Compagnons Bâtisseurs Ile de France

Our organisation promotes housing and environment living improvement and also prevents from exclusion: these projects goals are both technical and social. Resident’s involvement encourages empowerment and proactivity as well as helping each other and local solidarities. This concrete action on the structure should enable vulnerable people to appropriate housing and restore social relationships. Through the technical and educational skills of their technical leaders, Compagnons Bâtisseurs support families or isolated persons for housing environment improvement. Consequently, the renovation projects mobilize the participation of the inhabitants who are not able to face the financial pressure of their housing rehabilitation by the private sector companies or usual rehabilitation support facilities. The institutional and territorial partnership, set up with the social and technical services, allows the organisation to identify exactly the needs of the beneficiary population. Each year, many volunteers from France and some from other European countries come to discover the work of our teams on the ground. They learn the basic manual work (stonework, electricity, plumbing, carpentry…) to do with the inhabitants. They participate also in all activities set up by the workplace, such as weekly workshops (wall papering, soldering, and woodwork) and other activities (control of expenditures on energy). Before all, they learn how to work with inhabitants who leaves in poor neighbourhoods of Paris and his region, and how to work generally with a team.