Joseph Parpaillon, Mayor of the city of Orvault and member of the Urban Community of Nantes in France, was in Songhai Centre in Porto Novo on Tuesday, February 9, 2016. Mr. Parpaillon accompanied a delegation of Arcade (Active and retired people for Cooperation and Development Aid), a French association committed in a partnership with Songhai, for the construction of ecological toilets at Gbessou in the lake city of Sô-Ava.
This is a visit that comes within the framework of the decentralized cooperation between the City of Sô-Ava, Nantes Metropolis, the city of Orvault in France and Songhai Centre. The cooperation, focused mainly on hygiene and sanitation, involves the construction of ecological toilets and agricultural entrepreneurship training for the youths of the project implementation localities. It aims not only at sanitizing the environment but also at promoting youth employment and creating income generating activities for the people of the locality, through managing these toilets. 6 latrines and 2 showers are already built at Gbessou on the field of the secondary school and about thirty youths trained in agricultural entrepreneurship…
The mayor of Orvault is not visiting Songhai for the first time. However, he is very impressed every time he comes round. “What I have seen here is remarkable,” he exclaimed during his visit on Tuesday, 9 February. Joseph Parpaillon is stunned seeing the recycling and processing system developed by Songhai and which also contributes to environmental protection. For him, the Western model still has much to learn from Songhai in this area. Because, he says, “we are we in an economy, I will say a little wasteful. And although today we are aware of the environmental protection – COP21 held in Paris demonstrated it – we have much, much to do in the area of recycling, avoiding waste. “And the whole delegation recognized the expertise of the Centre on the issue.
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