Around the Bay: Humanitarian design rockets into 2015

(AFHSF) It’s been a buzzing 2015 already around the Bay Area for celebrating humanitarian design, in nonprofit and private practice alike! Here we touch on the panels, parties and fora highlighting great work by architects, planners and engineers for San Francisco and Oakland, and Haiti as well.  SPUR: New Plans For New Areas Among the…

#BALLE2014 Cooking Up Good: Food Shift

(For BALLE – Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) Too much fresh food heads to the compost too prematurely in the Bay Area while too many people go hungry. This is a problem that Oakland-based Food Shift is working to solve with their food recovery program, a process they incorporated into the 2014 BALLE Conference. We…

#BALLE2014 Cooking Up Good: Tina Tamale

(For BALLE – Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) Coordinating two-dozen local food purveyors for a conference is no small feat! But if anyone is up to the task it’s Tina Tamale. We chat with Tina ‘Tamale’ Ramos about her experience delivering the best handmade Oakland fare to the 2014 BALLE Conference, and her eight-year…

Prosperity For All scholars expand the conversation at BALLE 2014

(For BALLE – Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) The Prosperity For All Scholarship Fund works with funders and foundations to grant BALLE Conference attendance to emerging Localist leaders from diverse backgrounds and historically underrepresented communities. BALLE recently caught up with Scholarship coordinator Zac Taylor to chat about how the program works, and what impact…

Haiti’s Sanitation Spectrum

Whatever became of Sanitation Sally? Since 2011, Lisa Smyth has been working on the front lines of sanitation reform in Haiti – an under-addressed issue, she confessed in a project post by Architecture for Humanity. Waste is a hard enough thing to discuss publicly, let alone address earnestly. Yet there was promise – a sanitation summit on…

How’s my turning? (MASS part 2)

Can furniture revolutionize medical care in Haiti? (Students Rebuild) Adam Saltzman’s a natural behind the wheel in Haiti: liberal use of the horn; taking the shoulder when the tap-taps get jammed up; commanding the rugged road. It’s a rosy view through his SUV’s cracked windshield. “This is the backup car,” he assures us. The new…

Millennium Development Goals approach… Certain Development?

(Students Rebuild) ALL EIGHT of the Millennium Development Goals simultaneously crossed a milestone earlier this year – “1000 Days Left.” Or maybe it’s more of a warning sign. Since the Year 2000 (and those heady days of roboboogie), 189+ nation states have been working to eradicate extreme poverty around the world, prompted by the United Nations.…