Earth Mission has gained a significant body of collective experience simply from doing projects in remote areas for the last 20 years. Our experience was mainly in primary healthcare, engineering and cartography especially in areas of the world marginalized from main stream resources.
We are happy to share some of these past projects with you.
Earth Mission worked with the Karen Department of Health and Welfare, a community based organization with one of the ethnic groups based in the south-east of Myanmar. In conducting research on where to best place a series of portable refrigerators (in order to establish a working vaccination cold chain), it was discovered that there is no single good map of the villages and transportation network in Karen State, Burma. This project created a single data set for use by the Karen government in a variety of situations. The Cartography portion was completed in late 2014. The actual vaccination portion started midway through 2015.
Earth Mission created maps of houses built in flood devastated areas of Pakistan.
The process included onsite GPS data collection. EM also helped design and maintain the Project’s website.
Earth Mission migrated the interactive mapping system created for the Thailand Christian presence maps into a new database in order to create similar maps for other Asian and African countries, including Cambodia.
For further information, including viewing the maps, please visit the Global Rize website.
Visit the Global Rize website to see the Christian Presence map.
Earth Mission helped move a database of Thai Churches (developed by E-Star) into an easily accessible online map to facilitate understanding about the current Church situation in Thailand.
Both Google Maps and Google Fusion Tables were used for security, stability, and ease of use reasons. This map is no longer available as it was replaced by the Global Rize map (see in the previous tab).
Earth Mission provided cartographic consulting to other Non-Governmental Organizations from 2009 to 2014. Report maps were made by combining Shape files of local areas and data in Illustrator. A database was developed for one organization to help them track medical statistics across Burma.
Earth Mission designed and installed a suspension bridge so that local people would have access to health care and food during the rainy season. Previously, people had to walk about 8 hours to cross the river or risk a dangerous crossing.
Engineering Ministries International assisted Earth Mission in the construction of an earth bag building. EMI provided a team of U.S. based design professionals to design and build the earth bag building. The primary purpose of this building was to determine the feasibility of using earth bag construction in the jungle environment of Southeast Asia. The sample building was built in an area where construction materials were accessible. However, the intent is to construct future buildings in areas inaccessible to modern building materials. Traditional housing in the area consists of bamboo construction with leaf roofs. This construction is simple and effective for residences, however, some buildings (such as hospitals) require clean rooms, conditioned spaces, and longer life. For these applications, EM and its partners are investigating alternative design solutions.
Earth Mission is involved in building a prototype structure, in the U.S., using bagged earth. Bagged Earth uses building materials at the site (dirt) to construct a permanent structure. The advantages over conventional remote jungle construction include resistance to insect damage, tighter construction, and potentially a naturally conditioned space. Of course, there are challenges such as condensation, and seismic resistance.
