Project Cost: N/A

Project Status:
Plan under development

OVF Hosted (EcoBuilding) Stories:

	Ashoka Fellow Paul Cohen Promotes Low Cost Eco-Building in an Ecovillage in South Africa
	The Habitat 21 House at CalPoly Pomona offers a Ecofriendly Solution for Low Income Families
	Steve Bosserman Persues Microhouse Concept to Promote Low Cost Building Technoloiges in USA

Unity Center Resources:

	AMD 50x15 Partner Page "Digital Inclusion Ecosystem"
	Synergy California
	Factor E Farm
	Hancock Permaculture Institute
	Tamera Ecovillage
	Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives

Needs: Partners, volunteers, funding for construction, travel and operational budget to sustain the project for 1 year.

Support Project

Project Name: Unity Center EcoBuilding

Background: As we have developed the Open Digital Village concept into reality in Winneba, Ghana, we have considered how such Digital Centers could be further evolved into fully featured Multi-purpose Community and Unity Centers. The idea is that such centers would focus on economically viable innovation that includes the promotion of sustainable technologies in emerging markets.

We have considered various sustainable development best practices that have demonstrated that sustainability need not be a province of the affluent as we move towards the practical implementation of the Unity Center prototype in the bioregions we are focused on at the current time.

The Challenge: In many regions current housing standards pressure people of margin means to use expensive conventional materials such as bricks and mortar, whereas the traditional elements for rural housing are natural materials like earth. Because the cost of conventional low cost housing is far beyond the means of poor rural farmers, there is an urgent need to integrate new approaches and technologies into national housing standards.

There has been minimal effort to creatively address this problem. This has meant that many rural and urban residents alike are unable to access reliable, sustainable and cheap building systems for several reasons:

	Subsidized housing usually are very low in thermal, environmental, and aesthetic quality;
	Countries often face a housing shortage because the de facto building options include expensive modern building systems that require expensive inputs from developed counties;
	Assumptions that low cost housing systems and flexibility are usually seen to be mutually exclusive;
	Cost constraints typically dictate the mass production of standard designs with standard materials.

Vision/theme: Provide low cost buildings for human habitation without sacrificing quality of life or the ecology.

Concept: Create a model of holistic community development in rural South Africa “that supports land tenure, local economic development, the construction of low cost high quality sustainable housing, and the restoration of links to the natural environment that promotes a sustainable lifestyle.”

Goals:

	Introduce housing companies and builders to this approach so that it appeals to a broad range of other interested parties, including developers;
	Work with international and local networks of development specialists in housing, village settlements, and food security;
	Address food security dimension by incorporating the building design into permaculture development model;
	Conduct training sessions in “experiential learning” by building;
	Train village level and national leaders at the Unity Center;
	Introduce new ideas in a way that rebuilds the fabric of society and re-establishes the link between people and their environment;
	Provide rural settlement model based on ecological principles with the purpose of training people in the design and implementation of sustainable land use and village settlements.

Methodology - An Integrated Approach
Integrate elements that contribute to food security through grey water treatment, composting toilets, and farm gardens - an integrated model for local self-reliance as well as a basic building block for village settlement. The idea of a integrated approach is that the above if integrated into a building design that is both modular to scale rapidly and easy to assemble and reassemble components so that it can be replicated.

	Solar energy source for hot water, building heating and cooking;
	Integrated waste recycling and management;
	Household food security and clean water supply;
	High quality, attractive, low impact construction.

Sustainability and Replication: The idea of a integrated approach is that the above if integrated into a building design that is both modular to scale rapidly and easy to assemble and reassemble components so that it can be replicated. Key to the successful promotion of low cost sustainable building systems is the inclusion of new approaches that acknowledge that sweat equity (labor) can save the owner up to 50 percent of the building cost even using conventional materials, and that use of materials and techniques particularly suited to the owner builder can further reduce the cost. What needs to be explored is the role of the microfinance in the replication of these best practices.

Marketing and Promotion of a Best Practice: This is where the idea of the social entrepreneur comes into play. The key to replicating programs like this include the use of innovative marketing to get word out about this building process to various key stakeholder groups.