ngo – Shanghai Metal Corporation

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

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

End Hunger and Extreme Poverty in Africa

The United Nations together with all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading development institution agreed on eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). They range from halving extreme poverty rates to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015.

MDG 1 calls for the proportion of people who suffer from hunger to be halved between 1990 and 2015. In other words, MDG 1 is about eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. In a continent like Africa, where escalating food prices result of a 23 percent increase (in US dolar terms) in the FAO Food Price Index from 2006 to 2007, the number of people left hungry has increased. Nearly one billion people – equal to the populations of both the USA and Europe – do not have enough to eat.

A Kenyan farmer tends newly planted trees

A country where their people are starving and farming is the main industry, rural prosperity would be a development catalyst in Africa. But in order to create a prosperous rural Africa the promised aid is vital, which, in turn, can provide a springboard for development across the continent.

farm6

Farm Africa is a NGO supporting farmers from dry rangelands to lush forests in five east African countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Farm Africa’s impact has benefited 30.000 people in Babati, Tanzania from doubled crop yields, doubled the number of children going to school, 770.000 hectares of forest now protected in Ethiopia, increased by 600% the value of wild coffee harvest in Bale, Ethiopia, and by 249% in sorghum crop harvests in Kitui County, Kenya.

farm7

Nguuzi, his wife and three children didn’t have enough food to eat when his crops were badly affected by drought. But with FarmAfrica’s help, he learned how to water his crops by using the drip irrigation techniques and a water tank built to him. He earns money by selling his green gram crop through a farmers’ group, his family can eat porridge now, and he is able to pay for school uniforms so that his children can attend school.

farm1

Nguuzi is only one example out of many others benefited from NGO’s help. By setting up water points to improve access to clean, safe water, for families, livestock, FarmAfrica added five dams and four boreholes, which improved farmers’ access to water and allowed drip feed irrigation sites to be established close to these water sources. Eight farmers are already benefiting through the sale of vegetables grown on these drip irrigation sites.

farm2

Shanghai Metal Corporation is proud of initiatives of NGOs such as that of FarmAfrica, wich are crucial to help farmers get out of situations of extreme poverty and hunger. Shanghai Metal Corporation is specialized in aluminum alloy tubes/pipes widely used in irrigation pipes such as the ones used in the irrigation system build by FarmAfrica. For our full list of products that we offer check out our website here. Be sure to join the conversation in our LinkedIn group,Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Try also our new mobile application by scanning the QR code below.

You can also read more articles by our team at SMC:

A BRAZILIAN’S TAKE ON LEGALIZING GRAFFITI IN URBAN STREETS OF BRAZIL

YOU WILL LIKE THIS NEW CONCEPT: “LITTLE SATURDAY”

TREAT YOUR POTATO CHIPS BAG CORRECTLY

MASSIVE HYPER-REALIST ALUMINUM SCULPTURE WORTH MILLIONS

RECYCLED ALUMINUM PULLTABS MADE POPULAR BY THE BRAZILIAN COOPERATIVE “ESCAMA STUDIO”

NEW IPHONE6 CASES LEAKED BY A SMARTPHONE DESIGN COMPANY

INSIDE ROCKETS: THE ROLE OF ICE AND ALUMINUM

ALUMINUM EXHIBITION ENCOURAGES IMAGINATION IN ENGINEERING

THE NEW RECLOSABLE SCREW-TOP ALUMINUM BOTTLE FOR YOUR BEER

GIVE A LOOK OF LUXURY TO YOUR BEAUTY PACKAGE

LIQUID PACKAGING MADE FAMOUS BY A WATCH COMPANY