Many countries don’t have groups of local community architects to work with the communities yet. So in some countries, we have assisted by organising pilot community-upgrading and housing design workshops that are tied to actual projects, with support from the local NGOs (in Nepal, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Fiji and Penang). An important part of these projects is linking with faculties of architecture and young professional people in that place, and inviting them to participate in these projects and to learn how to work with communities. After that, we try to support the young people to keep working with the communities.

In several countries, we have given lectures at architecture faculties (in Vietnam, Mongolia, Lao PDR) and organized hands-on training seminars with students, young professionals and community people about how to work with communities, to support a community-driven housing design process (in Lao PDR, Cambodia, Myanmar, Nepal, Fiji and the Philippines). This is not just to develop technical support skills, but to show these young people how to make communities become the designers

and technicians of a design process which belongs to people (community design workshops in Vientiane, Phnom Penh and Yangon; earth-block making workshops in Vinh, Phnom Penh and Ulaanbaatar; a community mapping workshop in Fiji, a bamboo construction workshop in Davao and a slum-upgrading architectural competition in Surabaya. We’re now planning a big regional mapping workshop in Karachi.).

to share their experiences, share their knowledge and assist each other in different ways. In June 2010, we organized a 5-day regional gathering of 100 community architects and community builders in Chiang Mai, which gave a chance for all these groups to meet, present their work, compare notes and begin to set joint plans as a regional network of community architects. (Full transcripts of the interesting presentations at this meeting can be downloaded from the ACHR website.) Many of these groups also travel to join in the design workshops and training seminars in other countries. One of the first activities of this new regional network (which was officially inaugurated in Chiang Mai) has been to support fledgling community architect groups in each country with small seed funds of $5,000 per country.

So far, community architecture groups in nine countries have received this support and are using it in a variety or ways to initiate pilot projects with communities or to build their own national community architects networks. In some countries, these groups already existed (as in the Philippines, Cambodia, Pakistan, Indonesia and Vietnam) and in some countries they are just getting started (as in Lao PDR, Myanmar, Fiji and Mongolia). These groups can include young architects, architecture students and professors, engineers, planners and community builders.

We are also working to document the work of community architects around Asia and to help disseminate their stories, experiences and ideas through various media, including publications (a book on community architecture work by key groups around the region and a series of handbooks on mapping and community planning have already been published, and another handbook on the poor in heritage cities is now in process), documentary films about the work of community architects, and the setting up of a regional community architects blog / website.