Some of us dream of helping the world’s most disadvantaged. UNE alumnus Ashley Peverett, co-founder and CEO of the Building Communities Initiative, is doing more than dream. He’s constructing a solution.
He’s not exactly sure when the seed was planted – Ashley had been a regular visitor to the Asia-Pacific while rolling out business centres for the global property firm Regus in the early 2000s.
“I also lived in a fairly affluent part of Mumbai for a time,” Ashley says. “You would regularly see people who had come in from the rural areas; whole families in rags with just a few possessions tied up with string and nowhere to go. It was heartbreaking.”
‘what has become of this world and what has driven this woman to this?’.
There is one encounter Ashley will never forget. “I went out walking early one morning and found a woman asleep in the gutter, with one child tucked under each arm,” he says. “I recall thinking ‘what has become of this world and what has driven this woman to this?’.
It wasn’t until Ashley fell on hard times himself that an idea started to grow. In the wake of the global financial crisis, in 2008, he lost his comfortable job and ex-pat lifestyle in Mumbai, his home, relationship, visa … everything.
“All the pillars of my life were suddenly gone,” says Ashley, who returned home to Perth to live with his parents and take stock. “It felt like having my throat cut at the time, but it gave me the chance to completely re-invent myself. Support from my family saved my life – and there are many people who don’t have the luxury and privilege of family support or a safe roof over their heads.”
Armed with a Masters of Business Administration from UNE that he had completed in 2006, Ashley decided to pursue further study in architecture, a childhood passion. Maintaining a successful architecture and interior design business would consume him for the next 12 years. But, in time, he began to realise that it wasn’t well-heeled clients that he wanted to serve.
I wanted to come up with a way to make large-scale affordable housing for some of the world’s poorest people.”
“I became concerned about the growing housing crisis in countries like Africa and India, which contain the world’s fastest growing cities,” says Ashley. “More than half of the urban population in Africa and 24% of the urban population in India live in slums. About 50 million people need homes in Africa, and about the same in India, let alone other developing countries elsewhere in the world. I wanted to come up with a way to make large-scale affordable housing for some of the world’s poorest people.”
So Ashley and co-founder Nenad Novkovic set about assembling a global team of multidisciplinary consultants to research what could be done, sought global partners and began developing a suitable design and construction model. It took a few years, but in June 2019 the Building Communities Initiative (BCI) blossomed, with the mandate to use innovation and technology to “build quality, self-sustaining communities in collaboration with the citizens of emerging nations”.
“It was a grand plan, but I kept thinking why not me?, why not Perth?, why not Australia?,” Ashley says. “I had seen a lot of horrendous things in India and came to feel that there was a reason I was there; that there was something I could do to help. I really believe this is my destiny, but you have to be in it for the long haul.”
Rather than a one-off donation or short-term commitment, BCI makes an investment in families and their future.
“Without a home, people have no safety, security or a strong foundation for public health and education,” Ashley says. “How can your children have a good education without a permanent home? How can you have good mental health without a safe place to live?”
Using the technology it has pioneered, BCI has the ability to build very strong buildings very fast. “It’s no good going in and saying you will build 10,000 homes over 10 years; you need to build 100,000 a year,” Ashley says. “If you want the support of government, they need to make change within their term. They don’t want the 10-year plan but the two-year plan.”
BCI is still in the early stages of realising its vision, but is actively collaborating with government and private partners to establish manufacturing plants in India and Africa, thereby creating valuable jobs along the way. It has contracts for the construction of about 30,000 homes – four-floor, walk-up apartments – in Africa, and is expanding into the Ukraine and eastern Europe, to be “on the front foot when the war is over and displaced people need somewhere to return to”.
Ashley is also working to establish a not-for-profit arm of BCI to help all those people “not even on the radar”.
“It needs millions of dollars, but we want to create an instrument in partnership with financial institutions like the World Bank,” he says. “We are getting construction costs down – we are targeting under $US10,000 to build a quality home – and we should be able to get that even lower. If we can do that, get access to land, and do that on a large-scale, then that will be really something. We would like to build 1 million homes every year to give the poorest of poor home ownership.”
It all relies on a global team (BCI has offices in Australia, India, Ghana and the Ukraine), and partners in Chennai, Guinea and other African countries. “The best talent in the world and international partnerships are key to our success,” Ashley says. “If it wasn’t for that network, we wouldn’t be able to scratch the surface.”
As well as gaining more compassion for the plight of others, more resilience and greater confidence, Ashley says he is constantly reminded of the value of his UNE MBA. “It has been the foundation of my whole career,” he says. “The knowledge and skills that I gained have been invaluable, and having those letters after my name has undoubtedly opened doors on this journey. And it is a journey, not a destination, but a very exciting one.”
