Hasta La Ideas

Think of the possibilities of a world where social entrepreneurs are funded by venture capitalists. For the people behind COMMON, this is the world that they have made a reality with their series of COMMON Pitch events. As co-founder John Bielenberg explained in our Core77 Guide to COMMON, “COMMON Pitches are American Idol meets VC pitches.”

Last week, Core77 was on-hand in Cape Town, South Africa to cover the first international COMMON Pitch event. Promoted as a satellite event for the Design Indaba conference, eleven incredible entrepreneurs pitched their ideas for affecting social change across Africa to a packed house of enthusiastic supporters, but more importantly, a judging panel of five experts— Ian Moir (CEO of Woolworths), Serame Taukobong (CMO of MTN), Ory Okolloh (Policy and Government Relations Manager for Google Africa) Carlo Ratti (Director of SENSEable Cities Labs at MIT) and John Bielenberg (Co-Founder of COMMON).

Set against the backdrop of Cape Town’s City Hall, the entrepreneurs shared their plans for tackling some of the continent’s biggest problems—urban farming, early childhood education, recycling plastic waste and empowering women. The winning idea was also the simplest. Dr. Johnny Anderton, a native Capetonian, captivated the audience to his EarthBagBuild System, a straightforward construction system that combines ancient building techniques with 21st century technology. His winning pitch won the project a cash and prize project worth R220,000 (almost $30,000USD)

Earthbag construction is not a new concept. The idea of building structures of layered sacks filled with locally available materials was employed in military bunker construction and flood control. What separates EarthBagBuild is a locally developed and patented high strength polypropylene bag created with recycled materials. Dr. Johnny explains more in the exclusive Core77 video below.

The homes and buildings created with EarthBags are attractive, inexpensive, structurally sound, durable, energy-efficient, acoustically efficient, rot and corrosion proof, fire resistant, non-toxic and bulletproof! The polypropylene bag, made from an industrial by-product, is re-usable and recyclable. Once the structure is built, it can be finished with stucco. The EarthBagBuild concept encourages the establishment of community home-building projects where groups learn to build their own houses, training others in aspects of the system, thus creating a viral growth of jobs, micro-businesses and self-financed or government grant assisted homes. Dr. Johnny Anderton walks us through some of the EarthBagBuild projects below:

Jouberton Preschool The Faculty of Architecture, University of Nottingham, UK, designed the project to build a preschool in Jouberton township near Klerksdorp in South Africa. The students then came over and did the construction themselves.

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