YTB-driven Soil Block Building

Describe the specific problem that you are working to solve. What is the scale of the problem in the communities you are working in, and globally?

ISSB technology should be available to YTB-driven co-production programs across East Africa. YTB is Youth TimeBanking.

Rural schools, health clinics, and housing and other fragile structures in Kisumu, Kenya, Mukono, Uganda, Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Western Uganda, and many other areas in East Africa are vulnerable to seasonal storm damage. Options for restoring fragile structures damaged by spring storms are limited due to cost and are not environmentally sensitive. 

Please see this explanation of the YTB ISSB Project by Solution Team Leader Robert Kibaya in Mukono, Uganda. See the transcript of Robert Kibaya's narration - transcript starts at page 2.

Rural Schools are typically of fragile construction of eucalyptus poles, sheet metal roof, thin curtains for shade, and walls of burnt bricks. Currently in Uganda, people mostly use burnt blocks or bricks for construction. Burning blocks consume a lot of firewood and this has increased tree cutting. To burn ten thousand blocks, you will need about two mature trees. ISSB or soil blocks are both a more durable building material and environmentally friendly (no tree cutting) and climate conscious (no burning).

Interlocking Stabilized Soil Block (ISSB) technology is a solution developed by the late Dr. Moses Musaazi, Professor of Engineering at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. ISSB Reference and Tribute to Dr. Musaazi and This Man Can't Stop Innovating.

How many people are affected? Which factors contributing to the problem relate to your solution? Include any relevant local or global statistics.

YTB Global is supporting community projects in Mukono, Uganda with a self-funded effort to purchase ISSB machines for use in Mukono, Uganda and Kisumu, Kenya. These machines are being used by community leaders who use a "train-the-trainer" model to introduce the ISSB technology to youth and community members so that everyone is involved with making soil blocks.

YTB has self-funded the fees for technical labor with modest donations to guide the construction. Hundreds of youth and community members are involved with the initial ISSB projects for a building at a rural school and a barrier wall around another school to increase safety. ISSB Reference: Eco-Friendly Building Material. 

East Africa is affected by climate change and the increasing need for waste management solutions. ISSB technology can be used to construct water tanks, waste management enclosures, health clinics, housing, school buildings, and storage sheds.

Many rural schools in East Africa are made with fragile construction and vulnerable to seasonal storm damage causing further negative consequences. The youth are sent home and their education disrupted while repairs or new classrooms are constructed. This experience is further disruptive to working parents and contributes noticeably to learning loss and increases vulnerability to mental health decline in youth. 

The second consequence is that the cycle is perpetuated when the only option is to rebuild using burnt bricks and fragile materials and cutting more trees. These classrooms will be lost again during the next seasonal storm.

Describe your solution and how it works in simple terms. What is it? What does it do? Briefly describe how it works and what technology it uses. Be sure to use this space to talk about your solution, not the problem you are trying to solve. If relevant, share a link to a video of a product demo.

A useful solution to the need for stable structures is community leaders trained to work with ISSB technology, their ability to train others, and the availability of ISSB machines, cement, and modest accessories like simple soil-sifting screens, wheelbarrows, and hand trucks to move the ISSB machine.

ISSB technology is also a solution for low-cost, eco-friendly, community-led construction projects in North America. Makiga Engineering, in Kenya, manufactures ISSB machines. This reference indicates they have distributed ISSB machines to American countries. A manufacturing presence in North America would facilitate the use of ISSB technology for affordable housing, water storage, and sanitation solutions in the US.

See Reference: Classroom construction for rural school. Reference: ISSB for Constructing Classrooms, twenty-four pictures Reference: YTB 15-minute video with coverage of use of ISSB machines in Uganda.

ISSB technology is a transformational solution that, with additional sponsorship, would eliminate and prevent a negative spiral of unsustainable practices. ISSB technology contributes to not only the direct result of more durable structures - it also increases safety, gender equity (everyone involved), prosperity, and the greater likelihood that rural youth will continue their education and benefit from opportunities for a better future.

Describe the target population whose lives you are working to directly and meaningfully improve. Who are they, and in what ways are they currently underserved? How will the solution address their needs?

YTB Global is working with community leaders in Mukono, Uganda and Kisumu, Kenya to improve opportunities for youth in rural and impoverished areas of East Africa, particularly rural schools, and community activities for youth with limited access to technology. Having stable school buildings keeps youth in school and ensures a safer learning environment. Less time will be taken up with efforts required to rebound from seasonal rainstorms and flooding. ISSB structures are affordable, environmentally sustainable, and human powered.

The YTB Global team includes a community leader in Mukono, Uganda. We have started ISSB projects at two schools in Mukono: Mother Erinah Junior School and Bright Parents School. We have the support and involvement of the Heads of each school. The youth learners are also meaningfully involved as you can see in this video, https://tinyurl.com/ITBD2023YT...

The local team leader, Robert Kibaya, lives in Mukono and is intimately familiar with the needs of the rural communities. His life's work is devoted to improving conditions and opportunities for these people. YTB Global is working in partnership with the people in Mukono to implement the ISSB project along with other YTB activities, such as Community Crochet to develop community involvement https://tinyurl.com/YTBcrochet.

The design and implementation are directly guided by the community's input, ideas, and agendas are overseen by Robert Kibaya along with school and community leaders. Youth have meaningful involvement. The learners are helping to make the soil blocks for the new structures being built at their schools. 

The ISSB projects in Mukono, Uganda serves about three hundred youth learners attending two different schools in Mukono, Uganda.

What specific financial, technical, legal, cultural, or market barriers that you face do you hope Solve can help you overcome, and how?

We would like support from Solve to receive partnership advice, assistance with obtaining technical-professional guidance to meet government-approved classroom and-or dwelling standards, and to obtain additional ISSB machines that make curved soil blocks to build water tanks. We would also like support and connections to produce a video story of how the rural schools are benefitting from the structures made with ISSB machines. We would like to show other communities how youth are involved in safe ways by being part of the project team. These youth are representing YTB-driven co-production where they are involved with various aspects of the design, development, delivery (implementation), and use of the ISSB project product - their school buildings and enclosures. 

The youth earn YTB "time-credits" towards scholastic supplies, training, coaching, and resources to support their development. Opportunities for youth to participate in YTB-driven co-production projects offer a pathway back to community for youth who have been involved with substance use. An antidote to addiction to substance use is meaningful opportunities for social and community connections. YTB projects provide those opportunities.

Funding will be used to invest in additional safety equipment, work boots, work gloves, ladders, wheelbarrows, soil screens, and hand trucks to move the ISSB machine to various locations. The ISSB machine weighs about 130 kg (close to 300 lbs). The ISSB project can be replicated and scaled through the provision of our train-the-trainer model and additional ISSB technology for other communities, schools, and health clinics.

Describe how your solution approaches the problem in a new or significantly improved way. How could it catalyze broader positive impacts from others in this space? How could it change the market?

The Youth TimeBanking (YTB) ISSB Project is unique in that youth, community, and school leaders are involved in co-production. In YTB-driven co-production the professionals (teachers, heads of school, community leaders) work in partnership and reciprocity with the learners-recipients, parent-caregivers, and community members of the educational-scholastic experience. We are using principles of Timebanking, co-production, and Liberating Structures (everyone involved) to co-produce a solution that has input and involvement of everyone affected. 

The motivation is high. The self-discipline of the youth is admirable. Self-determination as observed by autonomy-belonging-competence is tangible.

YTB-driven co-production can work with any community, anywhere - especially with rural communities with limited access to resources who want and need to build-rebuild-repair structures in an environmentally sustainable way.

Please see 

What are your impact goals for the next year and the next five years, and how will you achieve them?

Between April 2022 when a storm destroyed a rural school in Mukono, Uganda and April 2023 the YTB ISSB Team learned about ISSB Technology, raised funds to purchase equipment, received and delivered training, and built a new schoolroom in one of the rural schools.

Within the next near we expect to build an ISSB safety enclosure around another school and build waste-management enclosures.

With our current, modest pace of fundraising, we expect to replicate the ISSB project in Kisumu, Kenya, with a local community leader by July 2023.

Over the next five years, our goal is to build one or two ISSB structures, with the guidance of technical labor, at two or more locations in Mukono, Uganda, one location in Kisumu, Kenya, and explore the possibility of an ISSB project with a Ugandan refugee settlement and-or a refugee community in Tampa, Florida.

Please see https://tinyurl.com/YTBexhibit 

How are you measuring your progress toward your impact goals?

Our measures are simple. A school was destroyed. The YTB ISSB project is part of the solution at a rural school in Mukono, Uganda. 

Going forward, we expect to build at least one structure per year at each of three locations - two in Mukono, Uganda and one in Kisumu, Kenya.

An intermediate measure of progress is the number of soil blocks cured. In eight months in Mukono, Uganda the ISSB teams in the two locations have collectively made over 30,000 soil blocks.

Going forward, we aspire to making soil blocks that can be sold to other builders as a way of sustaining funding for the ongoing need for "consumables" used in the building process - cement, gravel, stone, sand, technical labor, tools, safety equipment.

Another measure is the number of people involved. In Mukono, Uganda we have about three hundred youth and community members energized and enthusiastically involved. Their energy ignites hope for their future.

We know we are doing something that would not otherwise happen. We are making a transformative difference in the lives of hundreds of youth.

What is your theory of change?

If YTB, a youth-adult partnership...
• provides youth with service opportunities through its network of community organizations and operates a program of giving and receiving where youth earn YTB time credits for their service contributions.
• and monitors youth participation with ongoing activity reporting and periodic screening for needs and strengths.

Then youth will ...
• have experiences with service to others, Digital Inclusion, Community Literacy & Civic Engagement, and a sense of competence from making things for others with new technology and ancient-timeless skills.
• and will furthermore develop strengths, make community connections, and
experience how the reciprocity of giving and receiving creates better conditions for sustainable, positive change.

So that youth become community partners who...
• Co-produce sustainable, positive changes in themselves, their communities,
system paradigms, and adult mindsets.
• Important among this potential and kinetic energy is a reduction in the
prison pipeline and an increase in recovery, staying power, and peer-to-peer,
near-peer, youth-adult, and intergenerational solidarity.
• Participants provide a proof-of-concept that Youth ARE: Assets-Resources-Energy and that YTB scales and works anywhere for any youth with the results limited only by the support and willingness of adults to join in solidarity with youth for the benefit of all of us.

The video animation below provides YTB's Theory of Change

Along with this book: "No More Throw-Away People: The Co-Production Imperative" by the late Edgar S. Cahn, JD, PhD (2004)

inspiration is drawn from the final paper jointly written by Edgar Cahn and Christine Gray, PhD - Social Isolation and Timebanking (2021)

Describe the core technology that powers your solution.

The core technology that powers the YTB ISSB project is ISSB - Interlocking Stabilized Soil Block machines.

References for ISSB Technology

ISSB, Appropriate earth technologies in Uganda

ISSB, Eco-friendly building material

YTB's Board includes 2 white men and 4 females with diverse demographics.

YTB's ISSB Project partners are Africans born in Uganda and Kenya.

YTB collaborates with a refugee community in Tampa, Florida with a concentration of youth and adults from Africa and the Middle East.

Most of the youth involved with YTB Global are African Youth.

YTB ISSB Project helps build school and community structures in rural and emerging urban communities in Africa in need of better solutions for rural schools, waste management, and climate action.

YTB is working with its network of supporters and Every.org/YTBGlobal to increase its fundraising potential to broaden-and-build its capacity to continue working with local community leaders in support of youth and rural communities, emerging urban areas in Central Uganda, and a refugee community in Tampa, Florida.

Share some examples of how your plan to achieve financial sustainability has been successful so far.

Thus far, YTB Global has been funded by a relative ($20,000 USD), self-funding ($5,000 USD), fundraising through Every.org/YTBGlobal ($4,000), and community grants ($1,000).