5) Description of housing product/service offering: Bustan, in partnership with Kibbutz Lotan, has created an unprecedented model for affordable, sustainable, permanent building, starting with the most peripheral & impoverished population in Israel: The indigenous Bedouin. Between 2003-2005, Bustan worked with the village of Wadi el’Na’am to build a fact on the ground highlighting indigenous rights to build on their ancestral lands.

Our model is a straw-bale building based on ancient Middle Eastern desert building & modern green technologies. It is built of natural & salvaged materials, powered by a solar panel, equipped with a greywater system & surrounded by an orchard with indigenous fruit & nut trees & desert herbs useful for medicinal purposes.

This type of building is erected quickly (in a week or two), aesthetically, & with ease. Bedouin tend to own goats & sheep; straw is readily available. Mud-plaster is derived from the surrounding soil. Bedouin villages lack trash-pickup; rocks, cans, etc. are gathered to fill tires forming a yard fence. A semi-translucent facade made of two sheets of salvaged polycarbonate sheeting allows light into the interior while maintaining a sense of privacy.

Like indigenous peoples worldwide, over 80,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel live like refugees & third-world squatters surrounded by a first-world reality. Living in flimsy shanties made from jute plastic and scraps of wood, walled with corrugated tin plates, & roofed with carcinogenic zinc sheets, Bedouin children grow up in dwellings improperly insulated & poorly ventilated to accommodate desert extremes of heat and cold; Stellar numbers of children are hospitalized for heat stroke & dehydration.

Our priority is to go beyond the unhealthy, impermanent shacks in which millions of people lacking land & housing rights now live, offering a permanent, sustainable solution to their crisis.

6) Description of innovation: By introducing a style of building constructed via accessible techniques which people of all abilities & ages can learn and apply, from readily available materials at negligible cost, our approach is intrinsically innovative & holistically empowering.

Globally, our approach offers a means towards economic self-sufficiency through affordably building one's own home. Integrating ancient knowledge with modern technology, such buildings draw together the most efficient, affordable & healthy housing principles from climates & cultures ranging from Scotland to Yemen. Regionally, our approach forwards a form of desert building suited to multiple regions across the Middle East. The Excess to Access Shelter emerges naturally from its environment, standing as a counter-example to the kind of energy-inefficient & water-intensive cement developments which have been implanted in desert cities around the world.

Locally, our approach forwards the housing rights of Bedouin citizens of Israel. The construction of this building in the largest unrecognized village stakes the right of all Bedouin to build on their ancestral lands. The government refuses to link Bedouin citizens with health services, access to the electrical grid or waterworks, & continuously removes them from their lands in order to make way for developments. To shed light on these concerns & present alternatives, Bustan organized a team of architects, solar energy experts, water specialists, horticulturalists & green builders to craft a sustainable building according to the principle of sustainable relations with the land & between people.

Our approach stands as a model for communities 'off-the- grid' remote from government services & infrastructure. It sets a standard for sustainable, healthy & affordable housing suited to any & all living in poverty & interested in independently constructing their own home without resorting to borrowing or waiting for government aid.

7) Benefits to clients: Located in the midst of the village of Wadi el-Na'am itself - placed adjacent to the largest toxic waste facility in the Middle East – our initiative directly benefits the most marginalized population in Israel.

In our first stage of work, local leaders and NGO partners came together with over hundreds of local, regional and international volunteers to construct a shelter presenting an accesible and healthy building alternative. A team of health professionals staffs the shelter each day and purveys health care knowledge to the village population. Doctors treat emergency cases such as heat stroke suffered by children due to living in corrugated zinc shacks unsuitable for the desert climate.

Bustan extends the shelter's message to surrounding Jewish and Arab communities through our 'Green Guide Course,' in which we teach local citizens to lead tours of the unrecognized villages and educate their community, decision-makers, etc. about the potentials and challenges of Negev development. Year-round, internationals from all ends of the spectrum embark on Bustan tours of the Negev, learning about unsustainable desert development and the green-building alternative.

In the absence of state recognition of land and housing rights, building is a powerful political statement, a kind of self-advocacy. Our method evidences the compatibility of ancestral traditions with new and innovative green technologies, broadening our beneficiaries' sense of dignity and self-respect. The taste of liberation from the financial burdens of buying a home, as well as from the high cost of fossil fuel dependence, can spark a larger consciousness of the economic and environmental, personal and communal benefits of sustainable building. Finally, the experience of building one's own home rather than waiting for government assistance can be a first step towards community-level renewal with the potential to catalyze social change.

8) Key operational partnerships: After identifying Wadi el-Na'am as our project site, Bustan personally visited countless families in order discern the community's greatest needs, and cultivated cooperation with the local village leaders of Wadi el- Na'am.

To execute the project as professionally as possible, we formed partnerships with a range of eco-tech companies in the U.S. and Israel, from whom we secured equipment donations and in-kind technical support. We recruited a broad spectrum of professional consultants in the fields of architecture, greenbuilding (Michal Vital), horticulture, irrigation (Dor Havkin), solar tech (Dror Zchori and Gil Nezer), bio-gas and biodiesel(Eyal Biger). In the end our pioneering project team linked Kibbutz Samar, Lotan and Ketura and the Ein Gedi Field School. With ample expertise, we were able to rapidly execute our vision of building according to the highest ecological, social and aesthetic standards.

Today Bustan works with a range of Jewish and Arab organizations and institutions including: the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages (RCUV), the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, Ben Gurion University Center for Women's Health Promotion, the Jewish-Arab Center for Economic Development, the Heschel Center for Environmental Leadership, among others. Our main partner in purveying greenbuilding knowledge is Kibbutz Lotan (S. Arava Desert). Their Center for Creative Ecology will guide our future greenbuilding trainings.

9) Financial model: Our efforts are exclusively non-profit. Further, the basis of our work involves re-using the excess and waste left over at the end of the process of consumption as much as possible, as well as readily available materials; our beneficiaries have thus far had to pay nothing. The usual building in use today is a light wooden construction covered with metal sheets. Nearly every family can afford this impermanent form of construction, but we offer them a way to build much better houses for a lower price.

Through workshops throughout the building process, locals are trained in all the necessary methodology involved, including building with mud and straw, installing greywater systems, & installing solar electricity panels, hooking up solar refrigerators & solar ovens.

          • Costs as percentage of income: .05

          • Financing: An overall low-cost project running on volunteer labor & in-kind consultant trainers, the project is funded solely by foundations, philanthropists & Bustan members. The use of solar and greywater greatly enhances the long- range affordability of the running the shelter, & sets a positive precedent. From this point on, intensive workshops for non-local participants will be covered through fees. Later, Bustan will work to pool local resources to collect building materials. This assures that those who build and utilize the building feel a full sense of commitment, ownership & pride to the project before, during & after construction. It's vital that villagers witness for themselves an affordable form of construction & the model replicates naturally out of self-interest

10) Effectiveness

          • Project outcomes: The 3,000 villagers of Wadi el-Na'am have directly benefited. Since Bustan & the community built the 'Excess to Access' Shelter, it has served hundreds of village residents of all ages on a monthly basis. At least one additional straw-bale house was build in the same village last year. Two more are in planning stages now in a neighboring village. Straw-bale buildings are now under construction in Jewish desert villages. Approximately 77,000 neighboring Bedouin & 50 human rights NGOs have benefited from the notoriety of the shelter via its key role as a symbol of the Bedouin housing & land rights struggle and thus tangibly forwards their international advocacy efforts. Says one villager, the building has put “the most unrecognized of the unrecognized villages on the map."

          • Number of clients in past year: This year, the shelter was consistently staffed with professionals purveying information aimed at improving the villagers' standard of living in multiple arenas. At least 5-10 residents visited each day, receiving in-depth attention to their needs

          • Percentage of clients that are poor or marginalized: 97%

          • Potential demand: The percentage of low-income and marginalized between the Negev inhabitants clients is above 90%. The Bedouin population in the unrecognized villages only is now 80000 people. However the strawbale building system is available to everyone in the Negev. A few hundred Jewish families are interested as well.

The model has local, regional, and global applications. At the very least, it could serve the 80,000 Bedouin of the unrecognized villages, living in impermanent constructions. Furthermore, it could serve the entire Negev population of Jews and Arabs, or over a million people. The model has direct applications in desert environments worldwide, thus rendering it suitable to greater than 5M people's needs. If modified to meet local needs, the model also can be applied in colder and wetter conditions worldwide.

11) Scaling up strategy

          • Stage of the initiative: Scaling Up stage.

          • Expansion plan: In this, the second half of the project, we are in the scaling-up stage. We will work to develop the original shelter into a regional learning center aimed at transferring the affordable & green process of constructing homes with salvaged & readily-available materials. Traditional desert construction methods will be synthesized with modern knowledge about greenbuilding via straw-bale, mud plaster & stone. A series of accessible technical workshops will enable participants to build homes for themselves. Bustan staff & Lotan builders will be available to every family as planners and guides. Wherever they go, participants will spread the skills necessary to replicate this model elsewhere, leaving behind tangible examples of independently, sustainably- built affordable housing. We will offer workshops to each Bedouin tribe, & finish construction in the Jewish sector.

12) Origin of the initiative: The project orginated out of a vision of Bustan Director Devorah Brous. After spending significant time in Bedouin homes constructed of carginogenic corrugated zinc sheets unsuitable for summer heat, Brous saw a need for constructing an example of a desert shelter in a key location, to catalyze awareness around bedouin housing rights. Following ten months of active research regarding community wants and needs, an action committee was formed, led by ecological architects Michal Vital and Yuval Amir, and cob- building experts and permaculturalists at Kibbutz Lotan, particularly Alex Cicelsky. Relationships were cultivated with the Bedouin leadership in order to assure village- level participation and input at all stages of the process.

Contact Information:
Rebecca  Manski
Development and Communications Director
BUSTAN
(NGO)
P.O. Box 6955 Jerusalem, Israel 91060
Israel
Tel: 972 (0)523 711 800
Email: rebecca@bustan.org
Website: www.bustan.org