Article source: Asante Architecture & Design and Lönnqvist &Vanamo Architects
A Self-Sustainable Children’s Center In Tanzania By Asante Architecture & Design And Lönnqvist & Vanamo Architects
Econef Children’s Center is a collaboration with Asante Architecture & Design, Lönnqvist & Vanamo Architects, Architects Without Borders Sweden, Engineers Without Borders Sweden and ECONEF, a Swedish-Tanzanian NGO that aims to improve the standard of living for orphans in the Arusha area.
ECONEF is an independent non-governmental organization located in Jua-kali, outside Arusha in northern Tanzania. With the help of private donations ECONEF is able to offer security and everyday necessities for the 16 children living at the Jua Kali orphanage. The new Children’s Center includes sleeping quarters and classrooms for 25 children.
In Tanzania, building with earth represents the past and is associated with poor living conditions. Traditional materials and techniques adapted to the environment are abandoned in favor of importing expensive and sometimes energy-inefficient materials and products, such as concrete blocks, from which only manufacturers in more advanced economies benefit. The project aims to bring back earth as a modern and sustainable building material, using traditional handcraft and simple methods, for continuing a local rural building tradition. It also encourages local and international participation and can serve as an example for future building developments to improve the quality of Tanzania’s rural housing.
An area of cultivated ground; a plot of land, a small subsistence farm for growing crops and fruit-bearing trees, often including the dwelling of the farmer.
Over the last 30 years, worldwide absolute poverty has fallen sharply (from about 40% to under 20%). But in African countries, the percentage has barely fallen. Still today, over 40% of people living in sub-Saharan Africa live in absolute poverty. More than half of them have something in common: they’re small farmers.
Serving 408 kids from primary school and also the pupils from other three schools in the surrounding area, the Njoro Children’s Library is important in terms of giving the pupils access to books and reading in a region in which most have no books at home.
Volunteers: Anatol Struna, Ovidiu Chifor, Calin Bodnar, Laura Terzi, Radu Cotenescu, Sarah Kraußlach, Razvan Onu, Ovidiu Chifor, Beatriz Santiago, Vittorio Degli Innocenti, Simon Bowden, Pete Steele
Materials/techniques: compressed earth blocks and reused concrete blocks from an abandoned construction
Kilimanjaro Women Information Exchange and Consultancy Organization (KWIECO) was founded in 1987 in Moshi, Tanzania. It provides advice on legal, health, social and economic issues to women. The fundamental principle on which KWIECO policies are founded is the promotion of human rights, economic justice and gender equality by ensuring equal access to justice and equality for women and children.
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