permaculture

[Wesley Roe and Marjorie Lakin Erickson <lakinroe@silcom.com>]

Architecture for Humanity and World Changing Team Up for Tsunami Relief
Non-profits collect funds to aid local rebuilding efforts
—By Brendan Themes, Utne.com 
http://www.utne.com/webwatch/2004_179/news/11521-1.html

December 30, 2004 Issue

On December 26, a series of earthquakes off the coast of Northern Sumatra 
caused tsunamis that left at least 75,000 dead and one million homeless in 
nine surrounding countries. Though numerous aid organizations quickly 
sprang into action, the existing efforts have been inadequate in the face 
of such widespread and total devastation. In an attempt to catalyze 
reconstruction of the many wrecked homes and public facilities, the 
nonprofit organization Architecture for Humanity (AFH) has set up a fund 
through their Web site. AHF plans to use local labor in all aspects of the 
reconstruction, creating a cost-effective micro-economy that helps 
revitalize affected areas while avoiding unwieldy overhead costs. World 
Changing, a technology news site with a focus on environmentally and 
socially conscious innovation, has joined in the effort to promote the 
site, providing publicity and guidance to AFH's rebuilding effort. Both 
organizations have vowed to direct 100% of donated funds to local efforts, 
using none of the money to cover operational and administrative costs. The 
revitalization effort is sorely needed in countries such as Sri Lanka, 
India, Indonesia, and Thailand, where many of the tsunami's victims were 
already living in desperate poverty before the tragedy struck.

Go there >> Tsunami Reconstruction Appeal 
http://www.architectureforhumanity.org/__Sumatra.htm

On December 26th, a series of earthquakes occurred in the area of the 
western coast of Northern Sumatra, Andaman Islands and Nicobar Islands. The 
two strongest earthquakes had the magnitude of 8.9 and 7.3. The earthquakes 
caused tsunamis impacting nine countries in the region leaving more than 
100,000+ dead and a further 1M forced from their homes. Over 10 countries 
are affected as far away as Somalia and Kenya with Aceh province in 
Indonesia and Sri Lanka said to be worst hit.

In response Architecture for Humanity and Worldchanging.com launched a 
reconstruction appeal. We set an intial target for rebuilding of $15,000 
(enough to build a dozen homes, 2 schools or one mobile medical clinic). As 
of 11pm on December 29th we have reached $14,300 from 220 donors.


This fund is specifically to deal with rebuilding issues and we are 
speaking with local partners in the region which are focusing on the 
reconstruction process. Much like our previous response in Bam, Iran and 
Grenada, we work with groups who employ local labor and utilize 
construction techniques. By working those affected this keeps funds within 
the community and creates micro-economies for those trying to get out of 
this disaster. We have found this to be the most cost-effective way of 
rebuilding.


We are currently assembling local-based design and construction teams to 
work with carefully vetted relief groups. We are also refining a set of 
criteria for design/build work that will include employing local labor and 
construction techniques as well as economic and environmental sustainability.

As with all our disaster relief operations we are committed to zero 
overhead/admin. costs (everyone is donating their services and time and AFH 
is covering admin. costs) and directing 100% of funds towards the appeal.

About Worldchanging
The online publication Worldchanging.com covers tools, models and ideas for 
building a better future. With contributors in nine nations, and a web of 
allies around the planet, WorldChanging delivers essential information for 
people who want to make a difference -- an approach that has won it 
accolades in the press, hundreds of thousands of readers.

About Architecture for Humanity
Architecture for Humanity is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, 
founded in 1999 to promote architectural and design solutions to global, 
social, and humanitarian crises. Through competitions, workshops, 
educational forums, partnerships with aid organizations, and other 
activities, Architecture for Humanity creates opportunities for architects 
and designers from around the world to help communities in need.

We believe that where resources and expertise are scarce, innovative, 
sustainable and collaborative design can make a difference.

Architects Offer Help After 
Tsunami  http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/30/garden/30EMER.html?oref=regi
By ERNEST BECK

Published: December 30, 2004



HEN Craig D. Williams, an architect in Santa Rosa, Calif., first heard 
about the devastating impact of the tsunami on communities in Asia and East 
Africa, he jumped online. As the director of the North American chapter of 
Architects Without Borders, an international network of volunteers, Mr. 
Williams was able to reach colleagues in 15 nations.
        
"We are facing a tragedy of historic proportions," he wrote in an e-mail 
message, urging them to start thinking about what the organization could do.

About 50 wrote back, joining a global effort that is just beginning to take 
shape. Over the next few months groups like this could send volunteers and 
housing experts to areas where there are vast numbers of survivors without 
homes.

As relief agencies and governments mobilize to provide temporary shelter, 
food, fresh water, medical care and sanitation facilities, a handful of 
nonprofit organizations with money from governments, United Nations 
agencies and private individuals are gearing up for longer-term rebuilding 
and reconstruction projects.

Harry van Burik, the international program director of Shelter for Life, a 
nonprofit relief and development organization in Oshkosh, Wis. (www 
.shelter.org), said his group hoped to spend $1.5 million to build 1,000 
houses in Sri Lanka, where about 200,000 homes were destroyed and more than 
one million people are believed homeless. "Sri Lankans are living in 
cramped conditions in schools and churches and desperately want to go back 
to their homes," Mr. van Burik said. "But they won't find anything there."

His organization built 5,000 permanent shelters in Afghanistan after the 
2002 earthquake. And rather than fly or ship prefab shelters to Sri Lanka, 
where it has been building homes for people displaced by the civil war, the 
group plans to manage construction of one- and two-room brick or cement 
block houses with pitched roofs.

The philosophy guiding many groups involved in housing relief is that homes 
are the foundation for restoring a destroyed community. "We focus on 
individuals and villages," said Mr. Williams, whose organization 
(www.awb.iohome.net) has provided design and technical assistance in 
Afghanistan, Vietnam and Bosnia. "We don't help rich hotel owners with 
beachfront property."

Farshad Rastegar, the executive director of Relief International 
(www.ri.org), a nonprofit group in Los Angeles, said that secure, permanent 
shelter is a first step in helping people rebuild their lives. Without it, 
he noted, people are in a "permanent state of dependency."

To help 60,000 homeless victims of an earthquake last year in Bam, Iran, 
Mr. Rastegar said, Relief International is completing the building of 870 
homes with quake-resistant concrete foundations and metal beams. The 
houses, adobe style but with a steel subframe, cost $2,400 each and in many 
cases replaced simple mud houses that had "tumbled like a ton of bricks," 
he said.

Despite harrowing images of death and destruction, aid officials say 
finding funds for housing reconstruction is often stymied by bureaucratic 
foot-dragging, donor fatigue and fading media attention. In 1999, for 
example, the architecture firm Gans & Jelacic in New York was a finalist in 
a competition to design and build transitional housing for people displaced 
during the conflict in Kosovo. Completing the project, said Deborah Gans, a 
principal, is "still years away" because the money was diverted to other 
relief projects.

Housing advocates measure success in small numbers. Cameron Sinclair, the 
founder and executive director of Architecture for Humanity, a 
five-year-old nonprofit organization with members in over 100 countries, 
said he hoped to raise $15,000 for victims of the tsunami, enough to build 
about a dozen houses, and has so far gathered $7,000. His group 
(www.architectureforhumanity.org) held the competition for the Kosovo 
project and it has also held one for a mobile H.I.V. clinic, as yet 
unbuilt, for use in sub-Saharan Africa.

There is no shortage of innovative design solutions. For the moment, 
however, many relief organizations are concentrating on providing temporary 
shelter. Often it consists of a simple blue tarp: cheap, easy to 
distribute, easy to put up.

Mr. Sinclair has been working with Global Village Shelters, a design 
company in Morris, Conn. (www.gvshelters.com), that has created a $370 
flat-pack housing unit. Made of a three-quarter-inch laminated 
cardboardlike material that is waterproof and fire resistant (and 
biodegradable), the shelters are made in Butler, Ind., by Weyerhaeuser, the 
paper company.

"They are substantial structures," said Daniel Ferrara, president of Global 
Village Shelters, "not floppy tents without privacy." He said they provide 
enough ventilation to be suitable in the tropics and can offer a family 67 
square feet of privacy; two or more can also be fit together.

A few prototypes are in Afghanistan, and 100 recently in arrived in 
hurricane-trammeled Grenada, Mr. Ferrara said. The company is in touch with 
groups like the International Red Cross, which could buy and ship the kits, 
he said, adding that about 500 of them could be available for the areas hit 
by the tsunami within a month.