Rebuilding homes
Since the early 1990s, millions of Afghan refugees have returned to their homeland. In many cases, they arrive to find their homes and villages in ruins and lack the necessary materials to rebuild. Building the loam walls is not so difficult, but finding suitable materials for the roof is a problem. Shelter Now has set up its own factories to produce pre-fabricated concrete sections...
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Afghan villager are producing roof material
Since the early 1990s and in particular since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, millions of Afghan refugees have returned to their homeland. In many cases they arrived to find their homes and villages in ruins and they lacked the necessary materials to rebuild. Building the loam walls is not so difficult, but finding suitable materials for the roof is a problem. The typical flat roofs used on Afghan houses are traditionally made of wooden beams, brushwood and loam. Afghanistan once had a huge amount of forest lands, but all that has now changed and good-quality building wood is hard to come by. Since 1992, Shelter Now has set up six factories for manufacturing roofing systems - beams and panels made of reinforced concrete - along with doors and windows made of steel and glass. Local Afghans are trained at the factories. In order to ensure that a normal Afghan family can afford to build a house, the material is sold very cheaply or sometimes given away for free. Subsidizing the prices ensures that the reconstruction can proceed. So far more than 31,000 houses have been rebuilt using our materials.
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Rebuilding in Pakistan after the Flood of the Century
After the terrible flood during the summer of 2010 many thousands were able to survive because of the assistance of Shelter Now. Meanwhile over 100 new flood resistant homes have been built with the help of Shelter Now.
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Yield Increase
After the need of building material for houses is met, the factory produces concrete poles for grapevines. By staking the vine now the farmers harvest double or tripple as much fruit.
