The first tiny home sold for Rawhaus
When Cassandra Sari Damayanti joined the Because Accelerator in the spring of 2021, she was still at the beginning stages of growing awareness around her company, Rawhaus, and the importance of its product—tiny, sustainable homes for Indonesian communities.
Less than one year later, Cassandra has successfully sold her first home—and learned a lot along the way!
Constructing, deconstructing and transporting the tiny home
To begin the process, the Rawhaus team initially constructed the house at their facility in Bandung, Indonesia. They then disassembled the house to where it could be delivered with just one truckload, and off it went!
Following a 1,500-mile trek across land and sea, the materials arrived in Gorontalo, Indonesia, where the house was reassembled by a team of one Rawhaus representative and several local residents.
The completed house is being used by a recycling program initiative called Paredice (Parongpong, Rawhaus, Evoware, Divers clean action and Carbon Ethics)—an alliance consisting of social enterprises and NGOs with a mission of creating an independent and sustainable Indonesia using “a holistic system from upstream to downstream on waste management and environmental conservation to educate the public one district at a time.”
A workshop in progress, where community members turn plastic waste into useful items!
Through this program in the new house, the community will learn how to sort and manage domestic waste, use a plastic shredding and molding machine, and turn the end product into something useful—such as baskets and building materials, like tiles. After that, the carbon emissions produced will be calculated and offset through a nature conservation program.
“After completing the Because Accelerator and this small project, I learned a lot about what works and does not work for my product, identified production issues, got a clearer picture of the cost structure, and most importantly, got valuable feedback from the market” shared Cassandra in discussing her takeaways. “By starting from this small, simple project and being hands-on throughout the process, I learned more about building than I did in architecture school and learned more about running a business than I did throughout my MBA! Looking forward, we plan to build a small sample community that can showcase our product, scale up capacity, and tune the production line to be more efficient.”
Learn more about Cassandra’s experience in the Because Accelerator.
The Because Accelerator is a completely free online training and mentorship program for entrepreneurs who have product-focused ideas and businesses in areas impacted by poverty.