Boston 2009

Mateo presents Long Way Home to Boston Society of Architects

The following is a brief account of my involvement with the Long Way Home organization since my last visit to Comalapa in October of 2009.

I recently travelled to Boston to lend a hand and attend a series of Long Way Home (LWH) fundraising and network-building events. The first was held at Margot’s Gallery in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and was a wine and cheese affair in which old and new LWH partners were invited to come and chat with the current staff and get updated on the progress of the school-building project. It was a relaxed evening for more folks from the greater Boston area to get to know us and our work.

The second event required a bit more formal preparation and thought. Our board president, Elizabeth Rose, had arranged for us to speak two nights consecutively to groups of professionals and students in related fields of work to our own efforts. On Wednesday, November 18^th we spoke to a group of 45 from the Boston region at an event sponsored by Long Way Home which took place at an annual convention and tradeshow for the building trades called Build Boston. The event was graciously underwritten by the Boston Society of Architects (BSA).  Long Way Home used carbon-free webinar transmission to bring Michael Reynolds, the founder and pioneer of Earthship Biotecture (http://www.earthship.net/index.php) building design which specializes in tire and bottle construction, and the featured namesake of the Sundance Channel documentary produced by documentarian Oliver Hodge in 2008. Garbage Warrior (http://www.garbagewarrior.com/).  During Long Way Home’s presentation Mateo Paneitz, Long Way Home’s founder and executive director, spoke at length about our mission and philosophy for the work we are doing in Comalapa and specifically about the need for the vocational school we are building out of trash and tires.  Following Mateo, our on-site architect, Ericka Temple gave a power-point presentation on the architectural and sustainable design features of our school-building project, emphasizing the trash-bottle construction, thermal mass or water-harvesting systems built into the design of the each building. 

Then it was Michael Reynolds turn, as he spoke to us live via webinar from the current Earthship building site in Crockett Texas. He gave us casual presentation of his company and Earthship organization as a whole, while showing us a series of photos mostly featuring the more artistic and refined aspects of his Earthship Biotecture. When it came time for the question and answer portion of the presentation, Mateo asked me to step up and ask a blunt question on behalf of Long Way Home - what were Mr. Reynolds' intentions for collaboration with LWH?  In answering the question Mr. Reynolds was positive and reassuring to us while remaining uncommittal. 

The following evening the LWH crew headed to Boston University for our last presentation of the week in front of a group of urban studies graduate students. We repeated the presentation from the previous night with a few tailored changes for the audience and then watched the Oliver Hodge documentary on Earthship Biotecture entitled Garbage Warrior. The movie explains the evolution of both the design innovation and the political installation of Earthships as a recognized and respected method of building. It features the best of Michael Reynolds’ efforts in rammed-earth tire construction, the use of passive solar and wind energy, and the development of integrated water-harvesting and sewage systems into the physical structure of every building as part of Earthship Biotectures’ basic building requirements.  The film also documents Reynolds and his Earthship crew traveling to the tsunami-ravaged Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean and post-Katrina New Orleans in order to put their innovative building technology towards a humanitarian cause.

Thus, Long Way Home held a successful series of networking engagements in Boston, the result of which were new contacts and new avenues to pursue for technical and material support of the school-building project. In addition, the Long Way Home board of directors held their annual board meeting during that week. There was much to discuss including a new, transparent accounting system, the addition of two new board members and the overall growth of the organization in the last year.

Finally, there have also been developments related to the Cojol Juyu water project and the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) group from Seattle University (http://students.seattleu.edu/clubs/ewb/). We have been steadily working around the national moratorium on new EWB projects by connecting our University of Minnesota chapter with the Seattle University group. In fact, a University of Minnesota engineering student recently spent two weeks evaluating the project in Guatemala.  Now the two EWB chapters are preparing student groups to travel to Comalapa this summer to complete Cojol Juyu water project.  In addition, Seattle University is interested in sending a group of five Master’s level RNs down to Comalapa to do community/public health nursing field work, an idea that Long Way Home is interested in engaging.