Mexican-Nepalese student starts emergency shelter effort to aid earthqualke victims

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

Juliet Mendoza and Brian Cruz couldn’t come from more different places.

Juliet is a half Mexican-half Nepalese mother and student, and Brian is a Mexican-American former carpenter, now student-turned-entrepreneur. They both study communications at Texas A&M at San Antonio, and as these stories go, fate and an idea brought them together for a greater cause.

They joined forces to produce energy-efficient dwellings built from decommissioned and repurposed shipping containers, called G.O. Modules. Brian applied his ten years of experience in carpentry, as well as his contacts in port-to-port shipping networks, to 18 months of research and development. He put together a team of three of his fellow students, Juliet, Justin Rodriguez and Jacob Beltran and was slowly on his way to setting-up a business, the Charles London Group, when disaster hit Nepal.

On April 25, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake claimed at least 8000 lives in Nepal. Two-and-a-half weeks later another earthquake, this one registering 7.3 magnitude, claimed another 17 lives, at least.

After the first quake Juliet felt she had to do something to help – she has family living in the affected area.

There’s been considerable help sent to Nepal – food, medical supplies, clothing. What’s lacking is shelter. There are people living in tents in open fields, with no water or sewage. It was a situation that called-out for a solution they had in-hand.

There’s considerable science and development behind these G.O Modules. Brian says he knocked on the doors at NASA and found scientists who were willing to help him design non-corroding and insulation systems. The result was a small yet shippable unit with independent running water and sewage.

The idea now is to get them to the affected area in Nepal.

The Kickstarter campaign they’re talking about is the “Tiny Homes for Those in Need Around the World” campaign. Their goal is to raise $10,000 to build a unit, fill it with medical supplies and ship it to Nepal. The dream is that the first unit will spawn many more, for many other uses – micro businesses, food and supply storage …

Their deadline to raise the $10,000 is June 2.