Oliver’s Village Oliver’s house has embarked on a project to create a village to accommodate, treat and educate the AIDS Orphans in its care. At the moment Oliver’s House cares for 210 children of whom 12 are HIV positive and a further 42 have been orphaned as a result of the AIDS epidemic which our country faces. We also have a free computer training school and teach maths and science to disadvantaged grade 11 & 12 students. 120 food parcels are distributed monthly to residents of the Zenzele informal settlement and surrounds. Midgard Conscious Choice has been engaged to design, consult and manage a full biospheric programme for the site to ensure the viability of a complete community model that meets and surpasses all social, economic, environmental, architectural and agro-ecological international standards. The village and organic farm is being designed as a fully integrated sustainable environment.� This design meets the highest standards in earth friendly and efficiency terms. It is self sufficient in terms of Energy, water and food security and in the medium to long term economic sustainability will be achieved. Oliver’s Village has its own photo-voltaic electricity generation substation onsite, independent of Eskom.� All water heating will be done through solar-thermal systems.� Bio-gas digestion will provide a safe and sustainable gas-supply for cooking and heating requirements. Oliver’s Village has a borehole producing 20 litres of the highest quality water per second.� This is more than sufficient to provide for all of the agricultural, domestic and landscaping needs.� Supplementary rain and storm-water harvesting systems, and grey water treatment systems are also being constructed. In terms of food-security, Oliver’s Village will set a new standard for self-sufficiency and variety.� The agro-ecological design draws on the principles of organic farming, permaculture, bio-dynamic farming and Japanese-nature farming.� A food forest is also included in this matrix and the perimeter wall will be an extension of the food forest in the form of nutritionally dense vertical gardens. Food tunnels, a vermiculture and organic composting systems, a mushroom farm, shaded nurseries, and a temperature-controlled aquaculture and Effective Micro organism brewery, in addition to animal husbandry will ensure a year-round food security programme that surpasses the nutritional needs of the resident orphans and staff, as well as supplying food parcels to the adjacent informal settlement.� It will furthermore provide Oliver’s Village with an entrepreneurial opportunity for economic sustainability in the medium and long term with off-site food sales and the sale of probiotic solutions from the EM brewery. Oliver’s Village will provide accommodation for AIDS Orphans and staff onsite as well as classrooms and other community education and activity buildings.� A great deal of care is being taken to ensure that these structures are designed with the highest thermal efficiencies and natural lighting principles. Material selection is being scrutinised in terms of toxicity, environmentally responsible resourcing, and a strict zero-waste policy. One other major benefit of this sustainable design is the economic reality it creates to employ competent management to ensure the ongoing function, maintenance and production levels in all the enterprises.� Oliver’s House is well-aware that many well-intentioned community-based programmes fail due to premature handover to an ill-equipped or ill-trained community.� This will not be the case with Oliver’s Village.� Highly experienced consultants have been engaged from the design phase forward with competent managers to oversee the construction and implementation of all of the systems and the farm.� The enterprises of Oliver’s village will ensure that good and experienced management can be retained whilst local capacity is created through formal learnerships and practical experience onsite with approved mentorship programmes.� Oliver’s Village is a model, not only for community-based social responsibility programmes, but of how food-security and community health are best addressed in one fully-integrated system. A major contribution of this model will be the education opportunities it offers to others as an open university in sustainability with learnerships in community agriculture and food security on offer during the construction phase and as an ongoing part of the life of Oliver’s village. For more information please contact Terence from Oliver’s House.