Building People – A key objective of ours is to use each project as an opportunity to skill and train people wherever possible. We do our best to create opportunities for human development. We talk of buildings being built, but seldom talk of people being built. In every creative feat, there is the opportunity for people share skills, to learn skills and to develop skills - to build themselves as people. These skills are marketable and useful beyond the time period of the project itself and lend themselves toward assisting the participant in securing outside entry-skill level work opportunities. Where possible, all training and skills sharing is accredited and certified.

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Employing women – Beyond focusing on job creation, we emphasize the need to employ women. Women are generally not a common sight on building sites. This is because construction work is seen by society as physically strenuous and a “man’s job”. This mindset is a pity, as it leaves an uncountable number of would-be-employed women without work. We respond to this dilemma by exploiting the employment opportunities for local women offered through the use of low-technology building principles and natural materials. Sand-bag technology is an example of this. Bricks are replaced with sand-bags, mortar with eco-beams. The result is a building technology that is simple and easy to learn and not gender specific due to pre-conditioned gender stereotyping or physical strenuousness. Other TEL projects like the cut-lights, Mamre donkey trail guides, hiking trail guides are real-life examples of the employment opportunities available for woman when we think creatively and equitably.

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Low tech and labour intensive - Reliance on high-tech building methods, combined with an overuse of high embodied-energy building materials, excludes available low-skilled local labor and the use of local, natural building materials. In many cases this results in projects incurring unnecessarily high carbon footprints and little to no opportunities for the employment of local unskilled labor. Touching the Earth Lightly attempts to change this wherever possible. Through collaboration with like-minded professionals we ensure that both the design and materials use ensure maximum use of locally available building materials and the employment of local unskilled labor. Making these intelligent choices does not come at the cost of style or quality. All such decisions are formally signed off by qualified, diligent “green” professionals. The use of natural materials enhances the mood and spirit of the structure. The use of local labor becomes part of a proud legacy of the project.

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Responsible use of natural materials - The use of natural materials does not necessarily infer the depletion of the natural world. It can actually infer the opposite. The use of alien timber for structural beams in a house for example, means that there is less alien-invasive timber in our catchment areas and more Fynbos (in the Western Cape), meaning more water and biodiversity. The selective use of stone (for dry stonewalls)and sand (for sandbags) means a non-reliance on bricks and mortar and the negative by-products of the brick and cement industry. But most of all, there is the undeniable sense of uniqueness of natural products that cannot be rivaled by any synthetic product. As people we respond on a gut level to this, and we resonate with the materials and the decisions made, in a positive way.

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