Brian McCarthy wants to live in a shipping container – seriously.  And based on what I’ve seen of his work, I would be thrilled to live in one, too.  McCarthy is the founder of PFNC, a manufacturer and provider of affordable housing. PFNC stands for Por Fin, Nuestra Casa – a Spanish phrase that translates as finally, a house of our own.  

In 2004, McCarthy made a visit to Ciudad Juárez, along the US-México border, as part of his executive MBA program. The city is home to more than 300 maquiladoras, which employ 1.1 million people.  Maquiladoras are factories that import materials and equipment duty-free for assembly or manufacturing and then re-export the assembled product, usually back to the originating country; most of their employees live in slums.

After his visit, McCarthy couldn't shake the images of poor people living in slums, especially since most of those poor people work in factories and contribute directly to the area's robust economic growth rate (Juarez has an unemployment rate of less than 3%.)

In response, he founded PFNC.  Por Fin, Nuestra Casa is a for-profit business dedicated to raising the standard of living for families who currently reside in dangerous or substandard conditions.  It does so by using low-cost, recycled materials – retrofitted shipping containers, to be exact – to create and sell affordable housing for the base of the pyramid.

McCarthy is here at Pop!Tech as part of the Social Innovation Fellows program; he got just 10 minutes on stage today to tell us about his work.  Luckily, he was gracious enough to sit down with me afterwards for an extended interview about him, his work and housing for the base of the economic pyramid.  Side note: PFNC and Brian McCarthy were recently featured by CNN; rather than re-writing it, I urge you to read it before reading this interview.

(This post continues past the break; click "Read More" for the rest of the article and the interview)

As the week winds down I wanted to share a note about a couple of interesting Web 2.0 ventures relevant to the base of the pyramid community. Two social networks have launched recently, aiming to connecting people and ideas around the role of business and entrepreneurship against poverty and inequality.

BOP Source is one of them. The brainchild of Jenara Nerenberg (author of a great blog that goes by the same name), BOP Source was launched just over a week ago. It will be interesting to see how the idea continues to evolve. I was personally intrigued by Jenara's vision of Web 2.0. tools in the hands of the base of the pyramid, as described in her guest post for NextBillion.net. She envisions BOP Source playing that role, as explained in the original press release, which you can read here.

I also heard about Business Fights Poverty, which already has interesting activity going on with over 1,000 members pencilled in, podcasts, videos, interviews and discussions about the role of business addressing development goals.

I have joined both, although I'm well aware I'll probably not be able to be an active member everywhere. It's just a lot to keep up with! Very exciting times nonetheless... The tools are out there to bring together people and groups with a shared vision and shared ideas, and folks like Jenara and Zahid Torres are taking a lead in using them.

Along the same lines, here is another recommendation for your weekend: I just finished listening to Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, Seth Godin's latest book. Yes... listening to it. You can download the audiobook for free here. It was nice to listen to such great content read by Godin himself. Enjoy your weekend!