Anangpur Building Centre

Academy for Sustainable Habitat Research and Action (ASHRA)is envisaged as a program to train future professionals in the areas of appropriate building technologies and sustainable planning strategies and develop a corps of sustainable habitat advocates, within the mainstream. The primary target group is architectural and engineering students who are the future decision makers.

The main focus will be to take sustainable practices from lab to land through a network of students with the Anangpur Building Centre as the catalyst. A website and over 11 films have been made and this site has been selected as the ‘best educational website’ by Study Web. These resources will be used for lectures and online education. Students will be enrolled as members to the website, from this group of students the most motivated 15 students will be selected for hands on training on live pilot projects at the ASHRA's base at Anangpur Building Centre. After one year of training these students will go back to their colleges to complete their education and influence students and teachers.

The objective of ASHRA is to facilitate the absorption and diffusion of sustainable planning and design practices and technologies into the main stream and its propagation at a mass level. Through its partners in diverse countries having similar problems it will foster exchange of knowledge and experiences. It will specifically look at the relevance of traditional wisdom in several areas of the world and dovetail it into development practices of today. It will create links between agencies in sustainable development work and educational institutions in a cyclic self-sustaining manner. Typically it takes a few decades for a fresh approach and thinking to become part of the conventional education curriculum, but through the ASHRA process, hopefully the time taken for this is will be shortened.