On Wednesday, January 25, Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim will deliver the keynote address at the Tuck School of Business to launch a four-day design workshop for the $300 House Project, a concept developed by Tuck Professor Vijay Govindarajan.

In the fall of 2010, Govindarajan developed the $300 House concept and began a blog  to initiate a dialogue on proposed solutions to develop low-cost housing for the poorest populations in the world, those who are not currently served by any conventional housing programs. Since the initial concept discussion, students, faculty and staff from Tuck, the Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth’s Studio Art Department and the Center for Health Care Delivery Science have collaborated on the $300 House project. 

“Over 70 million people – the size of the United Kingdom – live in pavements with only sky as their roof,” Govindarajan said. “Is this right? Even insects and spiders have houses. Housing is a human right. Any nation which cannot house and look after its own people is a failed nation. It doesn't have to be that way. Businesses, governments, and NGOs must work together to solve this wicked problem.”

The four-day workshop will bring together students, designers, planners, engineers, healthcare providers, business thinkers and members of two communities in Haiti with the goal of integrating the best aspects of their ideas into a single prototype house for rural areas or densely populated urban slums. The project aims to expand into pilot projects in Haiti.

The address on the $300 House Project is open to the public and will take place at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, January 25, in the Georgiopoulos Classroom in Raether Hall at the Tuck School of Business. It will focus on connections between innovative thinking, the provision of decent, affordable housing for the poorest populations of the world and the role such development plays in the improvement of health, economic stabilization and development.

Kim took office as the 17th president of Dartmouth College on July 1, 2009. He is the first physician to serve as Dartmouth’s president; a co-founder of Partners in Health (PIH) and a former director of the Department of HIV/AIDS at the World Health Organization (WHO). He has dedicated himself to health and social justice work for more than two decades, helping to provide medical treatment to underserved populations worldwide.

Founded in 1900, Tuck is the first graduate school of management in the country and consistently ranks among the top business schools worldwide. Tuck remains distinctive among the world's great business schools by combining human scale with global reach, rigorous coursework with experiences requiring teamwork, and valued traditions with innovation.