Support students to build their own eco-campus on a 4,500 hectare nature reserve donated by the Oppenheimer family. Funding needed to build the first 2 eco houses.
Rural Expansion: Develop a rurally-based campus at Ezemvelo Nature Reserve, part of the Diamond Route, created as a model that is 'green' and environmentally friendly, as well as financially self-sustaining. Students guided by experts will build their own housing, dining-room, classrooms, and ablutions using traditional earth-brick manufacturing and building techniques, and whole-log techniques as an invader forest is available of wattle, bluegum, and poplar trees. Students all learn to grow their own organic food. World-class experts teach students to manage the eco-technologies, including solar and water and waste management, and are also trained by experts in conservation, research, leadership, eco-tourism and hospitality management.
The vision for the campus is to showcase the best methods to teach rural and squatter communities how to get safe beautiful eco-housing, organic food, tele-communications, natural prevention-oriented health care, education, and waste-management for a small fraction of the cost of the norm. In this way individuals become personally self-sufficient and become generators of economic growth and self-sufficiency for their communities. We wish to create this as a Centre of Excellence in working methodologies of the finest methods of rural poverty alleviation.
Your generous contribution to the Rural Poverty Alleviation Model will ensure that we meet our ultimate goal of $350,000 to create a total rural eco-campus which will be used to train 4,000 disadvantaged youth and community leaders per annum in methodologies that transform their housing, food, water, waste-management, and energy-usage situation