LEDeG organised Flood mitigation cum Rammed Earth workshop in Charasa from the 16th to the 17th of June 2018.
As part of the developing program for Charasa, a LEDeG team and an architect group working in the Nubra valley came to the village on the 16th of June for a workshop with the villagers.
The workshop consisted in the building of a wall with local materials and the design of the architects using a sawn log and some rocks. The walls dimensions were the following: 160 cm high, 132 cm long and 1 foot (30 cm) large.
This project was important for the Flood Mitigation program as it had the purpose to bring the youth of the village together and making them united, dynamic and strong enough to handle crisis situations such as floods. It also permitted more interactions between the different generations of villagers so that they can help each other in tough situations and to reinforce the intergenerational communication at a time when the elderly person in a more traditional way and the youngsters seek a more modern way of life. Finally, the workshop promoted the use of traditional constructions with the help of modern technologies so that the younger generations could see the potential of their local resources and how strong and appealing their buildings could be with easily accessible technologies and resources.
Thus, the team arrived in the afternoon of the 16th and started by meeting the villagers. A meeting occurred so that the purpose of the workshop was explained to the villagers, the architects presented them self to them, and so that they could express their concerns and inputs to the developing program for Charasa.
Once the meeting was over, everyone headed to the chosen place for the workshop where both villagers and the LEDeG team started preparing the structure to contain the wall and building the foundations.
The foundations were made by digging in a few inches into the ground in a 5 x 1.5 square feet rectangle, pouring some cement and placing some locally made bricks (made of earth and a little amount of cement). This was finished on the 17th early in the morning.
The construction continued putting in place the structure, sawing the log, sieving the soil, mixing it with some water, hay and one portion of cement for four portions of soil. Then the different soil mixtures were compressed in the structure into different layers.
The wall was finished around 4 pm and the structure was deconstructed about an hour and a half later once the layers had dried up. Many villagers were there to admire the wall appear out of the structure and to greet the LEDeG team for the well effectuated workshop and the good cooperation that took place with them.
The construction was a success as it got the participation of a lot of villagers, and especially of the youth of the village. The young adults and elder children participated in the building of the wall while the younger children played and danced around the wall bringing cheerfulness and encouragements to all. The structure technology was left to the villagers so they could build more walls using the same methods. The team left Charasa in the early evening leaving behind dynamic and united villagers motivated to build some more walls in the near future
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