Prototype Dome Workshop - Training Engineers and Supervisors for Darfur Secure Community Project: Winter/Summer/Fall 2007
ASP's architect (Kate) taught workshops in Khartoum on the fireproof 'superadobe' technology from Calearth in January and July of 2007. ASP introduced the technology to architects, ministers, NGOs and engineers at a seminar in Khartoum as part of the process of obtaining permits and a country license. Nader Khalili addressed the Sudanese architects by interactive video from California. Holding the introductory training seminars in the capitol and building a prototype dome facilitated training of NGO workers who could then take the technology to their rehabilitation efforts throughout the Sudan. Through this training, ASP identified future local engineers and supervisors for the Darfur community development project. Including students from the universities as part of the project helps to ensure quality control and sustainability of the projects.
Two engineers from NMG Geotechnical, Inc. in California, Ted and Steve, volunteered ten days of their pre-Christmas holiday to continue building the dome and succeeded in doubling its size. The architecture students from the University of Khartoum were a great asset to the summer session and a delight to work with as were several of the engineers from local NGOs. The students caught the vision of building secure housing for the poor and the rainy season proved a good test of the building material in flood regions such as the Nile river areas and the South of the Sudan as well as the desert regions of Darfur and the East. Nader Khalili's fall semester class at the Southern California Institute of Architecture designed schools for Darfur as their class assignment, resulting in several beautiful and workable school and hospital designs. Ibrahim's class at the University of Khartoum's School of Architecture plans to design schools during their spring semester. The students' designs, incorporating the superabode technology, provide the foundations for the first Darfur community. This community will have a central service area with a boys and girls school, a hospital, a market, a deep bore well, and courthouse - centrally located between several of the burned villages originally comprising around 1500 households. Shorieh, ASP's second volunteer architect, plans to teach an entire semester at the University of El Fasher in North Darfur and to build a small prototype on the campus with the students. Teaching through the Universities ensures both quality control and sustainability.Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma: Italy- November 2007
ASP and the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma co-sponsored two Sudanese psychiatrists at their November 2007 Master's Certificate Program in Italy (Instituto Superiori di Sanita). This program brings healthcare practitioners, policy makers, and human rights workers together from around the world to share best practices for psychological healing from disaster trauma. The program entails two weeks of classroom training followed by six months of online interactive learning. Future plans for the trainees are to start learning centers in their countries of origin.
ASP's plans for secure housing with the superadobe are part of the psychological healing for the war-traumatized. Beautiful and secure houses go a long way toward recovery and are something immediately tangible and sustainable for the people in the camps.
