Afghanistan’s Future Is Built on Skateboards and Containers

As we’ve already covered in our blogs, shipping containers can be used to build high-end homes, hotels, villas, restaurants you name it. Due to their low prices, shipping containers are especially good for low income areas. They have even built a shipping container skate park in Afganistan.

The mega shipping container skate park will be built by an international NGO Skateistan that uses skateboarding as a tool for youth outreach in both Afghanistan and Cambodia. The most recent skate park in Mazar-e-Sharif is an educational safe have for children.The 6000 square meter educational and sport complex was built out of repurposed shipping containers and other locally sourced materials to host 1,000 local children on a weekly basis.

Afghanistan’s skate park is not actually one of its kind in developing container-based education in developing countries. For example Apple‘s rival the Korean electronics chaebol Samsung has also used shipping containers to build  schools in South Africa. In Indonesia they have even build shipping container libraries.

It is yet unfold whether the skate park grows the future’s Tony Hawks or even enhances Afganistan’s economy but for the well-being and sophistication of local children the shipping container skate park is in a big role.

Shipping containers are a superior tool for businesses to actualize their corporate social responsibility programs as well as to spread culture and a high level of sophistication to developing countries. In general, we do not have many tools for helping the ones in need but shipping containers are a practical solution.

If you are planning to use shipping containers, please contact us in Shanghai Metal Corporation. We ship standardized shipping containers worldwide and compile prefabricated container buildings for customers needs. For detailed specifications, please visit our website. Please also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Tuomas P. // SMC Editor

Pictures and original articles: Inhabitat, Skateistan

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Coca Cola Saves Lives with Shipping Containers!

One of the world’s most valuable brands Coca-Cola is utilizing shipping containers in its corporate social responsibility program in developing countries within the bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP) category. Together with Deka R&D and other major investors including UPS and IBM, the beverage company is installing container kiosks that will provide drinkable water for three billion people in the world that suffer from the lack of it.

These Ekocenters are to provide purified water for communities that have a limited access to safe drinking water. The modularly designed kiosk is made out of a 20 ft shipping container. The container is empowered with Slingshot technology that is responsible for the purification of water.

 

The kiosk is also meant to generate entrepreneurship in developing countries, especially among women. Along with these kiosks Coca-Cola has also launched their 5by20 program that aims to generate 5 million women entrepreneurs by the year 2020.

As discussed in our previous article about container shops, setting a container kiosk is a considerable business also in developed countries. Coca-Cola has redeveloped the concept and is now using the Ekocenters for offering locally tailored mix of products, services and resources that also include sustainable energy, wireless communications, refrigerated vaccination storage, health education, and other functionality to jump-start entrepreneurship opportunities and community development.

This CSR project begun in 2013 as Coca-Cola set up its first Ekocenter in South Africa. The company aims to install 1,500 to 2,000 Ekocenters by 2015 in Africa, Asia and the Latin and North America.

As shipping containers gain more ways of use, we in Shanghai Metal Corporation are also becoming happier in offering our international customers high-quality standardized shipping containers. For details about our large variety of products, please visit our website or just send us an inquiry and our English speaking staff will contact you. Meanwhile please remember to follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

#BuildingValueAcrossTheGlobe

Tuomas P. // SMC Editor

Pictures and original articles: Coca-Cola Company, Coca-Cola Company Press Release, Food and Beverage News,  Designboom, 3BL Media, Expok News

Are There Enough Metal Buckets for the Ice Bucket Challenge?

The ALS Association’s viral marketing campaign for raising funds to to fight the ALS disease has gone mainstream in a really short time. The association has already received over $31 million in donations. The Ice Bucket Challenge (#icebucketchallenge) has already been taken by celebrities such as the WWE wrestler Triple H, actors Dwayne ”the Rock’ Johnson and Jean-Claude van Damme, singers Jennifer Lopez and Shakira, a venture capitalist Daymond John and footballers Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Gerard Piqué just to name but a few.

The challenge involves people getting doused with buckets of ice water on video, posting that video to social media, then nominating others to do the same. This effort is there to raise the awareness of the ALS disease.  People can either accept the challenge or make a donation to an ALS Charity of their choice, or do both.

ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed.

Since being founded in 1985, the ALS Association’s mission has been to do and fund global research on ALS disease and to cooperate with government, academia, industry and other nonprofit organizations. The association has funded over $99 million in research and clinical management projects.

 

Since the world is going crazy about the phenomenon, metal bucket manufacturers are forced to make more buckets. Galvanized steel is one of the best materials because steel keeps the ice chilled longer than plastic, and the galvanized coating protects the surface from corrosion.

Shanghai Metal Corporation is also a major supplier of galvanized steel that suits perfectly for building cold ice shower buckets. To know more about our galvanized steel, please visit our website. Please also follow us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. You can also download our new mobile application by scanning the QR code below.

#BuildingValueAcrossTheGlobe, #IceBucketChallenge

Tuomas P. // SMC Editor

Read more about the ALS Association and consider donating for good cause.

Sources: the ALS Association, USA Today, Youtube