April 23: Intern Project and Morocco Rebuilding

After our first Monday/Tuesday weekend and a sweet 6am yoga session to get our juices going, we huddled together in the yurt and discussed what we want to take on for our intern group project. We haven't decided yet but some ideas are to organize the 2009 Natural Building Colloquium being hosted by O.U.R. Ecovillage. Another idea was to help Elke coordinate her building project in Morocco. There are many villages there that were struck by a terribly flood in October 2007, leaving many homes demolished. They're goal is to have 100 homes built in a season. They think what they'll do is design a simple structure of local vernacular that suits the climate and culture of each village, taking into account that there will likely be more floods to come. Then after building a few with local builders and workers, enough knowledge will be passed on for the villagers to construct the rest. What needs to happen at this stage is to coordinate funding, accommodation, organizational structure and staff, including a screening process to get the right skills and personalities on board, and, of course, plan some fun for when it's done...maybe some camel riding in the Sahara desert nearby.