This project will help train 15 Zambian villagers to build affordable, healthy, mud-brick vaulted houses for up to 40 village families, kick-starting a sustainable, low-carbon, local housing market.
Traditional houses in rural Zambia have timber and thatch roofs, which present major health and fire risks, and need constant maintenance; deforestation means they are no longer feasible. The alternative had been to build house with corrugated iron roofs on timber beams. The cost of these materials is beyond the means of many families; they last only 10 years or so, and their poor insulation gives little protection from day-time heat, night-time cold, and noise during the rainy season.
AVN trains and supports rural masons to build long-lasting houses with timberless vaulted mud-brick roofs, providing an inexpensive, locally sourced, sustainable, and healthy alternative to use of sawn timber and sheet-metal roofing materials.
This project is kick-starting a local market in VN housing in 16 villages in the Chibombo District, providing affordable housing for up to 40 village families, employment for 15 VN masons, and keeping scarce cash resources in the local economy.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
