Every so often, people decide that just talking about the problems and challenges they face in their daily lives is no longer enough.  With today’s “green” revolution, the number of people taking things into their own hands seems to be increasing.  Recently, three gentlemen founded an organization known as “4 Walls International” to do just that. 

Steven Wright, Waylon Matson and Christian Husband decided that they were no longer content to sit around talking about local and world issues.  Their brainchild – “4 Walls International” – was started in their local community of San Diego, CA.  There, they built a 600 sq. ft. house that harvests water, produces food, and thermoregulates itself.  And it was built using old, discarded tires, bottles and cans.

Funding and building the house themselves, they did it to show others what is possible.  And while tires were the main product used to build the house, there is not one visible tire in the entire structure – and, more importantly – the house is currently growing tomatoes, strawberries, lettuce and cabbage. 

Appalled at the mountains of old tires filling up the Tijuana River Valley estuary (which is being killed by run-off), they decided to start their collection there, yielding 250 tires, and then obtained additional tires from a local used tire store. 

The success of this pilot project inspired them to expand into the canyons of Tijuana where people struggle daily for food, water, reliable shelter and incredible amounts of human waste (as a result of rain), with no infrastructure in place to handle it. 

Their humanitarian effort affords the impoverished people there a chance to work for free in return for a house that provides them with water, food, sewage treatment, thermoregulation and energy, entirely off the grid.  The people will be cared for - and the estuary will recover - as a result.  The result will be a model that they hope to take around the world in an effort to empower the world’s poorest people to satisfy their basic biological needs for themselves. 

Steven Wright, President/CEO of “4 Walls International”, had this to say:  “This is the logical solution.  We MUST rescue our environment, and we MUST care for people.  There’s no better time than NOW.”  He went on to say:  “It has to be about the people…we focus on developing local leadership so that impoverished communities can identify their own needs, and organize to build homes for each other that satisfy those needs.  Our mission is to address and solve current and future environmental challenges while improving overall quality of human life with a universal model and strategy. “

The housing development they are building in Tijuana is not comprised of ordinary homes…the homes not only provide shelter, but also provide a family’s basic biological needs, such as harvesting water, producing food, treating waste, thermoregulating and harvesting energy. 

The homes are being built for the area’s poorest of the poor in the hope that they can free themselves by improving their own standard of living and give them a new feeling of worth so they can live a life of a healthy family.  Rather than going in and building the homes for these people, they are teaching them how to build, so they can continue to teach others. 

But before proceeding, they must obtain permission to build from all levels of government.  The local board must develop a local system of accountability, insuring that everyone shows up to work for each other. As the work progresses, communities hold themselves accountable, not “4 Walls International”, which helps to harvest the feelings of a community.  With all the permissions in place, the group is now seeking funding to help with this amazing project. 

By creating a platform that unites the community in the common goal of building dependable shelters that promote agricultural production and sustainability, “4 Walls International” is encouraging recovery of our finite natural systems and promoting education for a more environmentally-conscious future.

For more information, or to donate, visit:  http://www.4WallsInternational.org.