bricks in it.

This booklet shows you how to make doughnuts with cassava flour.

Hot to make chutney from green, unripe mangoes or tomatoes.

This book explains how to make indigo dye: the best plants to use and the equipment needed.

Advice on setting up, using, adjusting and maintaining a treadle sewing machine.

How to line a fish pond using clay or pig manure and grass cuttings.

A recipe for making soap, using caustic soda and vegetable or animal oil.

Advice on how to make and fit a good pack-saddle so that you and your animal can work better.

A general method of making jam from fruit with a recipe for melon and pineapple jam.

Unhappy Customers. Two women sell passion fruit and pineapple mixed juice. One has not made it correctly so it makes her customers ill.

A tent drier can be used to dry fruit and vegetables in the heat of the sun.

Two simple methods of keeping food cool and so prolonging its safe life.

Some ways to preserve fruit so that it is available for eating out of season.

Advice on how to protect buildings from lightning strikes.

Water shortages are a problem in arid and semi-arid lands.

An introduction to simple stitches, hems, seams, buttonholes and darning.

Fish can be preserved for a few days by smoking it. It can then be eaten at home or sold in the market.

Advice on how to make soya milk from soybeans, with a use for the left-over solids.

A simple device for conserving water in the home, using a large, plastic bottle.

This describes and illustrates how to improve wells that have fallen into disrepair.

This book demonstrates how to grow pumpkins on a sandbar using the pit cultivation approach.

From problem to productive free resource: this book explains that, although the water hyacinth has become a problem, it can be very useful.