The Human Relief Project (HRP) was born and bred out of disaster situations. HRP founder, Roi Maufas was living in New Orleans, Louisiana when Hurricane Katrina struck land. As he was surveying the damage caused to his neighborhood in the wake of the disaster, he found that several shipping containers had washed up onto his street. Upon further inspection he realized that these containers were incredibly resilient and well built – unlike most structures throughout the city, they sustained almost no damage from the hurricane.
Roi figured that if these containers were truly as durable and transportable as they seemed, the prospect of creating emergency housing out of them for disaster relief situations should prove viable. Today, Roi’s vision has become a reality. Since 2004, Roi has relocated with his family from New Orleans, LA to Salt Lake City, UT and begun research and development to create new technologies that, once placed in a shipping container, could create fully sustainable emergency housing units.
The primary mission of the Human Relief Project is to provide safe, sustainable emergency housing units to those most in need throughout the world. We also aim to achieve the reintegration of people and natural resources with the land. So many disaster situations create an inharmonious divide between people and the land due to displacement, unfamiliarity, and natural resource damage. The Human Relief Project seeks to mitigate all of these problems by implementing a tiered approach to disaster relief. This includes economic, social, environmental and humanitarian aspects to all of our projects.
All of our projects aim to address the following components:
Emergency Shelter Assistance
- HRP works in partnership with Forge, an innovative design firm that offers real solutions for emergency management.
- Forge supplies HRP with high-quality emergency shelters constructed from shipping containers. These 164 square-foot, net-zero shelters arrive turn-key and sleep up to four people.
- Forge units can also be custom ordered or built on site.
Natural Resource Rejuvenation
HRP implements natural resource rejuvenation programs that:
- Help those affected by disaster to earn a sustainable living
- Restore the land
- Create a sustainable food or raw material supply
Education and Livelihood Development
By providing emergency shelters and natural resource rejuvenation programs, HRP will in turn create livelihoods. This can be achieved by:
- Teaching locals affected by disaster how to assemble Forge’s emergency shelters
- Restoring the land and making it highly productive by introducing new farming techniques.
- Bringing new sustainable technologies to areas that formerly relied on inefficient sources of energy, unsanitary forms of waste disposal and inadequate means of water filtration.
These efforts will result in economically stable and sustainability communities.
Health Promotion
HRC will improve overall health by:
- Bringing in emergency medical relief, made possible by Forge’s highly-mobile emergency medical units.
- Providing people with the economic and natural resources needed to ensure proper nutrition
- Disseminating new technologies that reduce pollution and hazardous waste, and improve water and air quality.