AffordAble Abodes

AffordAble Abodes is a social impact enterprise that strives to promote the construction of affordable and environmentally-sound, low-cost housing for the less fortunate around the world. Our mission is to empower them to provide a home and livelihood for themselves and their families. We are technologists and entrepreneurs, engineers and green advocates. We’re pioneering a new business model where the impact is wholescale – from the people we employ to the way we farm to the materials we produce. Each step in our value chain is thoughtfully designed to achieve our three primary missions: social impact, sustainability, and economic development. The idea for AffordAble was born in a poor community outside Phnom Penh, where founder Tim Tan saw that the needs of a communities went beyond just a couple buildings – they needed a model that involved the local people and drove economic growth in a responsible and sustainable manner. Armed with >20 years of experience in construction materials technology, he and our partners founded AffordAble with the mission of empowering people to break poverty. Our model revolves around kenaf, a plant with an incredible range of applications. We’re uniquely focused on the use of kenaf to create robust and green building materials. By training local communities to cultivate and process kenaf and generating the demand for it, we’re establishing integrated local value chains and teaching poor communities to (literally) grow their own houses. Using parts of the kenaf plant that are typically thrown away, we produce prefabricated structural building panels with similar (and often superior) properties to concrete but without the harmful environmental impacts. >95% of our inputs are upcycled industrial and agricultural waste products. By cutting the unsustainable cycle of traditional construction, we’re creating a sustainable alternative to the age-old model and forging a new path for those communities who need it most.