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Natural Building Network is a not-for-profit membership association promoting natural building principles, materials and practitioners worldwide. We support ecological regeneration, social justice, the building of community and economic opportunity, and the recognition of indigenous wisdom as essential in creating healthy, beautiful, and spiritually-uplifting habitation for everyone.

The work of our committees is essential to fulfilling our mission.  Please read the committee descriptions below and select one in which you can lend a hand. Please consider assisting in a committee whose work is in an area where you have previous experience or expertise, even if that experience is in another field. Our Committees are:

Communication   Education   Events   Membership and Affiliations   Resource Information

Communication Committee

The Communication committee focuses on spreading the word of natural building and its promise of a more sustainable and healthy world. Our priorities are listed below and cannot be accomplished without a diverse and creative group of members joining together to bring the work to life.

1) We are on the verge of launching a new website that will have a more refined vision and offer more services to our members. The website uses DRUPAL and CIVIC RM and will include an auto-renewal for membership, event listing with online registration for workshops, a gallery, upload section, and much more. If you have computer skills and would like to help in this area the entire member ship will be grateful for your contributions.
2) Also on the website we will be developing an online registration system so members can find a workshop and then immediately sign up for a workshop. This is a service to workshop host as well as a convenience to workshop participants. Assisting in the area will also require computer skills.
3) Available to anyone visiting the website will be an online store where members can sell products and books to help us further our vision of economic sustainability for our members. We will create a shop where a range of products related to natural building will be available and paid for using a PayPal-like system.

These are the immediate projects the Communications Committee will take on. If you have other ideas and skills to offer please contact committee chair Candace Vanderhoff at cyberhuts [at] att.net .

Education Committee

One of the NBN’s core purposes is education. We firmly believe that a
great deal of the resistance to Natural Building that we experience is
based on ignorance—either of the beauty, safety and appropriateness of
Natural Building, or ignorance of the disastrous consequences to all of
us if the principles of Natural Building continue to be ignored on a
massive scale. The education committee is currently soliciting
help to develop the resources that will help us all address this
ignorance. The Education Committee’s work falls into three broad areas: Professional Development, Reference Materials and Curricula.

We are currently focused on two projects.

1. Creating a structure for continuing education in NB. Between books,
personal projects, weekend workshops, week long intensives, summer
internships and long term apprenticeships, the opportunities to learn
Natural Building principles and techniques are many and diverse. The
organic nature of NB education is both a strength and a weakness. The
lack of rigid formal curriculum allows the practitioner’s learning path
to be more heart-guided and directly applicable, but it also allows us
to sometimes proceed in a haphazard manner, missing vital elements in
our knowledge of the whole systems. It can also make it difficult for
mentors and teachers to track our progress and would-be employers and
clients to judge our readiness for a project.

To address some of these weaknesses, the Natural Building Network’s
Education Committee would like to propose a dialogue among Natural
Building educators about continuing education. We propose the creation
of a Natural Building Education Passport or Journal that will act as a
kind of combination portfolio, dance card and unofficial transcript in
which Natural Building experiences and teachers’ comments are recorded
to help learners and teachers alike track the learning journey. We would
also like to build consensus about our use of terms such as “intern”,
“Apprentice”, “Journeyman” “Certified” and “Master” so they can continue
in their time-honored status and give other building trades a point of
reference for working with our practitioners.

2. Creating, collecting and sharing the educational materials and
technical resources that builders, officials and the general public need
in order to make informed, expedient decisions about building with
natural materials and principles. We see it as vital to our common
goals that our practitioners and outside organizations with whom we
collaborate in building understand how our work integrates with theirs.

Future projects include curriculum development and licensing for public
school, college programs, AIA CEU credits and professional development,
materials and methods introductions for lay people, NB scholarship and
micro-loan programs, and support packets for local organizing and
educational efforts.

The usefulness of any such effort depends mainly on the participation of
our members, particularly our master teachers. We are looking for
volunteers to serve on the Education Committee and help with these and
other projects that arise as part of our mission. Even if it is as
little as a letter or email outlining your feelings on these issues,
your constructive input would help us create resources that truly
represent the will of our members.

To lend a hand to the Education Committee please contact committee chair Chris McClellan at service [at] maplecom.com

Events Committee

The Events Committee is charged with planning, organizing and providing physical support to Natural Building meetings, gatherings, presentations and colloquia sponsored or hosted by the Natural Building Network. We work with other committees to market and promote the events and provide materials and information to support local events. We offer advice and assistance to local natural building guilds. In 2008 our primary efforts will be directed toward the International Natural Building Colloquium.

 We have three key responsibilities:

The 2008 International Natural Building Colloquium

Supporting local events: meet-ups, lectures, gatherings, presentations, etc.

Sponsorships: linking with other NB events

 If you have experience with event planning, facilitation or organizing we can use your help! Please contact Jack Stephens at jack [at] nbnetwork.org or Carrie Campbell at carrie [at] nbnetwork.org.

Membership and Affiliations Committee

The Membership and Affiliations Committee currently has three key priorities: Increasing membership, membership structure and benefits, and increasing affiliations.

Because membership dues are a primary income source, we recognize our part in supporting the economic sustainability of NBN. We welcome the assistance of members who are passionate about our mission and willing to talk about it with others, helping others see the opportunity of membership in and/or affiliation with NBN.

Affiliation with kindred organizations furthers our mission and that of our affiliates. Our committee will be creating opportunities to further the prominence of NBN, bringing recognition to the skills and resources that our members offer, while encouraging the mission of NBN.

We will focus our outreach efforts to construction trades, political movements, emerging builders, college and university groups, affordable housing, social justice organizations, and people and organizations that increase economic empowerment.

Please contact committee chair Carolyn Hernandez at carolynhernandez [at] netzero.net to lend a hand.

Resource Information Committee

With the combined input of all interested members, the Resource Information Committee will create databases of research findings and application technologies of natural building materials and resources for information on activities and efforts of the natural building trades. Outcomes of these endeavors will include:
• a natural building specifications guide
• a reference guide to information pertaining to such topics as law and code issues, precedent studies, natural materials, salvaged material usage, methodologies and techniques, health and environmental issues, regional context considerations, education, ethics and economics of natural building.

Because of other ongoing efforts, most notably in the green building industry, this corpus of technical knowledge will confine itself to a strict definition of natural building as ”...a process of sheltering with raw natural materials and assembled with communal human energy inputs.” This is not to be taken as a separation of natural building from other building processes, but to clearly focus on the intent of natural building in its purest form as the crafting of natural materials for human dwelling.

To lend your support please contact  committee chair Dafyd Rawlings at dafydrawlings [at] yahoo.com

Please contact the committee chair of the committee you are interested in supporting:

Communication:                    Candy Vanderhoff, cyberhuts [at] att.net

Education:                              Chris McClellan, service [at] maplecom.com

Events:                                    Jack Stephens, jack [at] nbnetwork.org, (co-chair)
 Carrie Campbell, carrie [at] nbnetwork.org (co-chair)

Membership & Affiliations:    Carolyn Hernandez, carolynhernandez [at] netzero.net

Resource Information:            Dafyd Rawlings, dafydrawlings [at] yahoo.com

Printable Committee Description Flyer

photos of contemporary natural buildings courtesy of Catherine Wanek