Besides helping to make a project successful, community involvement also gives people a stake in the outcome. Instead of passively receiving assistance, people become actively committed to not only seeing the project succeed, but in maintaining its benefits into

the future. In this way, appropriate techology is sustainable - designed with the community in mind, with their input, ideally with local materials, and in a way that is easy to understand, operate, and repair.

It takes time and patience to get to know a community and what it needs. People in the community also need time to establish a level of trust with an outside group, no matter how wonderful their intentions are. Once such trust is established, there is a much better chance that the technology will actually be used by the members of the community.

Appropriate technology is much more than nuts and bolts - it's also people, relationships, cooperation, and trust.