New Centre Rosalie Javouhey Girls’ School Complex
Project Outline Port-Au-Prince, Haiti
New Centre Rosalie Javouhey Girls’ School Complex
Project Outline Port-Au-Prince, Haiti
Our story in a nutshell A city collapses In January 2010 a magnitude 7 earthquake hit near Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, devastating the city and nearby areas. Thousands of schools, medical centres and houses were destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people displaced. The estimated death toll ranges from 220,000 to 316,000.
The sisters needed help The Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny were one of the many groups affected that day. One of the largest educators of women in Haiti, they lost schools, teacher training facilities, an orphanage, medical centres and more. Unable to face such an unprecedented disaster alone, the sisters activated their international networks, calling for support from all over the world.
Facilitating school reconstruction Documentation
Their top reconstruction priority was Centre Rosalie Javouhey, a complex of girls’ primary schools that serves up to 1,280 girls from the slums of Fort National and St. Antoine, Port-au-Prince.
We set an ambitious project agenda Construction Training
Replication Package
Thinking Development now has 4 interrelated objectives: to develop an inclusive and sustainable masterplan for the reconstruction of Centre Rosalie Javouhey, to document the process in video and text to share with all those who want to keep developing this kind of work, to ensure that capacitybuilding happens during design and construction, and to create a replication package so that the process and design can be easily replicated.
We mobilised to connect resources And all the way over in London a small group of us responded. We thought we could connect them with our skills and networks, and help them to plan something that would leave a lasting impact. So we started planning with the sisters to do a different kind of collaborative project.
Now we need your help to get these schools built properly, to fund construction, and to translate all our learning into an accessible case study for locally driven, internationally supported collective design. In this ebook, we will present our vision, our process and our plans, and ask for your help in finding the remaining funding and technical support needed to make this plan a reality.
Context
The country The Thinking Development project emerged to respond to the 2010 disaster in a way that also addressed these deep-rooted Haitian afflictions at a local level.
The site
Haiti is the third largest country in the Caribbean. It shares a 224 mile border with the Dominican Republic, but enjoys only a fraction of the economic security and disaster resilience of its neighbour. Hilly, tropical, and deforested, it is vulnerable to earthquakes, hurricanes, landslides and flooding. Even before the 2010 earthquake, Haiti was the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 86 percent of its capital, Portau-Prince, living in slum conditions. Only 67 percent of eligible children enroll in primary school, and less than 30 percent of these reach the 6th grade.
Capital of Haiti: Port-au-Prince GDP Parity of Haiti: $12.44 billion (2011 est. CIA) Life Expectancy: 62.51 years
Capital of Dominican Republic: Santo Domingo GDP Parity of Dominican Republic: $93.23 billion (2011 est. CIA) Life Expectancy: 77.44 years
FACT Around 85% of Haitian schools are private, usually managed by religious orders, under resourced, and thus low quality FACT A key strategy for reducing cholera is to improve drinking water in schools
Our site is a unique oasis of wooded land in the heart of Port-au-Prince. Bordering the densely populated slum of Fort National, it provides local children a rare opportunity to enjoy some nature and play space. Most site facilities were destroyed by the 2010 earthquake. Moreover, the school managers, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny, lost land tenure nearby and had to move another school to the same site. Our challenge, therefore, is to double the site capacity while preserving nature and play space for over 1,250 children. At Present, school admissions are partially suspended, as there are not enough classrooms, toilets, kitchen facilities, or play spaces to accommodate the demand. There is no clean drinking water, and limited toilet water means that toilets smell bad. Moreover, the prevalence of low-capacity temporary buildings (1 of which we deem to be unsafe), means the playground is cramped.
Contents
Our story in a nutshell Context Contents
2 4 6
What we’re about
8
Our objectives Our principles
9 10
Our process in the field
12
Dealing with distance Social Technical
Our design proposal Our design features Modular + replicable Structure Building section e-e Natural light + ventilation Water + drainage Electricity Building section a-a Child friendly + in touch with nature
Phasing strategy Phasing principles Phase one Future phases
Costings and funding Project outputs Overall project cost analysis
13 14 18
22 26 28 30 34 36 38 40 42 44
48 50 52 54
56 58 59
The bottom line
60
Acknowledgements
61
What we’re about
Our objectives Permanent Reconstruction Our primary objective, and the focus of this book, is to produce a phased plan for permanent reconstruction of Centre Rosalie Javouhey girls’ school. This plan must allow students to stay in school during construction, deliver essential facilities as quickly as possible, and ensure that all phases of construction fit into a sustainable and integrated vision for the future. The finished complex will be maximally energy- and waterindependent, and accommodate up to 1,280 students.
Case-study documentation We are documenting our planning process in short films that capture this unique journey and sharing its lessons with other development practitioners, donors, other disaster victims, and all those with a passion for breaking down international barriers in the name of equitable, sustainable and thinking development.
Capacity-building This project aims to create an ideal product by ensuring the best possible process. To create maximum sustainability and value for money, we will ensure that construction skills training happens during construction. Moreover, the site should become a case study for future replications of the same plan by showcasing open building sections.
Replication Our longer-term goal is to create a replication package so that our designs and participatory process can be easily adapted and replicated elsewhere in the city, thus benefitting from economies of scale, and addressing Haiti’s urgent need for high-density, sustainable and permanent schools.
1
Our principles
Inspiring
School spaces must be child-friendly; they must inspire learning, play and creativity; they must allow local children to learn the skills their communities need; and they must feel safe, secure, and welcoming to all they serve.
2
3 Efficient
Designs must use materials, styles and skills on the local market. They must also be modular and easy to replicate. This makes the building cheaper and easy to maintain, and enables people to improve the construction skills that they need.
Passive Design
Buildings must be naturally lit and ventilated during daylight hours. When electricity is required, such as for computing and water purification, it should be sustainably sourced. This is good for the environment, and cheaper to maintain.
4 5 6 Inclusive
The design and planning process has to include all groups who are immediately effected by the project. This should ensure a non-partisan outcome that is maximally useful. It should also empower all collaborators to look after their collective creation and continue sustainable development planning.
Disaster-resilient
All designs and implementation plans must be resilient to environmental and social threats, like earthquakes, hurricanes, poor materials and poor construction skills.
Holistic
Projects must be planned with the bigger picture in mind; they must consider all local needs, resources, infrastructure and ambitions for the future. This ensures that we only implement projects that are needed and that lea to empowering, equitable, and sustainable development.
Our process in the field
Dealing with distance
Our project was founded because neither locals nor foreign NGO’s in Haiti could take on permanent development planning of the Centre Rosalie Javouhey school complex. This seemed like an unnecessary and wasteful repetition of past mistakes, one that could lock the community into poor and unsafe infrastructure. So, we started this project to ensure best practice disaster recovery for those at Centre Rosalie, and to create a case study to share our lessons with the many development projects that are faced with similar circumstances. From London, we are not ideally placed to work with the Centre Rosalie community in planning their recovery. This is particularly true in the wake of a disaster where the conditions on site change quickly; the community around moves, new people appear with new needs, land tenure problems elsewhere lead the sisters to consider hosting more services on the same site, and different organisations make their mark on the site from month to month. However, although we cannot all be in Haiti throughout the design process, we have been innovating to ensure that this project doesn’t repeat the mistakes of past development projects. In this section, we’ll highlight some of these planning activities in Haiti and in London.
UK
London Haiti
Port-au-Prince
Community base
Design base
Social: There are four main stakeholder groups operating on our site As planning facilitators, we believe that lasting, sustainable and fair disaster recovery can only happen if all community members feel represented and satisfied that the proposals are fair. To ensure that our plans did this, we sought information from as many representatives of each group as possible.
Sisters: They own the land, and run the schools on site and the medical centre next door.
students: From all three primary schools, aged 4 to 16
teachers and other school staff: Including caretakers, toilet, kitchen, and administrative staff
others living nearby: With a view of and/ or access to the site, such as parents, past pupils and neighbours
Humanitarian and educational needs on and off-site: This was to ensure that the classrooms and outdoor spaces allowed all school activities to take place, and to make sure that the spaces catered for all kinds of people. It also helped to identify how the school could address the more basic needs of teachers and students so that they can properly focus on work when they get to school. E.g. there should be teachers’ showers and maximum space for growing food on site.
tall buildings; it transpired during our design activities that the children were instead scared of unstable-looking buildings – particularly those made from blocks. This conclusion enabled us to design 3-storey buildings to accommodate more students. In many cases, we showed stakeholders videos summarising meetings to which they may not otherwise have had access. This technique was very useful in communicating with extremely busy, nontechnical audiences, and in helping them to understand the circumstances of their neighbours, employees, students, etc.
Preferences, tastes, and fears:
Feedback on our 6 principles:
Tastes, cultures and perceptions of danger vary drastically from one place to the next. To ensure a design that was appropriate for Centre Rosalie, we asked site users to tell us where on site was scary and why? Where is their favourite place on site and why? We also showed the sisters and children images of different materials, spaces and structures and discussed their reactions. (image of the red and green faces show children’s first reactions to the images)
In a place accustomed to getting pre-designed hand-outs from NGOs and poor quality cheap products on the local market, we found that it had not occurred to most people that they may have the ability to turn down some offers, and pursue things that they had not had in the past, like alternative building materials or toilets. Nor had most people considered aiming for a best practice reconstruction solution that they proposed themselves. We therefore had to discuss our own agenda and principles to make sure that the community thought them appropriate, and to ensure that we agreed on their interpretation.
Ambitions for the future: To make sure that the reconstruction plans were flexible and can facilitate change and growth on site, it was important to understand what people hoped for the site in, for example, 10 years time. As such, we asked about what kind of services everyone thought the site would ideally provide, in addition to discussing what kind of energy and waste treatment facilities would be most sustainable and appropriate.
Understanding of other stakeholders’ needs and resources: Often those using the site do not understand the concerns of those managing it. Likewise, we found that the site managers were not always aware of the preferences of other site users. For example, the sisters over-estimated the children’s fear of
Confirmation that proposals for construction were representative: Finally, after gathering this information through frequent contact with the sisters, information collected by partner NGOs, and through design workshops in Haiti in July 2010 and September 2011, we developed our reconstruction proposal. To make sure that it really was compatible with all stakeholders’ interests, we refined it in September 2011 and finalised it on our 3rd stay in Haiti in June 2012.
Resulting design criteria • Additional classrooms – sisters can host 24 class groups at any 1 time. They currently only have 6 safe, permanent classrooms available. • Additional educational facilities (e.g. library, science lab, computer room) • Livelihoods training facilities – flexible space and kitchen space for cookery school
• Kitchen, food store and canteen facilities • Infirmary • Diverse shady spaces for play and meetings • Nature and garden classrooms that grow food in particular
• Unintimidating, safe buildings
• Storm shelter
• Low maintenance costs
• Space for safe earthquake evacuation
• Improved access to clean water and power • More toilets and washing facilities with water-saving features
FACT: Save the children report shows that 80% of temporary classrooms and houses become permanent and cost the host communities 3 times as much as permanent buildings over a 20-year period, in addition to being low density and highly exposed to the elements.
• Community gathering space
• A site masterplan