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Youth With a Vision Children's Residence and Multipurpose Center

Program Information
Building Type: Cinema/Movie Theater, Community Center, Education Facility - Day Care/Children’s Facility , Education Facility - Training Center, Landscapes/Parks/Outdoor Spaces, Library, Office Space, Public Space/Gathering Space, Recreation Facility, Refuse Collection, Residential – 4+ BR, Theater (Stage), Toilet Block, Utilities, Youth Center
Themes: Affordable/Cost-effective, Agriculture/Food, Climate - Desert/Arid, Context - Rural, Economic Development/Livelihoods, Education, Energy - Alternative Energy Sources, Energy - Efficiency, Energy - Renewable, Green Design/ Practices, Holistic Design, Materials - Alternate, Materials - Environmentally Sensitive, Materials - Local/Indigenous, Materials - Reused/Recycled, Materials - Traditional, Non-Profit/ Community-based, Participatory Design, Student Work
Location: Dennilton, Limpopo Province, South Africa
More details
NextAid is a Los Angeles-based non-profit organization committed to developing and implementing innovative solutions to the challenges facing African children.

NextAid's mission is to promote community-driven, environmentally sustainable, economically and socially empowering responses to the AIDS orphan pandemic. NextAid collaborates with individuals, businesses and nonprofits to produce creative, culturally-rich, awareness-raising projects and music events involving technology, the arts, public education projects,and volunteer opportunities.

NextAid’s premier project is a multi-purpose center for Youth with a Vision, a South African non-profit organization that runs various programs to engage community members of all ages in changing the problems that affect their community. YWAV teenagers use creative-enterprise to teach AIDS awareness and life development. NextAid is working with ecological architect Joseph Kennedy and a team of international volunteer designers and natural builders to design and build an earth-friendly center for these teenagers and a home for an additional 50 children orphaned by AIDS. It will be a community resource center and a beacon of hope for an area affected by record HIV infection, unemployment and poverty. NextAid is also developing small scale youth-led sustainable development projects in other African countries.

NextAid was fortunate to have an Architecture for Humanity Design Fellow, Chris Harnish, work on-site in Dennilton to help develop a holistic strategy for building as well as responding to day to day needs of the organization. Below is a blog of his writing that was featured in the Architectural Record online during his 9 month stay in South Africa.

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