“Toilets, water, depleted tropical soils, and refrigeration are four of the myriad challenges of the developing world. Small fruit, vegetable, and meat sellers lose considerable stock to the sweltering heat. Farmers’ fields and drinking water get flooded by water contaminated with human feces. The water taps stop running for weeks at a time forcing people to drink fetid water. Consumers buy dubious products and suffer increased rates of sickness to top off the other challenges of poverty. Another challenge is processed goods, necessities such as soap or washing basins, cause money from a poor area to flow out to large foreign businesses. All of these challenges can be met by a community store.
community center
Comuna Tola Chica
“Comuna Tola Chica is a community of about 64 families and a total of about 400 people, and is one of the most organized and active comunas in the country, also known as the ‘greenest’ of Ecuador.
Final Vanuatu Drawings
The project in Vanuatu is moving along. Here are the final drawings. We modified my $300 Earthbag House design to meet the needs of locals in Vanuatu. The houses are clustered, two rooms have been added in each house, the porch enclosed and a common outdoor work area included.
Vanuatu Earthbag Update Aug 12, 2013
“Hi Owen, I’ve been sick for the past fortnight but it’s given me a chance to process all the offers and opportunities that have opened up.
I am going to have to work with the government in Vanuatu so I have to be very clear what I can offer to a community and how I can fund it.
Vanuatu Earthbag Project Report
In an effort to prove that a simple earthbag roundhouse could be built entirely with unskilled and inexperienced labor we made a leap of faith.
We bought a block of land on the island of Efate in Vanuatu. We intended to build a women’s centre and hoped to inspire pacific islanders to recycle and build safe affordable Eco housing. This is not a charity or a religious venture. It just started with one Australian family wanting to help some friends in a nearby island.