OSE Apprenticeship FAQ

What qualities are you looking for in apprenticeship applicants?

Please take a look at our OSE Apprenticeship Candidate Criteria.

What if I am too old to participate myself but I want to bring this work back to my own community?

You can still participate in shorter term options including the 2 week Seed Eco-Home Builder Crash Course or the 2 month Build Your Own Seed program. It takes a global village to build a village to reinvent the world, and you can mentor or sponsor a candidate from your own community. It is ultimately up to the Apprentices as far as what they do after graduation - and one option is to replicate an OSE back home. In which case - you will have the benefit of the apprentice doing good work in your community - such as building affordable eco-homes. Read more about what is in it for you at Bring an OSE Apprentice to Your Community.

Can I visit with you before applying?

Answer: We are not taking visitors right now as we are preparing for the apprenticeship. The date of the 'on site interview' is June 7, at which time applicants visit our facility and meet other applicants to the program.

Regarding visiting sooner - that is a good point and worth considering. However, the reality is that we are in a way starting from scratch, and there is in all honesty not much to see. We have built dozens of machines and prototypes - but those were exactly that - prototypes - and most have been decommissioned, deconstructed, modified, or recycled - with many ending up in our 'machine graveyard.'  With all these learnings, students in the Apprenticeship will actually be benefiting from the know-how gained to engage in full productization, based on design guides that capture our learnings. This will be taught in the design (Architectures of Civilization) aspect of the program - but we will be basically starting from scratch to build things that are no longer prototypes - but products that we will be using in actual construction and other activities. We plan to productize the tractor, backhoe, trencher, auger, bulldozer, CEB presss, and other construction machinery including 3D printer and shredder first.

A lot of the former experimental area is fenced off, as the facility space will consist only of the workshop, Rapid Learning Facility (the new production/education workshop), and Alpha - an experimental prototyping area for various infrastructure builds in the area of construction. Part of the Apprenticeship involves experimenting with all aspects of infrastructure - and students will be involved in building some additions to the campus. As our students gain skill and responsibility, they may actually be invited to build a microhouse village - and move in - for on-site accommodations and more direct dogfooding of the things we build.

To sum up - we would like your first visit with us to take form of the Video of Interest which is the first step of the application process.

I would not be able to pursue this opportunity without some measure of financial aid. Please tell me more about financial aid offered for this opportunity?

The program is designed to be finished without getting into 'college debt.' See more at OSE Apprenticeship Financial Aid.

Tell me more about sponsorship and crowdfunding?

Regarding Sponsorship and Crowdfunding, OSE and the candidate have options to collaborate to solve any outstanding financial needs. This type of collaborative approach is common through the program, where we work together to problem-solve on all types of issues, with common or out-of-box thinking and effort. For additional funding, OSE can envision 3 clear possibilities for sponsorship, crowddfunding, and grantwriting - which would be considered on a case by case basis, and would be based on cost-benefit analysis - cost in time and effort, benefit in terms of funding and its probability of success.

1. There is a large number of foundations, grant sourceses, philanthropists, etc across the globe. Education and the mission of OSE has wide appeal. OSE has received significant funding from such sources in the past, so if an applicant would like to collaborate and apply prior to joining - or even during the Apprenticeship - there is a lot of possibility. In the past, we have not done much grantwriting - as funding sources typically came to us. In this case, we would solicit actively - but the candidate would have to do most of the work in terms of actually identifying and writing grants. OSE would help with its 501(c)3 nonprofit tax exempt status, and be involved in providing guidance. Grants can be pursued for OSE in general or for the candidate specifically - and the number of areas that OSE covers is large, so the number of grant opportunities is also large. We do not have a grant-writer on staff, so the candidate would need to provide most of the initiative and execution. There are many AI-powered assistants for grants now - such as this Zeffy - such as this automated email that was generated for OSE - https://www.zeffy.com/grants/education?utm_campaign=x2-brand&utm_medium=cold-email&utm_source=instantly&w_email=ops@opensourceecology.org. An online search will yield many other AI-assisted resources - and in the future - OSE would like to automate this process. For immediate candidates - if you do engage in seeking grants for tuition/costs assistance - or other endeavors - we request that you set up an OSE wiki account and help to document such opportunities by starting a wiki page for this purpose. Grants can apply to projects once the candidate is accepted. We will in general be engaged in the creation of open source Universal Basic Assets infrastructures - and the public benefit nature of such an effort can be attractive to many funders. The only caveat is the cost-benefit analysis - because historically, we always prioritizeo open development instead of crowdfunding (such as product release of the Seed Eco-Home) - where the former is more generative - as it leads to unlimited funding once the product succeeds. There is definitely a place for grantwriting - with the disclaimer that the 'revolution shall not be funded' - meaning that if one is pursuing fundamental world change, there will never be enough funding for that due to the way things work. Following this advice - we always focus on product development and enterprise as opposed to charity-based funding. However, we are always open to collaboration on grants - and the opportunity with OSE apprentices is a case in point.

2. For crowdfunding, we have done a number of things from a donation or subscription button in PayPal or other crowdfunding platforms. We have set up funding baskets for specific projects early on in the project - for example to fund materials. We have done a couple of Kickstarters. There are countless options for doing this. This takes work, and results may depend on how much effort one puts into this. Once we develop increasingly effective or automated ways to do this - this can run in the background as part of OSE processes. Once again, OSE can collaborate on this by leveraging its publicity channels. These are not particularly well developed, but in the future, our goals are to become a key player in the communication and publishing of practical solutions. For now, if candidates are interested in crowdfunding, this would once again be a collaborative effort with OSE and follows the same guidelines as the grantwriting above.

3. Sponsorship can be considered a specific form of crowdfunding/grantwriting. A possibility here would be to post an attractive page on our website and wiki, or other platform - introducing the candidate and crafting a compelling story about them. The specific ask could be for a single philanthropic funder to provide full tuition or other assistance - ideally in the geographical area local to the applicant. The sponsor would have the benefit of watching the apprentice grow - and ideally creating real impact in that local community in the future - such as working on solving housing right in that community. OSE assists in this process with its reputation, and documents this effort so that we can incorporate a proven process when working with future students. We publish this openly so that everyone can benefit from our learnings and apply our process, templates, and automation resources for their own needs.

So in general - we welcome collaboration, with the OSE apprentice leading the intiative, and OSE providing support and endorsement. OSE's rolse is to make sure that we build techniques and assets in all the above areas, document and publish, and share this so that everyone's life can become easier with such openly-published organizational learning. This is all part of our effort to build a transparent and inclusive economy of abundance.