Crowdfunding the Eco-Hostel

VIDEO in Spanish

Video’s text in English:

We are Aalto LAB Mexico, an incredibly diverse team. Some of us are artisans from the community called ’20 de Noviembre’, located in Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico, others are students, teachers, researchers either from Aalto University (Helsinki, Finland) or from the National Autonomous University of Mexico or from Monterrey Institute of Technology (Mexico City). Some of us might work either in companies or NGO’s. Whatever our background, our collective aim is to make the world a better place; well, including making the world of ’20 de Noviembre’ a better place.
Several projects have originated from our previous fieldwork but we believe that the Eco-hostel project is the one that could bring benefits to the community sooner. The idea emerged from our conversations, observations and experiences at ’20 Nov’. The joy was contangious! Sharing and eating delicious meals whilst make crafts passionately together. This is a community with great potential for community tourism.
Additionally, we understood and acknowledge that the traditional Mayan house synthesizes hundreds of years of wisdom and it would be worthy to use it as a source of inspiration within the global search for sustainability.
Symbollically, the Eco-hostel Project is a seed, where ’20 Nov’ is the earth, the people the water, providing nourishment, so that the seed might bloom.
The whole community is a reflection of the hostel itself, where Miriam and Daniel may offer accommodation, Mrs Rosa and Mrs Leydi may offer food and the visitors can buy crafts either from Sarita, Agustin, Ofelia, or Carmen.
This important reception building becomes a unifying element, where visitors can see a map that indicates where to stay, where to eat and where to shop. They can also see samples of the local crafts.
When there are no visitors, the space becomes a community centre for people of ‘20 Nov’, where for example, children can do their homework.
Its architecture as a living experiment, where some walls are made of block to make it more stable, others are made of wood to improve the ventilation; the rooftop is made of ‘guano’ (palm leaves), to keep it cool, but with parts made of metallic sheet that perfect rain water collection.
All in all, the reception building will be a living project… but first it needs to be born.
With this in mind, we hope to achieve the project’s funding and have submitted it to the crowd-funding platform called “Transformadora Ciel”. We invite you to visit its website and explore the different options; every transaction will be rewarded with more insight and detail, to inform and share.
Do not hesitate to contact us for further information. On behalf of the whole team, thank you very much!