The Blueprint: Our community transformation model

Many orphanages in developing communities are run purely from donations and often struggle to keep their program running. Severely lacking funds, most of the children lack proper nutrition and education. PBA’s youthHaven blueprint involves working with existing orphanages in our villages to provide funds for quality family-based care as well as expansion and updates on housing for orphans.

The majority of people who live in developing rural communities lack any access to basic healthcare. Often the nearest clinic is hours away from their home and at best have nurses with inadequate equipment and medicines. To get to a hospital, they must travel to the nearest town, which most families cannot afford the transportation costs, let alone the doctor fees. PBA’s healthWorks blueprint involves building local clinics, hiring health practitioners, supplying vaccinations, mosquito nets, and eventually promoting public health.

A third of the world lives in slum dwellings with no proper sanitation or a proper roof. Though most of the world’s poor hope to own their own home, they are faced with difficulty acquiring land, obtain financing, and other social constraints. PBA’s familyWorks blueprint involves creating low cost, sustainable homes for those who have inadequate housing. We plan to partner with MIT students who will develop the most efficient/sustainable model house for every different region. The plan is to build houses that will in time develop into safe, clean, sustainable residential neighborhoods.

Over a billion people in developing communities lack access to clean water and over 2. 5 billion lack basic sanitation. Water issues affect half of the world’s population with death, sickness, and poverty. Many use unclean water because they have no other options or spend hours daily to collect water. PBA’s cleanWater blueprint involves working with development partners to strategically build cost effective water wells, teach the community on how to maintain the unit, as well as implementing technology for purifying bacterial contaminated water sources.

Over 100 million children of primary school age in developing communities do not attend school, even more leave school illiterate. For those in developing communities, they cannot afford the school fees or the live too far from the nearest school. Many communities do not have a school building to hold classes, or have limited capacity. Rural areas need teacher’s quarters since teachers typically come from neighboring cities for the week and travel home for the weekends. For those in distressed, inner city communities, schools lack public funding to provide an education that can be comparable with neighboring suburban districts. PBA’s educationPromise blueprint plans to expand education by building schools, libraries, teacher’s quarters, providing scholarships for high potential students, and supplying books and needed other materials. In distressed communities, the blueprint plans to provide incentive programs for students to improve performance.

Many of the rural villages only source of income is through farming. But most farmers are subsistence farmers, harvesting hardly enough to sustain their immediate family needs. PBA’s foodWorks blueprint involves educating rural farmers about best farming practices, providing affordable irrigation systems, competitive markets for their harvest, and supplying farmers with better inputs and equipment.

Most people in developing communities lack any access to credit or other financial services because no one is willing to invest in small self employed business. PBA’s marketWorks blueprint plans to partner with microfinance organizations nearby to build a savings and loan branch within the village. Eventually when a village grows to need an official bank, PBA would again partner with microfinance organizations to build one in a strategic location.

Many rural villages in developing communities lack sufficient roads, electricity, irrigation, or sanitation. This severely constrains the impact and reach of other blueprint efforts. In other regions, poor maintenance has left much of the existing infrastructure in disrepair, limiting economic growth and discouraging new investment. PBA’s InfrastructureWorks focuses on building quality roads to connect rural villages with nearby towns. Depending on the growth potential of a village, other infrastructure and green energy efforts may be deployed in a Next Generation Village.