WATANI International
21 November 2010
Decent housing is not merely about loans or building materials, it is about human rights and empowerment, about maintaining human dignity, peace and security.
The local housing programme of an Egyptian non-governmental organisation (NGO), the Better Life Association for Comprehensive Development (BLACD), has won a World Habitat Award as part of the United Nations-sponsored World Habitat Day. BLACD received the award last month for after close competition with dozens of civil associations from several countries all of them advanced in civil work. Topping the list were organisations from India, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Cuba.
Built and improved
BLACD is a non-profit organisation founded in Minya, Upper Egypt, in 1995, and working to improve the quality of life for the poor and deprived in Upper Egypt. It is the first NGO in Egypt to formally work on behalf of quarry-workers, fishermen—whom it educates on environmental protection laws and how to limit the pollution of the River Nile—and low-income farmers and their children in Minya.
World Habitat’s GBP10,000 award was presented by the Building and Social Housing Foundation (BSHF), which also presented a silver cup engraved with the name of BLACD and its winning project. Maher Bushra, chairman of BLACD, received the prize at an international ceremony in Shanghai on 4 October 2010.
According to Mr Bushra some 400 new houses have been built and some 600 houses improved. The programme has also seen some 6,000 families gain clean drinking water, sanitary drainage, and indoor toilets.
Mr Bushra told Watani that before applying for the Habitat competition he attended, together with other BLACD representatives, a conference in Canada on the building and housing movement. There he gave an address on behalf of the association; a few months later his speech was translated into English and posted on the Habitat website.
“When we learnt that the BSHF was offering awards we decided to participate with our local housing programme,” Mr Boshra said. “A delegation of international jury members visited us in Minya and stayed over for a week to evaluate the BLACD experiment.” The association’s reports were published in English and Chinese.
Local material
The programme has enabled marginalised households whose housing conditions were unsafe and unhygienic to improve their housing conditions significantly, reducing diseases and achieving a sense of stability.
Watani met some of the women who had benefited from the programme. One villager whose house had been improved said that, previously, it had been a mere hut made of rush matting. “We were living under straw,” she said. “But when we were given a loan of EGP3,000 we were able to build a new house.” Another woman told Watani: “We were embarrassed to invite guests to a house with only one room, but now the house is bigger and cleaner.” Another from the village of Beni Khaled, near Samalout, said the new houses provided better protection. “At last we can drink clean water; before we used to draw water from the Nile. We are so thankful.”
The programme has had a positive impact on several levels: environmentally, economically, and socially. It uses locally-sourced building materials such as limestone, lime mortar and sand. Training courses are given on how materials can be found and used in a way that minimises degradation of the surrounding agricultural land and the wider environment. Compared with existing housing, BLACD designs allow more daylight and ventilation into the homes.
On the economic level, it employs labourers from the local communities to carry out the construction work with the families. It uses local suppliers and transporters of raw materials and quarry blocks, helping to stimulate the local economy. So far BLACD has trained 25 construction workers in the use of locally available material
Reduced domestic violence
The winning programme enables the poor to plan, implement and build their houses. They are also given fair loans that they can resonably expect to be able to repay. The association says that in order to address the area’s housing needs it is necessary to work on changing banking policies towards lending to the poor.
Managed by local leaders and volunteers, the project is working together with residents and 16 grassroots organisations in the area to increase participation, strengthen social networking and establish a housing movement to defend human rights
The project carries out social activities with men, women, children and young people to facilitate integration. Following the improvement in the lives of the residents levels of domestic violence have been notably reduced.
More than 100 women have been trained to be more aware of and to support the realisation of the social and health needs and rights of women in the area. BLACD has worked to build the institutional capacity of other local NGOs such as the Wadi al-Nil Association for the Protection of Quarry Workers and the Hope Association for Women’s Development, providing training, technical and financial support.
One of the important aspects of the programme is that it crosses religious lines, with Christians and Muslims working together in cooperation to build one anothers’ houses.