At a time of increasingly devastating natural disasters, a new company is working to bring affordable and resilient homes to the public - especially communities in disaster-prone areas.

While housing is a necessary component of attaining a sufficient standard of living, not everyone has ready access to it. This is further magnified in parts of the world experiencing poverty and frequent natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes.

WORTHYdomes seeks to change this, one home at a time, by providing sustainable dome shelters to communities regularly battered by natural disasters. Additionally, it also offers modular buildings for individuals and communities looking for low-cost options that meet environmental, safety, and logistical challenges.

"WORTHYdomes serves communities and individuals - caring for their physical, personal, and spiritual needs, and we seek to see entire communities transformed so that no one is invisible or overlooked," said Reagan Rodriguez, Founder and CEO of WORTHYdomes.

He notes the market need for these buildings, especially in places with low incomes and high living costs.

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Driven By Real-World Cases

Rodriguez first got the inspiration to develop cost-effective and sustainable shelter after witnessing Haiti in 2010, the same year it was ravaged by a magnitude 7 earthquake.

WORTHYdomes was able to provide more than a hundred of these domes in the Caribbean nation - the houses still standing ten years later, despite the natural disasters that have visited the country since then.

Domes of Hope: WORTHYdomes Offer Low-Cost, Disaster-Resilient Housing Alternatives
(Photo : Photo: Worthy Crowd Funding)

While the company continued being a "side business" for Rodriguez in the following years, Hurricane Maria's aftermath in Puerto Rico in September 2017 drove him to take WORTHYdomes further and pursue a disaster relief contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

To take this cause further, WORTHYdomes has recently launched a crowdfunding campaign on its website (www.worthydomes.com), aiming to use the funding round to spread awareness about its buildings' capabilities and problem-solving potential across consumers, communities, and potential investors.

The Shelters of the Future

To achieve these affordable and resilient buildings, WORTHYdomes combine old and new construction technologies, employing sustainable methods to ensure comfort, durability, and environmental sustainability - Earth berm construction, green walls, passive solar designs, and more.

"This is the new way to build, high tech composites made from recycled materials and structured earth berming systems that are in a class of their own in the modern housing and building industry," Rodriguez added.

Its solutions include creatively designed structures such as Opal, Hades, Gem, and the Super Igloo - each designed to meet a specific and demanding requirement such as industrial and military applications.

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