Mu'izz Foundation intends to create a pilot project utilizing Superadobe building methods to build a multi-use facility that could serve as an orphanage, homeless shelter, school, or co-operative housing unit and in the process empower low-income people by giving them the tools to build their own low-cost shelter themselves.  These facilities would cost a fraction of traditional building methods as the main building material is the most abundant resource we have: Earth.  By stabilizing the Earth with a small amount of cement, lime or asphault emulsion, and utilizing the shapes of vaults and domes, a safe, environmentally clean, and esthetically pleasing structure can be built using methods that have been approved for construction in one of the worst earthquake regions in the US: Mojave desert, California, Seismic Zone 4.  Once our model has been approved in the United States, we intend on duplicating this project in the poorest places in the world.  This would empower the poor by creating jobs that would allow unskilled labor to make low-cost, sustainable housing. Thus, providing these people a way to improve their own condition.

Superadobe Technology is designed by Nader Khalili, engineering by P. J. Vittore, models of which have been constructed and tested for the City of Hesperia, California, Building and Safety Department, in consultation with I.C.B.O. (International Conference of Building Officials), in the forms of arches, vaults, and domes between 1993 and 1996. These successfully passed the California required codes for the models.

According to UN Special Reporter on Adequate Housing, Miloon Kothari, over one billion people on the planet lack adequate housing while around 100 million have no housing whatsoever.   In developing countries, inadequate housing is far from being an exclusively urban problem.  Around 75 percent of the poorest people in the world -- some 900 million in all -- live in isolated rural areas and depend on agriculture to make a living.   It is these people that Mu’izz Foundation plans on working with the most.  With the tools of war, sandbags and barbed wire, and the earth that is under their feet, we can educate the poorest people how to build safe shelter for themselves without the need for materials that are out of their reach.  Utilizing Nader Khalili’s emergency shelter design, villages can be built for less than the cost of the tents that relief organizations provide.  With our proposed designs, schools can be built to serve to these villages.  Inexpensive orphanages can take care of those without parents, and community centers can be built to provide job training and relief that their communities are so desperately needing.  Additionally, these people will be empowered as they would be building the infrastructure of their own communities.  We would be providing the people a way to improve their condition.

In this country, as in many others, the root causes of the epidemic of homelessness lies in the fundamental belief that in order to be successful, people must live a life beyond their means. If there are only so many resources to go around, a small group of people are utilizing a large amount of resources. This leads one to the conclusion that a large amount of people must make due with what is left over. It is this paradigm that we hope to have a hand in shifting. In this country, family situations including abuse & substance use, illness or injury, parents being laid off, children being abandoned, natural disasters, discrimination, and simply growing up poor are largely to blame. Moreover, a culture that has us all competing with each other for a slice of the American Dream is also to blame. We hope to instill a culture of people helping each other to achieve one of the most important goals that every family has before them which is to provide adequate shelter for our families.  By using environmentally sound design we can achieve this at a fraction of the cost of traditional building, so there will be more of the pie to go around.

For more information about Superadobe Technology, visit http://calearth.org.