1) Blueprint Alliance – Living Manual & Blueprint200 $19K
Facing the ever growing refugee crisis in Europe and globally, the Blueprint Alliance formed in 2014 on the premise of creating an applicable, regenerative blueprint of human settlements. Their focus within this vast attempt is on redesigning refugee camps and post-disaster intervention camps.
Some context:
Displaced people, statistically speaking, spend an average of nearly 20 years in the refugee camp that received them. This makes refugee camps much more than an intermediate settlement, yet the camps generally are designed as such. In most cases the camps are a copy/paste version of the western ideal of society, just at a lower standard. Usually life in the camps is directed towards an individualized lifestyle, with the supply of basic needs being covered through centralized first aid systems. This ideal is not sustainable to begin with and does not meet the reality of of people living in those structures for many years.
Imagine a very different scenario: the very people who are being uprooted, driven out of their homelands and forced to “seek refuge” elsewhere could become empowered to create a regenerative ideal of life. The suffering they endure rooted in a war-driven-economy could be transformed into the possibility of a new perspective, not only providing relief but actually nurturing pride. Water visionary Bernd Müller states: “Imagine the 60 million plus refugees leaving behind a green trail through the places they were forced to inhabit.”
The manual
The members of the Blueprint Alliance – specialists in the fields of refugee aid, post-disaster interventions and international development – ground their work in this vision. They’ve taken on the task of creating a manual for the long-lasting regenerative design of refugee camps, including the evolution from first aid to permanent living. The design will allow inhabitants to live with self-sufficient access to their basic needs. The manual will outline principles and best practices in permaculture, natural building, wastewater treatment and the use of regenerative energies, applicable for settlements of up to 10,000 people.
In cooperation with the SLUSH Fund for sustainability (sustainability fund of the cosmetics company LUSH) The Grace Foundation co-funded the Blueprint Alliance with €4K of seed money for initial planning meetings in Tamera, Portugal and the UK in spring 2016.
Blueprint200
As the team began its research for the manual in those meetings, the idea of the Blueprint200 project emerged: scalable test sites designed for 200 people, as proof of concept and educational centers for future application of the manual. As The Grace Foundation, we feel that the parallel creation of the manual and the Blueprint200 is the right strategy and were happy to support the development of the Blueprint200 project to its current standing with another €15K of seed money.
Tamera Healing Biotope in Portugal was chosen as the first location for this step. Tamera is already a well established education center for community building, permaculture and regenerative living, offering an easy-to-access platform for learning and exchange for international organizations and specialists. In a potential second step, the Skala Community in Greece could serve for the implementation of a Blueprint200 model in a region which is directly affected by the waves of refugees entering Europe through Greece. It would be able to provide first-hand insights about the applicability of the project.
Three planning meetings for Blueprint200 in summer and fall 2016, as well as continuous work for the living manual led to the following timeline and outcomes for both projects (noted in keywords):
– creation of comprehensive online database started
– drafts designed for web-based manual
– Surplus Permaculture Design Team (US/Belgium) joined research team for living manual
– conduction of numerous interviews globally with specialists, organizations & displaced people for data collection
– journeys of research team to refugee camps in Algeria for conduction of interviews
– feeding of interview data into database
– three planning meetings for Blueprint200 in summer and fall 2016
– decision that campsite in Tamera’s guest center will be transformed into first Blueprint200 settlement
– decision for a two-year planning and design phase (2016 & 2017)
– mapping & draft of site designs started
– decision for implementation to start in 2018
– presentation of the project at GEN (Global Ecovillage Network) conference 2016 by members of Blueprint Alliance
–Further funding of $50K from Grace Foundation pledged for next steps
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