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Best wishes for Xmas and the New Year, and many thanks to all of you following our progress and helping us in our work. Here’s a summary of some of the latest news on the AVN Program.
AVN’s Earth roofs for the Sahel programme has gone from strength to strength in 2009 (and has even extended beyond the Sahel) :
By the end of the last building season (June ’09), 146 VN masons had been trained, and currently we have some 230 apprentices in training ; we estimate that over 7,000 people have benefitted directly from the AVN programme in Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal, and that the equivalent of around 300,000 euros (= 444,000 US$) has been generated in local salaries.
Camille Sanon, VN builder and his team, Sinthiou-Bamanbé/Senegal.
We can confidently expect the total number of vaults built by the end of the current winter season to be over 1,000.
International recognition is growing, with AVN being one of eleven “...outstanding finalists” for this year’s World Habitat Awards, as well as one of 26 prizewinners (out of over 1700 projects submitted), for the World Bank’s Development Marketplace Competition on ‘Adaptation to Climate Change ‘.
The World Bank prize funds will be used to match a similar grant from the French Ensemble Foundation, to trial our new strategy for scaling up the apprenticeship and construction Program (DPPV : Deployment of the Program from a Pilot Village). This signals our renewed focus on concentrating the great majority of our efforts on housing and facilities (schools, dispensaries...) for rural families.
AVN’s structure is reinforced with the addition of a new offshoot : AVN-Belgium, which is now formally established there as a ‘not for profit’ NGO. AVN-Belgium’s first program, in collaboration with our team in Burkina Faso and with Abantu-Zambia, is scheduled over three years, and involves training of apprentices from Zambia in Burkina Faso, and the deployment of a team of VN masons from Burkina Faso to Zambia for 5 months each year, during the Zambian dry season (which, fortuitously, coincides with the rainy season in Burkina Faso) ; during the first three years of this program, it is planned to build about 70 houses in the construction zone of 6 villages, and to train 16 VN masons and 32 apprentices.
Séri Youlou welcoming Christopher Phiri and Kasalama Moobela, the first two apprentices from Zambia, at the bus station in Boromo, after their 24 hour plane journey from Lusaka via Addis-Ababa and Lomé.
This appeal by Séri Youlou, co-founder of AVN, recorded in Boromo, was broadcast at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (sub-titled in English)
It reinforces the growing awareness of the role that AVN’s programme can play in reducing carbon emissions ; assessment of the relative carbon footprint of VN housing is being carried out by for us pro bono by staff in the London office of Environmental Resources Management (ERM), leading global experts in the field of environmental impact assessment.
Your investments in our programme will not only bring social and economic benefits to AVN’s target populations in the Sahel and elsewhere. They will also pay off in the longer term in reducing global carbon emissions, by replacing ’carbon-heavy’ building materials such as corrugated iron roofing, concrete blocks, and cement with locally sourced earth and water. You may think the difference this makes is marginal, but think again : the corrugated iron roofing sheets used throughout Africa only last 5-8 years, and the iron they are made from is manufactured in China and India, and shipped and trucked half-way round the world before ending up on some poor African family’s roof...to be replaced a few years later when they have rusted away !
If you are based in the USA or the UK, you can do your bit to help the rural poor in the Sahel, and make some impact - however small - on global carbon emissions, by making tax-free donations via our entries on the Global Giving websites :
Global Giving USA
Global Giving UK
« Thank you once more for your support Hoping to see you soon on www.lavoutenubienne.org ! »
Séry Youlou, Thomas Granier and all the AVN team
AVN’s principal sponsors in 2009
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Association La Voute Nubienne (AVN) trains and supports local builders in the Sahel in the construction of affordable earth brick vaulted houses, eliminating the need for scarce wood, reducing deforestation, and preventing desertification, while contributing to economic development.
The Voute Nubienne (VN) technique is a simplified, standardised, adaptation of an ancient technique from the Nubian region of Egypt. Earth brick Nubian vaults built over 3,000 years ago as store-rooms at the funerary temple of Rameses II at Luxor, are still standing. We think the technique has proved its sustainability !
The simplified VN technique, relatively unknown in the Sahel and West Africa, has been validated at the technical and socio-economic levels during the first few years of AVN’s activity, and is a wonderful example of African technology transfer.
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