Sustainable, affordable housing for everyone.

As part of our commitment to improving life for rural Mozambicans, we spend a lot of our time improving available housing. Sara and Sarah used their Field Study to investigate how Project Vita could sustainably produce clay-brick houses at scale for people living in poverty-stricken areas.

Project Vita had success with several small pilot programs, but the goal of this initiative was to determine methods of scaling up production without affecting sustainability. At the time of the project, approximately 13.5 million Mozambicans lived in substandard housing.

Sara and Sarah drew up blueprints for home construction, using tried-and-true methods from Project Vita's experience constructing homes in Mozambique. They then went about optimizing the plans - looking for ways to reduce cost and increase durability. They also created a standard operating procedure for construction, reducing the risks of ad hoc solutions. Based on their study, they calculated that each home costs around $1,000 to build.