By Tony Kaye | AVN Vice-President
AVN 15th Anniversary
AVN's Annual Report for the 2014 / 15 Season has just been published. As well as summarising the last season's achievements, it also lays out the results achieved by AVN and the teams of masons trained through our programme since the year 2000, when the Association was born. In brief:
- 5 countries and 13 regions of deployment in West Africa, employing 51 staff
- 380 qualified NV masons, and 300 apprentices in training
- 1,500 completed construction sites in 700 different localities, totally 68,000 m2 of NV buildings
- 20,000 end-user beneficiaries
- 55,000 tonnes of CO2 eq potentially spared in initial construction and lifetime energy efficiency
- 2.2 million USD of local economies generated in basic structural works.
These remarkable achievements are the results of the 33% average annual growth rate of the market in NV construction. You can download the English version of the 80 page, beautifully illustrated, Annual Report here.
New regional office in Mali
AVN's new regional office in Koutiala was inaugurated in February in the presence of local dignitaries and M. Harouna Ouattara, supporter of the project on "Zero maintenance Nubian Vaults in Mali" financed by the Air Liquide Foundation.
Completed in August 2015, the construction of this pilot building is the start of AVN's R&D programme in Mali aimed at financial and technical testing and validation of architectural and technical solutions for an urban environment:
permanent maintenance-free coatings for external walls (e.g. cement renders over adobe bricks with encrusted pebbles),
anti-erosion roof coatings (earth+sand+tar),
new designs for parapets (cement blocks and slabs, reinforced concrete),
construction of external staircases to maximise use of a roof-terrace.
This first test building has proved the worth of the above techniques and has also led to the training of 9 local masons and apprentices capable of responding to the growing demand for urban and community NV buildings.
The pilot building has already received many visitors. Although urrently used as an office, its design can be adapted for housing or community buildings such as health centres and schools, and AVN is now preparing guidelines to this effect.
Portfolio of amazing photos of NV masons at work
To finish this report, we'd like you to enjoy the superb photos taken by the French photographer Régis Binard, who visited AVN's program in Senegal this year, and sent us magnificent images of NV masons and their work. You can see the full set on his website here.
Best wishes to you and all our supporters from all of us at AVN in France and in Africa.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
