HUMAN NEEDS PROJECT INC
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Mission Statement
To build environmentally, socially and financially sustainable infrastructure systems that provide a path out of poverty for people living in informal settlements
About This Cause
Human Needs Project (HNP) is a collaborative of Scientists, Business leaders, Experts and Volunteers joined in the design of sustainable, affordable infrastructure systems that provide integrated services to create the basis for individual and community development in informal settlements. In 2014 The Town Centre, an “infrastructure for opportunity”—the center provides both physical infrastructure for clean water, sanitation, wastewater treatment, and a social infrastructure that provides information, skills training, access to credit and computers, with a path to community ownership of the Town Centre. The Town Centre is a social enterprise that works to create the conditions for financial and social self sustainability, and serves as a platform to bring knowledge, expertise and networks into the slums. Town Centres are built on three pillars: 1. Innovation—clean technology and social innovation 2. Community—engagement with all stakeholders, community ownership and capacity building 3. Sustainability—environmental, financial, technical. Our theory of change is that if strategically combined services are provided in a centralized setting, local residents will be able to obtain the skills, information and credit they need to create opportunity for themselves. As the Town Centres develop, they help residents create other social enterprises. Community members take classes in entrepreneurship and web design. They create businesses to support HNP’s cafeteria or sales of clean cookstoves. They form organizations to learn how to improve their businesses as tour guides or laundry service providers. Together, they learn how to improve their lives and their community. And they learn how to maintain and operate the Town Centre so this engine can continue to generate income and to serve their needs. In 2010 at the request of the elders in the local community, Human Needs Project put together the pilot Town Centre in Kibera, one of the largest slums in Africa. Over the past four years, HNP has created a solid foundation: Gaining the trust of the community. Gaining title of the land. Constructing the building. Hiring and training Kiberan staff to professional standards. Raising more than $2 million in private funds. Over the next two years, the Kibera Town Centre needs support to fund staff and operational expenses as we transition from start up development to being fully operational and financially self-sustaining through service fees. We need time to test, fine tune and prove this model in the next 18 months to ensure effective expansion of the model to other regions. Accordingly, we are looking to partner with visionary funders who see the power of an engine of social enterprise that begins within community and with the most fundamental needs of community members in mind. What are the services at the Kibera Town Centre? HNP recognizes that slum residents face a complex set of problems—from lack of basic services to insufficient skills to a dearth of microcredit—that requires an integrated sustainable solution. Accordingly, the Kibera Town Centre is a socially designed, clean-tech facility managed by trained local residents that includes the following core services all housed in one central, highly accessible location in the heart of the Kiberan slum: • Clean water, provided by a 1000 ft deep borehole, which supplies 10,000-20,000 liters of clean water per hour. • 15 Toilets, 25 Showers, 2 washing machines, 2 dryers and 5 clothes hand wash stations • Recycled water—all of the water that is used in the Town Centre is processed within the innovative wastewater management system (completely enclosed within the Town Centre) and then available for use by the community. • Eco-shop, which sells improved cook stoves, solar lights and other goods for the health and wellbeing of families. It will also develop and locally produce other clean tech solutions. • Computer room with high speed internet • Adult learning center, provide training in modern technology, entrepreneur development, creative and web technology skills. • The social space in our Wifi Café and beautiful atrium coffee shop provides a rare breathing space in the slum (and access to delicious nutrition for all comers) while showcasing our Information Center. Here customers are offered video presentations and programs on health, education, tolerance, parenting and self-development. All of these services are aimed at sustaining and boosting the economic and personal potential of slum residents. They have the ability to shower, do laundry, power their phones, do emails and obtain clean water, helping them be more productive. They can learn skills, and access credit, information, communications, and professional and academic networks, and they gain an understanding of professional standards and expectations. All of these services are provided at affordable rates, which both ensure the participation and dignity of the participants, but also ensure the long term financial sustainability of the Kibera Town Centre.