Q & A with Gina Duncan, Executive Director of Fondation Enfant Jesus

Gina Duncan (right) with FEJ Founder Lucienne "Manmi" Duncan

Fondation Enfant Jesus (FEJ) is the non-profit organization that will own and run USGBC’s Project Haiti Orphanage & Children’s Center. Project Haiti is being rebuilt in the earthquake-stricken Port-au-Prince’s Delmas 41 neighborhood and its impact will go far beyond the walls of the building. The LEED Platinum facility will educate the Haitian people on how to rebuild back better and will provide a safe place for those who need it most. FEJ is dedicated to creating a nurturing and loving environment that educates both children and parents, offers pathways to adoption and provides medical support to those in need.

Who benefits from the work of FEJ?

First of all and most importantly, the children who receive care at our orphanages and schools benefit from our work. These children are most at risk and in the poorest communities. The community itself also benefits.  We work closely with the women in the community who are the mothers of the children, we provide education and we set a positive example. We are really proud of the example we are setting for the rest of the country on what is possible.

What is your proudest accomplishment thus far?

As far as FEJ is concerned, our proudest moments have been centered on uniting families and promoting education in everything we do. The impact of education through our school program, health clinics and promotion of education in all its facets is at the core and essence of change and progress. We’ve taken the time to understand that education is the true catalyst for change.

"Inexhaustible" Inspiration: Thomas Knittel Talks Biomimicry

Amy King
Director, USGBC Leadership Institute
U.S. Green Building Council

A building shaped like a butterfly. A skyscraper modeled after self-cooling termite mounds. A structure in arid climate inspired by a desert snail. Biomimicry, the application of nature’s principles to solve problems, is an emerging influence in modern day green building and other design and technology.

Biomimicry expert, Thomas Knittel

Last month, USGBC staff were fortunate enough to hear from architect, biomimicry specialist and HOK VP Thomas Knittel, who visited our office in DC and gave a stunning presentation on biomimicry as part of USGBC’s Leadership Institute, our new leadership development initiative for staff.

I caught up with Thomas after the presentation to pick his brain even more.

Amy King: HOK is USGBC's partner on Project Haiti, our effort to build a LEED Platinum orphanage and children’s center in Port-au-Prince. How have you been able to integrate Life's Principles into the project?

Thomas Knittel: Life’s Principles were developed by Biomimicry 3.8 to describe the overarching patterns found amongst species surviving and thriving on Earth. For me, this set of six principles and 20 sub-principles identifies what you could call system-level success. Whether it is dynamism critical to homeostasis (Gaia Hypothesis), or individual parts operating in the system, these patterns are not just an ethical overlay, but common sense if we want to continue living on a planet with limited resources.

Who’s Benefitting from Project Haiti?

Marisa Long 
External Relations Manager
U.S. Green Building Council

As part of the USGBC community, you’ve been introduced to Project Haiti over the past year. You’ve heard us talk about rebuilding this orphanage and children’s center in Port-au-Prince that was destroyed in the earthquake that devastated the region just over two years ago.

You know that Project Haiti is set to achieve LEED Platinum and the impact that will have – from creating jobs and teaching local Haitians how to “build back better” to providing a resilient model for rebuilding that all countries can learn from and replicate. As Roger Limoges, Project Haiti lead and vice president of organizational development at USGBC says, “If we can build LEED Platinum in Haiti, we can do it anywhere.” Project Haiti is a powerful symbol of what’s possible in the green building movement and its impact will be vast.

 Marisa Long with children at the Crèche at Lamardelle

But it’s of course more than that. What you haven’t heard us talk much about is Fondation Enfant Jesus (FEJ), the beneficiaries of Project Haiti. It wasn’t until last week, when I traveled to Haiti myself, met the amazing people from FEJ and spent time with the children and staff at their facilities, that I fully understood the impact this project will have on FEJ and the communities it unselfishly serves.

Project Haiti IV

Sally Gimbert
Structural Engineering Technician
HOK

This entry was cross-posted from MetropolisMag.com.

USGBC's close collaborators in Project Haiti, global architectural firm HOK, have published a series of blog entries on their efforts to design the first LEED Platinum orphanage and children's center in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Their pro-bono design efforts have been met with great enthusiasm, but also unique challenges. Read more about the design process for Project Haiti on HOKlife.com.

Early in the Project Haiti process, our team decided to meet the design requirements of the ICC 2009 International Building Code—also encouraged by the Haitian government for new construction since the 2010 earthquake. We were already familiar with the code and so we believed it would provide the best opportunity to create excellent design. Selecting a code was also a means by which we could ensure the safety of occupants.

HOK has never worked in Haiti before. Our partner, the U.S. Green Building Council, is focused on adapting to a new global perspective in sustainable design. These two factors made for a project with unique challenges. And, we knew at the outset that we’d have difficulty following codes written for consumer-based, resource-rich nations.

Amidst the chaos in the earthquake’s aftermath, an underlying sense of self-enforced order supports the Haitian desire to own and operate at a Western standard. They, too, are looking to build fiscally sound, structurally stable, and economically progressive projects. The difficulty? Haiti has very little infrastructure to support these goals. As we work with the code here, three items continually demand our attention: constantly checking on the realistic cost of building to code, developing an educated workforce to achieve code-compliant design, and the acquisition of materials in a resource-poor country.

The residential streets of Port-au-Prince. (image courtesy of HOK).

It is easy to make assumptions about infrastructure in the U.S. An engineer working in St Louis, for instance, can have confidence that when she/he specifies a high-strength structural bolt, it will be available domestically, with little to no lead time, and at a reasonable price – all saving time and money while easily meeting the code. This is not the case in Haiti. Port-au-Prince only recently acquired such basic things as garbage trucks – a welcome site for residents living on streets lined with goat-eaten trash and building debris.

Two Years Later: Rebuilding a Resilient Future for Haiti

Rick Fedrizzi
President, CEO & Founding Chairman
U.S. Green Building Council

This article is cross-posted from the Huffington Post.

Two years ago this week, Haiti was hit by the catastrophic earthquake that killed more than 315,000 people. Today, the work to rebuild this poorest country in the Western Hemisphere has barely gotten started.

According to the U.S. Department of State, the U.N. has called this earthquake the largest urban disaster in modern history, affecting 3 million people, displacing 1.5 million and creating 10 million cubic meters of rubble. Two years later, while some significant steps have been made – less than half of those originally displaced still remain in camps, half of the 10 million cubic meters of rubble has been removed and USAID has provided approximately $108 million for emergency shelter and shelter solutions – we need to work faster and do so much more.

I've always said the work we do to make our buildings green is about people and making their lives better. That is why the U.S. Green Building Council, along with global architectural firm HOK as the pro-bono design partner, have been working to design and construct Project Haiti, which is aiming to be a LEED Platinum orphanage and children’s center in Port au Prince. In an effort to show the children of Haiti that their lives are valued, they deserve to breathe clean air and they are cared about, it will provide for the immediate health and emotional needs of orphans and offer a pathway to adoption. And today, we are proud to release the renderings of Project Haiti, the first of many steps toward our end goal.



This building is our commitment to live up to our ideal. Project Haiti will provide a safe, comfortable and nurturing environment for some of the most vulnerable people in the world. HOK’s sustainable design strategies are sensitive to the culture and history of Haiti, while at the same time including passive elements that require minimal maintenance and are not dependent on mechanical systems. Aspects such as natural ventilation, a safe water supply, an on-site power generator that uses solar, wind and biofuel and biomimetic design features will all be incorporated to create a building that is environmentally and financially sustainable for the people of Haiti.

I have witnessed for myself the amazing resiliency of the Haitian people who wake up every morning in the tent cities, wash themselves in a bowl of water and do whatever they can in the oppressive heat and sun to make an honest day's wage. But nothing has had more of an impact than meeting the hundreds of orphans that have made Project Haiti not just a professional obligation, but a personal commitment.

As we soberly acknowledge this two-year mark, I'm asking that you reflect on the efforts being made to rebuild Haiti and engage in USGBC’s work with Project Haiti. Whether you simply learn more about the project, make a donation or spread the word, every little bit helps to get us to our goal to do just this one critical thing. I guarantee it helps us show the developing world that sustainable building practices are not just for the well-off, but for everyone.

Read the press release from HOK »

HOK & USGBC Working Together to Build LEED Children's Center in Haiti

USGBC's close collaborators in Project Haiti, global architectural firm HOK, have published a series of blog entries on their efforts to design the first LEED Platinum orphanage and children's center in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Their pro-bono design efforts have been met with great enthusiasm, but also unique challenges. Read more about the design process for Project Haiti on HOKlife.com.

HOK Volunteers Helping USGBC Rebuild Orphanage in Haiti

The challenge goes far beyond a small site requiring a multitude of uses. Haiti’s fractured (and, in some ways, nonexistent) infrastructure presents obstacles for providing basic needs such as electricity and running water. Environmental and cultural circumstances influence many aspects of the design, creating a steep learning curve for the team.
Read the full blog entry »

Project Haiti: The First Charrette

When you’re used to seeing colleagues in work attire, it’s strange to see them on a weekend. But there we were – a conference room full of people in shorts and jeans, spending a summer Saturday volunteering for an extraordinary project: rebuilding an orphanage and children’s center in Haiti.
Read the full blog entry »

Project Haiti: Challenges

At the opening charrette for Project Haiti, we asked a few of the designers about the challenges they anticipated for this unique project. Their responses covered everything from technology to materials to cultural considerations.
Read the full blog entry »

Project Haiti Takes Center Stage at Greenbuild 2011

This is a cross-posted entry from the blog at hoklife.com.
Access the original entry »

HOK is the USGBC’s official design partner for Project Haiti, a pro bono effort to build a LEED-certified orphanage and children’s center in Port au Prince. Sustainable Design Director Mary Ann Lazarus and a team from HOK recently returned from Toronto, where they shared the Project Haiti story at Greenbuild 2011. Read on for Mary Ann’s guest post and an amazing video from the USGBC:



Imagine it: 15,000 people in the Air Canada Hockey arena, lights flashing, music playing, Jumbotrons running. Cue USGBC CEO Rick Fedrizzi for the introduction of the new Project Haiti video. The video features the recent site visit by the USGBC and HOK team members and meeting with the terrific clients, Gina and Lucien Duncan from the children’s center.

I was quite overwhelmed to be projected at mega-scale to this crowd of great green leaders from across the globe and humbled by everyone’s positive reaction. The video’s goal is to communicate the tremendous opportunity to support the children’s center effort as well as share the inspiration that the project provides to all involved. And it does just that!

Check it out – it’s well worth the five minutes of your time. And think about supporting Project Haiti as well. Pass it on.

Learn more and support Project Haiti »
Visit hoklife.com »