“Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose,” Thomas Edison, one of the greatest inventors and innovators of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s is quoted saying. Diaspora University Town (DUT) system is for making the time resource and land resource productive. The system is for tapping time capital and having time capital invested in accordance with Kenya constitution 2010. Time capital is what will eradicate slums in Kenya.
No person and family given a choice between living in a decent house in a clean and healthy environment or in a slum with a dirty and unhealthy environment will choose the latter. Thousands of Kenyans who live in slums have time capital capable of changing their living status. Each year they lose this time capital for there is no system or formula for this time application.
The DUT system and formula will put this time to productivity and establish the time as capital to produce houses and settlements in accordance with the Kenya Constitution.
In the Kenya Constitution preamble, we wrote, “We the people of Kenya, … RESPECTFUL of the environment, which is our heritage, and determined to sustain it for the benefit of future generations… ADOPT, ENACT and give this constitution to ourselves and to our future generations.”
Slums damage the environment for ourselves and for future generations. Our present generation has to start working toward achieving a clean and healthy environment in every part of Kenya by applying the only capital that a human being has, Time.
In the Kenya Constitution we awarded ourselves the right to housing. The Kenya Constitution reads, “43 (1) Every person has the right— (b) to accessible and adequate housing, and to reasonable standards of sanitation.” Kenya Constitution further reads, “19 (3) The rights and fundamental freedoms in the Bill of Rights— (a) belong to each individual and are not granted by the State.”
Diaspora University Town (DUT) is a project that will achieve the rights of housing through development of a well-planned town that will settle persons going to the future. The town will have housing units, townhouses and apartments, progressively built.
The town GDP will progressively grow as DUT systems and plans apply the resource of time, through jobs creation, to meet the constitutional rights of food, housing, clean water, healthcare, social security, education, clean healthy environment, and children rights.
The DUT project that is developed by Diaspora Kenyans, Ndara B Community and Partners is becoming a town development model that will ignite new towns developed in the 47 counties. More towns development will reduce migration to slums and have persons living in slums relocate to the well-planned towns. This will progressively eliminate the slums.
The Diaspora University plan will also play a role in slums elimination as the plan adopts the WPI plan of project-based learning. Students who join the university to study engineering, business and other degree programs through project-based learning will learn and create development plans that modify slums to planned settlements with a clean and healthy environment.
As the DUT system, formula and model is incorporated in the education of students joining Diaspora University; the Students will also be able to spearhead projects for new town settlements.
The DUT system is established through making Ndara B Community human resource and land resource productive and Diaspora Remittances productive. Kenyans trapped in slums and poor settlements that could deteriorate to slums can use this model.
The DUT system is a formula of making the human resource of time productive to meet a person’s rights of food, housing, clean water, healthcare, social security, education, clean environment, and children rights.
The system that is based on recognizing time as capital aims to guide to productivity the time resource or capital of over 40 billion hours that is lost every year when 20 million persons are not productive or underproductive.
As more and more of the adult Kenyans apply their time to develop the systems and plans that meet their constitutional rights when using the DUT system or formula, they will no longer live in slums. The time applied productively will make Kenya a wealthy nation with a clean and healthy environment.
(Dan Kamau, formerly of Worcester, MA, is the Diaspora University Trust – Executive Trustee www.dut.or.ke and a Director in DUT Credit Ltd www.dutcredit.co.ke Dan can be reached via Email dan@dut.or.ke )
