PerfexCom is a Social enterprise, which is a social mission driven organization which attempts to apply market-based strategies to achieve a social purpose. In other word a Social enterprise is a “hybrid organisation” of a commercial entity and a charitable organisation. In PerFexCom’s case its social mission is focussed on supporting the university studies of impoverished rural students, though providing subsidised accommodation and employment to the students as well as providing student loans. Even though many commercial businesses would consider that they have social objectives, a social enterprise is distinctive because their social purpose remains central to their operation.

This social mission can be accomplished through a variety of ways and depends on the structure of the social enterprise. In Perfexcom’s case, the profits from its software development and computer magazine businesses are used to support its aforementioned social aim. It also accomplishes its social aim through its operations by employing these disadvantaged students in its business units.

I believe that social enterprise is a way to reduce a non profits dependence on charitable donations and grants furthermore the business itself is the vehicle for social change. This is something that ticks all of my boxes and when ABV showed me the project I was very excited to assist PerfexCom. Whether structured as nonprofits or for-profits, social enterprises are simply launched by social entrepreneurs who want to improve the common good and solve a social problem in a new, more lasting and effective way than traditional approaches. They are conceived and operated by visionary entrepreneurs who recognize potential where others may not see it and who apply discipline, pragmatism, courage and creativity to pursue their solution in spite of all obstacles, toward a world that is more abundant, secure and inclusive for all.

Its not all rainbows and lollipops either, I think the biggest challenge facing a social enterprise is explaining themselves especially the ones that have both missions and organisational models that haven’t seen before. The area’s that are the most challenging is ‘product’, ‘participation’ and ’structure’ and the combinations of all of these.
The intersection between ‘participation’ and ‘product’ is one example of this issue. Many non-profits are focused on public participation. These organisations use well honed engagement and facilitation techniques to get people out, harnessing community effort to raise important issues, clean up parks and so on. However, until recently {1990s}, this kind of mass participation was rarely used to make specific, high quality products or services that need to ship at a specific time and succeed in the ‘market’. Until recently, creating products and services that will be used by large numbers of people has been the domain of big companies and governments who can marshal trained specialists and set up big management structures. These are not the strengths of your regular little non profit and that is why I was asked to assist PerfexCom with getting its software to market .

Also ‘Structure‘ is another big issue to look at from a social perspective. I mean we have well established legal and social structures for create non-profit, public benefit organizations. Yet, in every country that I know about, Cambodia included, these structures work poorly when people try to hybridize and innovate what it means to do public benefit work. The frameworks we’ve developed for charities over the last few hundred years just haven’t caught up to these new ideas yet. The result is that many hybrid organizations must engage in pretzel like contortions in order to find a structure that finally works, PerFexCom is no different in this regard.

Of course, ‘participation’ and ’structure’ are only two examples of pragmatic challenges that social enterprises face. You could also delve into the question of investment, and in particular the fact the hybrids are perceived as a bad fit for both private investors and traditional grant givers. Social investors that seek a blend of social and financial return on their investments and is one of the few sources for investment for Social Enterprises. The range and number of financial institutions that lend to or invest in social enterprises has increased in recent years. Although this makes it tough to compete, scale and move in the ’market’. Also the revenue side of the equation is an issue as well. Social Enterprise must constantly ask itself what kinds of income is it going to align with, or not disrupt is social mission for. The list of questions and challenges is fairly long.

The long-term future of social enterprise depends on whether it has organizational strengths to cope with future developments: for example the ability and motivation to innovate in embryonic markets that are too small for large organizations and closeness to customers, ability to use new technologies. I really do think that ABV is uniquely placed to assist social enterprises in Developing countries to overcome these challenges.

• To create a system to store CIC information
• To establish a local and wide area network to enable staff access to stored information and sharing of files
• To increase staff understanding of the network and ability to share information and access centrally stored files

• Establish a Local Area Network in the major CIC offices in Goroka and Lae
• Establish a Wide Area Network linking Goroka, Lae, and Aiyura offices
• Train Staff in the use and maintenance of the LAN and WAN
• Establish central printing network in the major offices (Goroka and Lae)
• Establish a database server as part of the network

• Working Local and Wide Area Network with centralised printing
• Staff know how to use LAN and WAN
• IT Staff know how to maintain LAN/WAN
• Information stored centrally on database server
• Documentation on LAN/WAN specification
• User Manual on LAN/WAN and appropriate documentation for network maintenance

computer systems ethics…

Goroka, Eastern Highlands Provence, Papua New Guinea – December 2006

For those of you who don’t know, Linux is a Computer Operating system. It is one of the most well-known examples of Free (as in freedom) software and of open-source development: unlike proprietary operating systems such as Windows, all of its underlying Source code (programming language) is available to the public and anyone can freely use, modify, and redistribute it. To put it in simple terms, would you buy a car that had the bonnet welded shut? With proprietary operating systems such as Windows that is exactly what you are getting. Which means when the car stops working you can’t take it to any mechanic; you have to throw it away and get another one!

In my situation here in PNG, as I am with the Australian Business Volunteers I represent (in part) the Australian government as well as my precessional integrity as a software developer, makes the piracy of software strictly taboo. Unfortunately in a lot of developing countries they just don’t care so not using pirated software is a hard argument to win . Some of the driving forces behind Linux adoption are the flexibility to customise it to local needs, low ‘Total Cost of Ownership(TCO)’, security, reliability, and remote management. And a lot of organisations are moving across to Linux, for example Brazil’s PC Conectado program or the City of Munich in Germany has chosen to migrate its 14,000 desktops to Debian Linux.

I use Linux for exactly these reasons, its solid, it works well and it is easy to train people in. In the end total cost of ownership is so much lower than Windows based Server products. Which makes it brilliant for use in developing countries, because in a developing country often the major barrier to good IT infrastructure for organisations is the TCO? By Total Cost of Ownership I mean the calculation of direct and indirect costs as well as benefits related to the purchase of computer software and Hardware. For example the greater initial price of a high-end computer is to be balanced by adding likely repair costs and earlier replacement to the purchase cost of the cheaper bargain brand. And the initial price becomes just the beginning of the life cycle of costs. In this project the difference is that the initial expenditure on server software is PGK$300 versus PGK$ 105,000.00 for software.

I have a view that it is actually unethical for any IT professional, who is actually concerned about outcomes such as the Millennium Development Goals or Sustainability, to use or recommend any Windows software unless there is no other option. My proponents will argue that utilising open-source software exposes an organisation to risk because many IT service providers in the developing country do not know open-source software and therefore can not maintain open-source software. My counter argument; is that using or recommend any Windows software forces an organisation into a dependency upon Microsoft technologies. And I have found that many expatriate IT professional working in developing countries, firstly only know windows technologies, and secondly don’t spend the time required to train their local counterparts to maintain and improve IT infrastructure, which reinforces the dependency.

I take pride in being broadly skilled in both Windows and Open-source technologies, because in some rare cases I have deployed windows solutions. It just seems to be a more intelligent way to solve problems if you have a ‘large tool box’ with different tools to fix the job. You can choose between using Microsoft, Red Hat, Debian, SME Server, or countless other technologies and Linux distros. Even though there are many intelligent and brilliant people that use and contribute to Microsoft products, there are 100 fold more intelligent and brilliant people working on Linux.

A Linux distro (distribution) is a Operating system comprising of several software components such as the Linux kernel, and assorted free, Open source, and possibly proprietary software. On this project I am using my favourite Linux distro SME Server (formally Esmith or Mitel MAS 6000) a friend and ‘tech mentor’, Steve Jenkins put me on to it back in 2000 and I have regularly used it for most server builds from Guatemala to Japan. I spend a lot of time defending the SME Server distro from other Open Source (serious) Geeks as it lacks a lot of the more ‘hardcore’ elements of other server distros. You see I do believe in the open-source philosophy however my main driving force is a sustainable outcome for the client. The main reason why I use SME Server Distro is because it is simple and easy to administer, maintain and install. When on projects I can train my local counterpart in how to use the distro, in a relatively short amount of time.

Qmail is being the biggest issue with the distro. Qmail is a Mail Transfer Agent(MTA) that runs on Unix/Linux. It was written by Daniel J. Bernstein as a more secure replacement for the popular Sendmail program. The long and the short of it qmail is just plain weird. Dan Bernstein, is quite excentric and hasn’t maintained the code for a fair while. Most Linux Geeks don’t like it because it’s not strictly open source, because by their rules they classify such software as “non-free”. However, qmail users point out that it is “free enough” for anyone to use. To support modern standards you need a degree in qmail patching. It doesn’t support ipv6. Its real clam to fame is that it’s “more secure”, certainly it is designed to be, or was a while ago – but only if it’s set up correctly. My colleagues are advising me to use Exim witch is the default MTA of Debian Linux. Of course Djb is a genius and great activist with his Court case against the US government where he was able to get the ruling that software was declared protected speech under the First Amendment and national restrictions on Encryption software were overturned. Although he does get stuck into Wietse Venema which is uncool (being Dutch and all), who is the creator Postfix which is the default MTA in a number of Linux distributions and the last two releases of Mac OS X.

On the other hand I am really becoming a big fan of the yum (Yellow Dog Updater – a package manager for RPM-compatible Linux systems). It makes it so easy to update packages on the server. You see, I have customised and deployed two web-based applications for the CIC, an asset management application (AssetMan) and the other a human resource management application (OrangeHRM). For this I needed to update the PHP engine on the server, just two quick yum commands and it was all done! Both of these applications use the LAMP Stack witch refers to a set of Free software programs commonly used together to run dynamic Web sites or servers: L (Linux, the Operating system), A (Apache, the Web server), M (MySQL, the database management system or database server), P (PHP, and/or Python, scripting languages)

I think that the authors of these Open source programs did not design them all to work specifically with each other, the combination absolutely rocks. The great this is that the LAMP stack has become very popular because of its low cost and the utility of its components. Which means that there a lots of web based applications out there to use. The fantastic this is that when used in combination they represent a Solution stack of technologies that support application servers which directly competes with mor expensive alternatives such as Apple Computer’s WebObjects, Java/J2EE and Microsoft’s .NET architecture.

I am having a fantastic project for the reason that in 8 weeks I have dramatically increased the IT capability of the CIC with a robust, sustainable and scalable solution. All of this for a fraction of the cost that the CIC could have spent, if they had have used a ‘conventual’ IT contractor (PGK $173,420) where I have spent PGK 23,395 and most of that is on hardware. The most rewarding factor is my colleague Clayton, who is a local, and up until 3 months ago he was unemployed and was only employed for a 6 month contract to help with Desktop Publishing at the remote research station. After talking to him in the first week, I put some pressure on the CIC to relocate him Goroka.

About 90% of my time has been spent training Clayton in the mysterious arts of an IT manager. I believe that training someone in a one on one role is one of the most rewarding things you can do. He is really switched on and has then trained other CIC staff to assist him in keeping the IT systems running. I actually get Clayton to do all of the user interaction (once I have trained him in a particular procedure) as so he receives the kudos from his wins, it increases he ownership of the system and I make sure that there is no dependency on me. The good news is that the CIC have just employed him as the permanent IT manager, which is a significant pay rise, and that is a direct outcome of my work [insert warm glow ]. I have given Clayton all of my tools (its going to be a bit pricey to replace them all but I know that he will put them into good use) and a ton of software and manuals. So he will be well set up when I leave, which is a great feeling.

The Volunteer’s Guide to the Galaxy has been around since 2001, it started as a small idea that was cooked up over a few glasses of wine at the Rijksmuseum during the International Volunteering Conference in Amsterdam in January 2001, between Brian Culgelman (United Nations volunteers Webmaster for the International year of the volunteer), Nina Bowbridge (Youth Leadership expert Woking in the Community sector in Australia), Sheri Lake (a Canadian school teacher who was piloting volunteering to under twelve-year-olds), Cees Houten (volunteering coordinator for the National volunteering centre for the Netherlands) and Norvan Vogt (a self-proclaimed techno — freedom — fighter) [that's me]

I was a bright eyed and bushy tailed volunteer who was working with the International Youth Foundation on the Youth Action Net website. I payed my own way to go to the conference as I thought it would be a great opportunity to meet like-minded people at an international conference as well as gather some content for the Youth Action Net website. After the conference myself and Brian ended up working on the youth portal of the International year of the volunteer website. It was apparent from the amount of people on our online forum that we should put together a guide to the people who are volunteers to help them plot their way through the amazing amount of information and ideas on social change. The idea was picked up by the United Nations as an output for the end of the year of the volunteer. Unfortunately due to lack of funds we never produce the CD but most of the content that was generated from the project as well as the Byte multimedia contest I took with me and started to disseminate via e-mail to any people that were interested.

As more and more people were interested in the e-mail as I was sending out it became apparent that there were other people adding to the guide and that there were a number of different versions floating around cyberspace. So I spent a fair amount of time putting all of this together and hosting this on my own personal web site. This is not such a bad situation and I got a lot of hits of my website. Unfortunately it was not very attractive and never really did to fulfil people’s needs.

In June 2004 I started writing this current website, I wanted to put together a collaborative document system that would help us share information with people. So what you see before you is evolution three of the Volunteers guide to the Galaxy. I hope that it is of some use to you. It is not really designed as a online community but more as a knowledge base.

Aim: As part of my investigation for the Volunteer’s Guide to the Galaxy I decided to investigate ‘WWOOFing’ as a model of civic participation and judge for myself its impact for positive social change. I will have to also qualify that I consider in the form of civic participation to be volunteering.

Method: I took leave of absence from work for four months (jun – oct 2005 ) and went over to Europe in the summer and spend most of my time working on organic farms within France. And all I worked on five different farms for a duration of two weeks each. It was quite an enlightening time as I’ve met quite a lot of different people who would using this opportunity to further all sorts of goals. From learning French and understanding more about French culture, to spending the cheapest time possible whilst waiting for various visas to come through sober they could work in other countries.

The only real barrier to WWOOFing I find is the transport barrier. Even though it would seem quite cheap because you can get almost anywhere in Europe by train and normally the WWOOFing proprietor will actually pick you up from the nearest train station, I find the lost on time as well as the expense of the train system to be a great barrier to participation. I actually purchased a cheap secondhand motorcycle in order to be more flexible and mobile in getting too all of these farms.

The WWOOF model
In the early years of the organic movement, one of the few ways to gain international organic farming experience was through WWOOFing—short-term work in exchange for room-and-board arrangements made through a membership network originally known as Working Weekends on Organic Farms. Founded in 1971 by Sue Coppard, a London secretary looking for inexpensive, rewarding short breaks in the countryside, the WWOOF name was later broadened to Willing Workers on Organic Farms (to reflect farmstays longer than a weekend) and more recently to Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (to soothe the concerns of some countries’ immigration authorities).

From those modest beginnings, the movement has spread to some 60 countries, with hundreds if not thousands of farms and volunteers participating each year. At least 17 countries now have their own national WWOOF organizations, while another 40 or so are grouped as “WWOOF Independents.” While some of the latter have just a single participating farm (Cameroon, Estonia, Singapore), others, like France and Spain, have well over a hundred farms on their lists. As the WWOOF UK website puts it, these days “the sun probably never sets on WWOOF.”

The popularity of WWOOFing seems to have been expanding faster in the past decade or so, keeping pace with the extraordinary growth of the organic sector generally. WWOOF Italia, for example, has grown from 23 host farms in 1999 to 230 in 2005, according to its coordinator, Bridget Matthews. (The Tenuta di Spannocchia is one of them.) Fran Whittle of WWOOF UK, which also administers the WWOOF Independents, reports that the first international WWOOF conference, held in 2000, attracted participants from 15 countries.

Outcome: I found that WWOOFing in general was an incredible and somewhat understated method of social participation. As opposed to activism I would consider this form of volunteering to be as necessary as well as much a social change agent as some activist activities or other forms of volunteering. When you take into account the amount of people that actually partake in some form of WWOOFing overseas or in their own home country it would represent a significant portion of the volunteering community. It is very unfortunate that in most volunteering surveys big bodies such as volunteering Australia do not account for this form of volunteering. This is compounded by the fact that most people who engage in WWOOFing do not consider themselves to be volunteering but to be engaging in some form of holidaying, or at best a form of cultural exchange.

Probably one of the neatest and coolest geek side shows that I have ever been involved in. During my posting to Vanuatu I met up with a rather remarkable VSO Volunteer, Gregor. Gregor was a Systems Administrator from Toronto, Canada. He was assigned to VANGO the Vanuatu non profit sector’s peek body to help them get the sector’s IT Infrastructure together.

The project was called Wantok (‘one talk’) as this means in Bislama (Vanuatu’s language); tribe, clan or brotherhood. The general idea was to set up a Dial-in E-Mail Server based at the Vanuatu Credit Union, which would allow the local nonprofits to have access to email. Basically the NGO would pay a small fee that would cover the running costs. Because there was enough organisations involved it was cheep and sustainably funded which ensure that the project would have a good chance of survival. They would be able to dial in and once they had ‘popped’ their email the connection would be dropped.

The Computer was an old 486SX PC Clone that was liberated and resurrected from the Chamber of Commerce, where I was working at the time, whom was not utilising it at the time. We installed a distribution of Red Hat Linux as the OS with out a GUI so the HDD footprint was quite small. We set up the box to Dial in to the internet 3 times a day, thus keeping overheads low. There where only one modem in and one out so if you dialled and could not get through you just had to dial latter. You have to remember that in 1999 most business didn’t have email capability never alone community sector organisations. So this was a great leap forward for most of the organisations.

By the time that I left Vanuatu at the end of 1999, Wantok was going strong, Gregor was due to depart of Canada in mid 2000. unfortunately I lost contact with Gregor eventually so the ultimate fate of Wantok remained a misty to me. When I went back to Vanuatu with Chun in 2004 to network the Youth Challenge office, Wantok’s fate was not really on my mind as I thought that it probable died a long time back as it had been 5 years. It was not until I was leaving to head back to Australia at the end of our stay that Georgia, one of the staff from the Youth Challenge office introduced me to ‘some other geeks’ as she put it who where also doing some IT voluntary work. as soon as they introduced themselves I knew who Dave Grey was. He was professional services and solutions provider for MITEL SME server(other words esmith), my favourite Server Distribution that I had been installing all over the world.

As soon as I introduced my self, he asked me if I was ‘The Norvan Vogt’, “the one that has been installing version 5.6 in Mexico, Japan, Guatemala, Germany and Costa Rica?” he said. I replied with, “yeah that would be me, how do you guys know that?” “You put your contact information in the updates fields” he responded. So we then spent a few minuets talking to each other in a sort of geek frenzy that no one else understood. It was like a gaggle of football fans meeting at a sports bar after their team had just one the grand final but ten times worse. When they explained what they where doing in Vanuatu the mention a mythical email server called Wantok. I informed them that Gregor and I had built and implemented her. He then informed me that they had just upgraded it. So apparently, I was later to find out, she had gone the distance and keeped going with little disruption for the past 5 years. A small warm glow starts in my hart when I think about that. I am from a linage that goes back 5 generation on my paternal side of Master Craftsman, so the work ethic of ‘a job worth doing is worth doing well’ is close to my hart.

Wantok was a simple yet elegant solution to a great need. It was built and implemented well and lasted longer than any of us expected that is why it is the neatest and coolest geek side shows that I have ever been involved in.

wantok website

The Project

The purpose of our team being in Tayutic is principally to build the community hall for the town. They currently have a community hall but it is in quite a dilapidated state. During a recent pneumonia epidemic the community hall was used as a makeshift hospital to service the influx of indigenous people seeking medical attention. It became apparent that the community hall was inadequate for this function and the community secured the government’s support to build the new hall. The new community hall will be roughly 20m by 20m of a concrete and wood construction; we will be building the whole building from scratch, everything from leveling the ground to doing the roof.

As a secondary project we will also hope to construct two classrooms for the local high school. At the moment there are only three classrooms which means that the last two classes have to go to the neighboring town (1.5 hours away) to finish high school. This often means that a lot of young people within the community do not actually finish their high school. As the school year is coming to an end, we hope to secure some help from the local high school-age children in the community.

Well the pace on the actual work has been very slow. Unfortunately the development association didn’t get all the paperwork done before we got up to do the work in the community so the materials only just arrived around new years. While this has been a little disappointing the moral in the group is still very high.

While we have been waiting for the materials to come the group has been very busy working in the community on many other projects that are also important to the health and happiness of the community. A fine example of this is after the flash food of the first week of project, we where around to help the community clean up afterwards. Once we had cleaned our own house we then helped out cleaning up the church primary school and high school, as well as the medical clinic. It was quite a good opportunity to show the community that we where still around and committed to staying and helping the community wherever we could.

Also we have been able to get our English classes underway. The first week there was very little interest as it was quite close to Christmas, but both the children’s class and the adult class have been growing steadily ever since. Also a group of us had the opportunity to go on a 4 day expedition down and fix up the priest’s house (which is used as a makeshift hospital come community centre) a days walk into the Chirripo Indigenous Reservation.

The Indigenous

Roughly 70% population is indigenous in Tayutic. These people are mostly from the Cabecar tribe which are closely related to the Bribri, Teribe tribes. The homeland of these tribes was originally the Caribbean side of the Costa Rica where the majority of these people still live – the Bribri tribe generally occupied lowland areas, while the Cabecar tribe preferred the isolated heights of the Talamanca Mountain range. Tayutic is the main town outside the indigenous reserve and serves as the main services hub for the Talamanca Mountain range region. Over a 500 year period, migrations of these tribes took place west to the Pacific coast via old foot trails across the mountains where Bribri and Cabecar settlements today are found. Although these tribes display distinct language forms, they share the same spiritual beliefs, employed the same weapons and used the same craft for river travel, had similar architecture and other forms of cultural manifestation. The best representation of the arts of these tribes in the gallery comes from the Bribri. The Cabecar and Teribe tribes women have recently formed artisan groups.

After colonization and the slave trade it brought, the indigenous groups in the country moved more and more to isolated areas in the country. With the creation of indigenous reservations (indigenous properties created by the State) the indigenous groups were concentrated in specific areas and in what today is known as Talamanca (the principal reservation), and in the south of the country bordering Panama. These groups of people are engaged in agriculture. In the the 1990s indigenous groups were given a bigger exploitation of crafts or handcrafts to sell. This initiative has been impelled by other organizations that have looked to help this social sector of Costa Rica

An interesting fact is that in the south of the country one of the native group, the Guamí, continues to be a nomadic group in the sense that they are moving constantly between Costa Rica and Panama always searching for work like planting, picking up coffee, and gathering products of the area. This situation precipitated a problem of national identity in the sense that they were not given identification cards in Panama nor in Costa Rica. Until this problem was solved approximately 5 years ago the Guamí were living without legal documents, rights and social services.

The Community

After travelling for 2 hours on a old school bus up an eroded muddy mountain trail we had disembark the bus so that the weight of reduced enough to cross an old suspension bridge. The first thing that strikes you as you descend into the valley of Tayutic is the absolute beauty of the area.

The area was first settled around 1900. The high altitude plateau was first cleared for coffee production. Even before the coffee price collapse the people of Tayutic had diversified their crops. Now the production of dairy products and beef cattle form the base of the agricultural activities.

Tayutic also serves as a service centre for the Indigenous reservations in the mountains to the south and east of the town. The layout of the town is quite sparse although the small general store, church, police outpost and Community Hall (which we will be building) form a pseudo town centre.

The Oasis Network Salvation Army street van started in 2000. Research has identified that young people most ‘at risk’ in the Canberra region come from atypical backgrounds (i.e. they are mainly from middleclass backgrounds, which is not reflected in the national averages). The Salvation Army believed that there were very few immediate services available to these ‘at risk’ youth. The street van would provide a means of intervention by providing social and spiritual support to young people in locations that they frequent, before their problems escalate. This also gave the van’s staff the opportunity to refer them to appropriate services and programs available.
The van is a Toyota Hiace that is stocked with coffee, Milo, tea and donuts. A team of three or four volunteers drive the van out to a number of chosen locations around Canberra where they provide a hot drink and donuts in the hope that they will be able to talk to young people about any issues that they have.
I was attracted to this program through my interest in working with young people and my belief in the doctrine of the Salvation Army.

Aim: The primary aim of the Street Van program is to focus on the needs of homeless people. However, the Street Van program will respond to clients in distress regardless of age, race, gender or lifestyle persuasion.
	Objectives: To endeavour to make contact with groups or individuals who are: Homeless. In moral or physical danger. Addicted to, or likely to become addicted to legal and/or illegal drugs. To assist those contacted by Providing physical, emotional and spiritual support for those who are in need. Offering clients support and/or follow up support services. Making referrals where necessary to achieve successful rehabilitation. Referring clients to other professional agencies who can offer long term support programs. Where possible, encouraging clients who live on the streets to find a more stable and secure environment.
Why: Family Breakdown Death of a parent Drug abuse Peer group Sexual abuse Parents kicking them out Parents homeless themselves (70%)
Conclusion: The greatest thing I learned from working on the streets is that sincerity goes a long way. Young people, as one of them kindly pointed out to me, can “spot bullshit a mile away”. And it’s true. When I was speaking to them on important issues, I found that I had to speak sincerely and honestly about what I thought were the problems and acknowledge that I didn’t really have all the answers. I think that in the time that I’ve worked on the streets, my understanding and appreciation of other people’s positions and their own special qualities had become greater through just being able to understand where they are coming from. Doing this kind of volunteer work has helped me to develop a better understanding of my own spirituality. I think that even without the formal structures of religion, almost everybody has a hunger for a purpose and meaning to their life. That became evident when I talked, really talked, with the youth I met. Working with the Salvation Army and the street van has been a very worthwhile and fulfilling experience

The Project

A unique galvanized sheet metal ‘Tophat’ manufacturing capability has allowed the development of a unique bolt-together framed housing module that economically provides 50-65m² of living space. All major objectives relevant to the development of sustainable low cost housing modules have been met.

It is intended only specialized items such as screws, solar cells, pumps, sinks and taps be added to the transport of the steel frame – as roof sheeting, wall cladding and flooring will be obtained locally.

These innovations lead to opportunities and new designs which meet the growing environmental awareness evident in the 21st century, as well as balancing the ever diminishing resources faced by builders everywhere.

A specific example of the application of new industry products created by Decoin  is the development  of a variable depth and thickness ‘Tophat’ profile suitable for studs, joints, purlins which compare favourably in cost to other timber products etc. These Tophat are actually incorporated into the prototype low cost 50m² unit on display at Decoin’s Prototype Research and Development Facility at 10 Tralee St, Hume.

The unit is suitable for semi-urbanized and non urbanized rural villages and towns that do not yet have a requirement for multistorey walk-up accommodation

The basic 50m² frame and local cladding could be built for not much more than $2000AUD

This unit, called the Wave Habitat or  the “one-tonner – that can go anywhere” due to the combined total weight of the roof, wall, joist and bearers including foundations weighing less than one tonne, consists primarily of ‘Tophat’ sections screwed together, that can be transported and erected almost anywhere, by unskilled labour. The prototype Wave Habitat on site at Hume is designed to simulate indigenous light weight material cladding locally available. In some cases the floor would consist of slit bamboo, and the walls woven palm leaves or grass, or louvers and lattice

Naturally the galvanized  frame is termite proof, and corrosion resistant and will reasonably sustain cyclones, earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters, as well as being free of consequential hazards such as broken glass etc.

The mezzanine sleeping area is an added bonus. In most generalized flood plain monsoonal or typhoon situations, flooding is rarely 3m high, and if it is, the roof provides an additional platform height of over 5 metres above ground.

Using the tripod Megaanchor™, foundations can be installed almost anywhere as they provide more than adequate resistance to settlement, pull out or wash out, without substantially increasing resistance to actual flood waters, or damaging fragile eco and/or geoculture in the immediate area.

Coupled with a galvanized roof, rainwater tank, solar cells, environmental waste collection system the unit has the potential to provide family accommodation that is not only affordable but has a minimum or close to zero impact on the environment.

As a module it can easily be aesthetically combined into cluster village living or into larger units of 100m², 150m² etc.

The design of the affordable house is generic. It can easily be modified to suit cold  to hot /or tropical climates with a variety of window and internal cladding treatment to suit local industry, skill levels and resources. The kitchen, toilet facilities etc are designed to be sustainable within the context of the local environment.

It is intended only specialized items such as screws, solar cells, pumps, sinks and taps be added to the transport of the steel frame – as roof sheeting, wall cladding and flooring will be obtained locally