Aurélia Greff

A multimedia communication manager of Veolia Environnement, Aurélia Greff, in organizing her holidays, prefers encounters with the populations of the towns and villages that she visits.
This penchant has led her to a very special association : La Voûte Nubienne.

How did you happen to discover La Voûte Nubienne ?

Aurélia Greff

In 2008, I wanted to spend my holidays in West Africa, and specifically in Burkina Faso, the "country of honest men".
With my partner, we wanted to meet the men and women of the country, famous for their very warm welcome. And being very sensitive to the action of the Veolia Environnement Foundation, I also wanted to make a field trip to see how the aid granted was used.
On the Foundation's internet site, I found the projects supported in Burkina Faso. The Nubian vault project caught my fancy. I contacted the chairman, Thomas Granier: the connections happened very simply. We left for a month between October and November 2008, deciding that two weeks would be devoted to visiting the association's various projects.

How did the trip go ?

The association headquarters in Burkina is in the town of Boromo.
We routed our visit around this town, riding moped from village to village.
We met masons trained by the association and admired the many buildings : church, small millet brewery, grain silos, homes, hotels ... we slept under Nubian vaults : the rooms were far more pleasant, cool and comfortable, than those under tin roofs !

We also had the luck to be there at the time of the conference of masons organized by the association: about 80 persons attended and came to hone their skills. For example, the association La Voûte Nubienne teaches the masons without reading and writing skills how to prepare an estimate :
it's doing an extraordinary job of training and transmitting knowledge !

That being said, you became the sponsor of a project underway in Madagascar, of which the leader is the association Écoles du Monde : how did you switch from one project to the other ?

It so happened that the managers of Écoles du Monde had discovered the work of La Voûte Nubienne and were interested in importing it into Madagascar. I was already familiar with the country, which I really love.
I knew that the needs over there, particularly for housing, were enormous. When I realized that Écoles du Monde was ready to apply for aid to set up the project, I immediately offered to be the sponsor for the Foundation.

All aspects of sustainable development are present in this project : the principal players acquire real self-sufficiency (experienced Burkina Faso masons will transmit their skills to Madagascan colleagues), the families can participate in building their own homes, the materials used are cheap and help fight deforestation.
It's a really great initiative !