Open Architecture Network

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
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.