Earthship Classrooms

We have teamed up with Phil Basehart, formerly with Earthship Biotecture now with ECOHAB.org, to build new classrooms for Pi Gwo Byen. Phil has been building Earthships for over 30 years. Earthships are sustainable, off-the-grid buildings that use geothermal forces for cooling, are hurricaine and earthquake resistant, and are solar powered. The materials used are largely upcycled tires, bottles, cans, and trash, along with cement and rebar. The designs are artistic in nature and the buildings are entirely self-sufficient. A key feature of Earthships is rainwater collection, and using it for flushing toilets and washing hands. The waste water is then filtered and used in the garden, which helps to power our onsite nutrition program.

The build is in it’s third year, the unrest in Haiti has prevented the pace we had hoped for, however, in spite of the unrest and the challenges there in, we have been able to forge ahead. We now have two completed classrooms which are in use. There is another classroom 80% completed which will hopefully finish in February 2024. We also have the foundation tire wall built and ready to continue and maybe finish also in February 2024. Having classrooms which are able to be locked up when not in use allows us to actually have a computer lab. This has been a dream since we first started the school. Now we can begin the fundraising efforts for a computer cart and 24 laptops to reside in the cart, available for our students as well as possible community courses in using computers. This is a game changer for our school and the community beyond.

Working together with Earthship, we are training Haitians from our community to build Earthship structures so that they can carry the knowledge forward and create homes and businesses constructed in the Earthship style.

Andrew and Damian ran the workshop with about 14 people from our Community, teaching about wind energy and building, from scratch, a wind turbine which now augments our solar panels and keeps the lights on at Pi Gwo Byen. Damian is a fantastic teacher and mentor to the Haitians. He taught skills and best practices to enhance existing skills. We are planning the next workshop, for which we already have most of the materials. Pi Gwo Byen will build a second turbine and eventually participants can build smaller turbines for their own homes now that they know how to do so. A huge shout out to Andrew Bowring for heading up this project.

They are working together 5 days a week to build these shelter huts. We are starting with Shelters for members of our staff at Pi Gwo Byen as well as members of the Haitian Crew who have been learning on the job while building our classrooms. We have begun with 2 shelters thus far and will keep you all posted on the progress of this Pilot Project. It has been exciting to at last be able to share out to the community the Earthship style buildings, which are sustainable as well as hurricane and earthquake resistant.