Endorsements

From Osafa.org

Cameron Sinclair

To improve the living conditions and the quality of structures for education, health and housing for millions of people in Africa we need to give access to construction documents to everybody and allow for replication and adaptation of these innovative designs, for free. Osafa is a great example for an open approach to architecture. Sausalito, January 2007.

Cameron Sinclair (Wikipedia) is architect and co-founder of Architecture for Humanity. Osafa.org will closely cooperate with his upcoming Open Architecture Network (OAN) that pursues the idea of open source architecture on a global level. See the inspiring talk he gave at TED conference in 2006. In 2004 Fortune Magazine named Cameron as one of the Aspen Seven, seven people changing the world for the better.
(Photo credit: Francine Daveta 2005)

Christoph Chorherr

When I heard about the idea behind Osafa.org for the first time I was thrilled: With the success of this project experiences that our NGO has made with the construction of social buildings by european universities in South-African townships could be copied and improved by other builders in Africa. I believe that this kind of free access to knowledge and experience is a vital component for an independent economic development of the continent. Vienna, July 2006.

Christoph Chorherr (Wikipedia) is founder of the NGO S²ARCH ("Sustainable and social architecture") that organises the construction of community buildings in South Africa. Christoph is member of the federal state council in Vienna and teaches at the Vienna University of Economics. He blogs at http://chorherr.twoday.net.

Katrin Rohde

We frequently put up utility buildings as recently an agricultural college for 100 students. Experiments and professionell support by architects usually are financially impossible. If the initiative osafa.org is a success it would greatly support our work. Together with so many builders and NGOs in West Africa our construction projects could become more social, cheaper and maybe even more 'beautiful'. Ouagadougou, July 2006.

Katrin Rohde (German Wikipedia) is the founder of many development projects in Burkina Faso, among them two orphanages for more than 100 children, a hospital and an agriculural college. She lives in Burkina Faso since 1995. Rohde was nominated by the 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005 project and has been awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit. See katrin-rohde-stiftung.de.

Bill Liao

Osafa.org looks like an innovative, yet down-to-earth example of a new grassroots approach in development cooperation. It looks like it can address the need for innovation in communal architecture in developing countries by applying a collaborative, open-source approach to disseminate and develop new and existing, less costly and more localised, methods for building; schools, hospitals and other infrastructure buildings in rural Africa. Osafa.org appears to be the kind of initiative that seeks to empower people to find and implement suitable solutions for their own specific problems, that I feel could be very suited to make a positive and sustainable impact in people's lives. Appenzell, June 2006.

Bill Liao is the co-founder of the business networking website XING and investor in The Hunger Project. See his XING profile and weblog.