letter from architecture for humanity June 2011: Building Futures Using the Power of Design

After 124 newsletters I'd think we'd begin to run out of things to say but we just keep building hope hand in hand with communities around the world.

In Japan, we've been working and building alongside communities on both short term economic development project, youth facilities and long term village reconstruction. Our project team now includes traditional carpenters of the area and rob the human bulldozer. Getting connectivity in the rural villages has been tough so the team has been using youtube via mobile phones to do internal drawing reviews - the plus side, capturing surprise guests at our construction site!

In Haiti, reconstruction continues apace with foundations our second school complete and construction is set to begin two more. In Lesotho, our Football for Hope program saw the opening of a fifth center in a fifth country. Watch Axel Stelter take you on a walk-through of the completed center on his final day as an Architecture for Humanity design fellow (at least for this tour of duty). On Tuesday we announce our biggest project in the US since Hurricane Katrina. 'We are super stoked' were the exact words from the community board meeting on Thursday night - and so are we. Any guesses? Tweet your answer at @archforhumanity with #nextproject by Monday night - winner gets some sweet swag (Hint 0:00:12).

On Wednesday we found out our idea to bring accountability and transparency to international aid and development was selected out of hundreds to compete for funding from chase community giving. Next week co-founder Cameron has 8 minutes to present our idea and has a one in five chance of taking the idea one step closer to reality. That day we launch 'Chapter Project Grants' - $2500 grants that we are making to existing and new chapter projects in need of funding. Chapter members - check out site for details.

Finally this weekend we launched our third kickstarter project, this time to bring arts into schools and community buildings in Haiti. With the funding we will commission a number of Haitian and international artists to create an in-situ piece. Believe in the arts? kickstart us today!

Read below for more details on those and other programs, job opportunities and upcoming events.

Cheers,
The Architecture for Humanity Team
848 Folsom Street, Suite 201, San Francisco, USA

Regional Offices: Port au Prince, Haiti | Cape Town, South Africa | Sendai, Japan

On Twitter:
The Org. @archforhumanity | The Chief Eternal Optimist @casinclair