World Shelters

Following the disastrous tsunami in 2004, World Shelters raised funds to provide 20 shelters to International Medical Corps for use in Sri Lanka as portable medical clinics. Additional shelters were delivered to a village in Galle, Sri Lanka and in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. International Medical Corps was founded in 1984 by volunteer physicians and nurses. IMC is a private, nonpolitical, nonsectarian global humanitarian organization dedicated to saving lives and eradicating suffering through emergency relief, development and health care training programs. The shelters shipped for IMC’s use as clinics measured 23 ft long x 11 ft wide x 8.5 ft tall, with 255 square feet of space. Each shelter was packed in two bundles weighing a total of 125 lbs, able to be hand-carried and easily transported by two people. IMC used additional shelters both for housing and services for displaced persons and for IMC’s own operations. (ver aqui)

Design Science Methodology

Design Science is a problem solving approach which entails a rigorous, systematic study of the deliberate ordering of the components in our Universe. Fuller believed that this study needs to be comprehensive in order to gain a global perspective when pursuing solutions to problems humanity is facing.

"The function of what I call design science is to solve problems by introducing into the environment new artifacts, the availability of which will induce their spontaneous employment by humans and thus, coincidentally, cause humans to abandon their previous problem-producing behaviors and devices. For example, when humans have a vital need to cross the roaring rapids of a river, as a design scientist I would design them a bridge, causing them, I am sure, to abandon spontaneously and forever the risking of their lives by trying to swim to the other shore."

—R. Buckminster Fuller from Cosmography

Katrina Shelters

Temple to Temple has been working in the Mississippi Gulf Coast since the first weeks after Hurricane Katrina, with continuous support from World Shelters. Their initial objectives were to provide immediate relief to the devastated neighborhoods in East Biloxi peninsula that were hit simultaneously by 27ft storm surge from the north and the south. These low-income neighborhoods are a mix of African American and Vietnamese communities. Based in the Buddhist Temple in East Biloxi, Temple to Temple created a 'point of distribution' that provide food, water, ice, household supplies and many other identified services such as debris removal to the surrounding neighborhood.

Buckminster Fuller

“For the first time in history it is now possible to take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than any have ever known.
Only ten years ago the ‘more with less’ technology reached the point where this could be done. All humanity now has the option to become enduringly successful.”

– R. Buckminster Fuller, 1980

Tecnologia Apropriada