January 2003
La Betania, just another barrio in a satellite city?
When Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras in October 1998, the inhabitants of the neighborhood of La Betania in Tegucigalpa had to abandon their houses and give them over to the swelling river. Four years later they are moving into their new houses in a satellite town 30km outside of Tegucigalpa, the new neigborhood is also called La Betania. This is a project planned and implemented by EcoSouth member EcoViDe in Honduras with funds from the Swiss Red Cross and the Swiss Chain of Solidarity
Read more: La Betania, just another barrio in a satellite city?
Cuba: 3ra. ruta ecologica Holguín - Santa Clara
Three MCR Clusters in Ghana
Clusters of workshops where MCR has an established place in the building materials market were discovered by EcoSouth expert Martin Melendez when he visited Ghana at the end of 2001. He was able to compare the situation in 2001 with an earlier mission in 1996, and come up with quite a realistic overview.
ECOSOUTH NETWORKING from Namibia to Thailand
During our holidays in Thailand we took the opportunity to visit Geoffrey Wheeler who Peter met at the ecomaterials conference in Santa Clara in September of 2001. Geoffrey started to build up a Center for Vocational Building Technology (CVBT) in a village in Northeastern Thailand after he married into a Thai family. A close relationship to the catholic church enabled him to build the center on church owned land. Thus, in 1991, the CVBT was founded. Its aim is to create new employment in Northeastern Thailand by promoting small-scale manufacture of concrete building materials, thereby replacing imports to the region and helping to reduce migration of workers to Bangkok or foreign countries.
News - January 2003
Women tilemakers in Mexico receive enterprise award
The tile workshop of the Treig women´s cooperative in Etla, Oaxaca received second prize in a concourse for outstanding and success economical enterprises managed by women. The tile workshop was initiated in 2000 through a program with students from the Technical University of Berlin. The women produce 1,500 tiles per month which are sold to a developing clientele that includes private dwellings as well as public buildings. Among their marketing strategies is to take advantage of the weekly market, whereby they have a small display roof and distribute promotional flyers. Their profits since beginning production are equivalent to one month´s sales, which they have reinvested in improvements to the tile workshop and to support a capacitation center of their own. EcoSouth provided the original capacitation, whereby two members of Treig attended a course at the EcoSouth center in Nicaragua, followed up by an onsite course for the entire cooperative in Etla.
BSHF calendar includes Two decades after the earthquake, Guatemala
The Caritas post-earthquake adobe reconstruction project in Baja Verapaz, Guatemala is included as the May 2003 photo in the calendar of the Building and Social Housing Foundation. That project after the 1976 earthquake was directed by one of EcoSouth´s principal experts, Prof. Dr. Kurt Rhyner. One of the winning projects was the Architect of the Community Program of Cuba, an approach also being used by several EcoSouth partners in Latin America and Africa.
