In 2018, two new SOS Children’s Villages were opened in quick succession in western France. They now offer around 70 children a warm and cosy home. Saunier Duval kitted out the houses – 15 in total – with modern heating technology.
Two boys, two girls, one house – they made it their own in next to no time. SOS mother Anne can’t help but grin when she talks about how the siblings, two girls aged twelve and eleven and two boys aged ten and eight, quickly left their mark on the house – house number 1. “The children moved in in summer. They chose their rooms at one of their first visits and left a stuffed animal behind to keep guard.”
The house is one of eight family homes located in the village in Beauvais-sur-Matha, around an hour’s drive from the west coast of France. It also has a community hall. All of the houses are new-builds. 36 children have found a new home here.
“Sadly, most organisations that look after children in need cannot guarantee that siblings will find a home together,” explains Isabelle Moret, Director of SOS Children’s Villages in France. “We know, however, that the bond shared by brothers and sisters is key to ensuring the well-being of children who have experienced a difficult family environment.” The homes in Beauvais-sur-Matha have room for up to six children. Siblings can stay together here. Just like these four.
The children, who have now found their SOS mother in Anne, were the first to move into the village. Louise and Emma, Léon and Lucas (their names for the sake of this article at least) now all attend primary school in Beauvais. “It’s a short walk away,” says Bintou, the family assistant who supports Anne with housekeeping tasks. The children have already found hobbies they enjoy. “Louise and Emma go horse-riding, while Léon and Lucas play football and practise judo.”
And they have made friends, both in the children’s village and also in the local area. The eight family homes have gradually filled up since summer 2018. The community hall has been given a splash of colour and now features faces with aluminium noses and googly eyes. For Halloween, the windows were decorated with big pumpkins and ghosts. There’s also a small playground where the children can run around right on their doorstep.
“The village is pretty and really cosy, just like our house,” Anne and Bintou are agreed. “It’s just like a modern town house development.” In the garden there’s a drying rack; two pairs of trainers sit in front of the door. A balance bike and a buggy are parked up a couple of houses down. The kids have certainly settled in and literally transformed the village into a real children’s village. Even the letterbox in front of the community hall has their hand prints on it and someone has added the words “Merci” and “Bills, postcards, letters”.
“We are very happy to be here,” says Anne. She is an experienced SOS mother who previously spent almost 20 years working at the SOS Children’s Village in Châteaudun near Orléans. “I decided to work for SOS Children’s Villages so I could share my joy for life and give children the joy they need,” she says.
Bintou supports her as an “aide familiale” – a family assistant. She used to work in a kindergarten. One day she came across an advert for SOS Children’s Village. “I knew that I wanted to get involved.”
The work demands a great deal from the women and their colleagues. The children have gone through a lot and experienced some traumatic circumstances. It is Anne and Bintou’s job to organise day-to-day life; they have to build an emotional relationship yet also be prepared to take a step back. To be a family – for a time. The women have to show tremendous self-control here.
At pretty much the same time as Beauvais-sur-Matha was being set up, SOS Children’s Villages in France was also working on the SOS Children’s Village in Gémozac in the same administrative district. “Building a new SOS Children’s Village, from the first draft right up to the moment the children move in to their new home, is a very special experience for our organisation. It was quite exciting and challenging to open two SOS Children’s Villages within a six-month period,” explains SOS Director Isabelle Moret.
There was a huge and urgent need for the villages in the Charente-Maritime district. Rather than the six family houses originally planned for Beauvais-sur-Matha and a further six in Gémozac, the district ended up funding the construction of eight houses in Beauvais and seven in Gémozac, creating new homes for around 70 children. The two SOS Children’s Villages are really similar in terms of their architecture and fit in well aesthetically with the local surroundings. The technical systems installed in both locations are also the same.
In Beauvais-sur-Matha and Gémozac, Saunier Duval heat pumps provide heating in winter and cooling in summer. The Vaillant Group in France has supported the two projects since day one, both as partner and technical advisor for building services. Although many gas-fired boilers have already been installed in SOS Children’s Villages throughout France in recent years, none of the projects involving heat pump systems have been quite as extensive as this one. In addition to 15 heat pumps from the Genia Air series from the Vaillant Group brand Saunier Duval, the houses were also supplied with a Magna Aqua hot-water heat pump. All in all, this was technology worth more than half a million euros. A real showcase project, and one not only good for SOS Children’s Villages, but also for the environment.
The technology comes with real advantages for the children’s rights organisation. “It is environmentally friendly and conserves resources. The money we save by using this efficient heating technology can then be used elsewhere for the children,” comments Emilie Fontaine from SOS Children’s Villages France.
Alexandra Deschamps, who has passionately worked on many SOS projects in the past at the Vaillant Group in France, adds: “We have a very clear goal in mind: we want to give the children living in SOS Children’s Villages the gift of warmth. Providing efficient heating technology ultimately forms the core of our global partnership with SOS Children’s Villages. And it’s what we do best.”
Efficient heating technology is what we do best.
Our commitment to SOS Children’s Villages would not be possible without the active support of our partners, the installers. A good example of this is the installer Philippe Desrousseaux, who turned his daily routine upside down and worked two full days free of charge to install a new heating system in an SOS Children’s Village. We take a look back at an impressive story.
“In a few days, new children will be moving in with us and now the heating is broken!” When Vaillant France received this call for help in mid-February from the SOS Children’s Village Plaisir in the department of Yvelines, it was an urgent matter. A new gas-fired condensing system had to be procured quickly, and an installer who could put it in place was needed just as fast.
Vaillant France provided a gas-fired condensing system and contacted Philippe Desrousseaux from the company Zen Chaudières. The installer immediately took two days out of his regular schedule to install an ecoTEC plus VCI as a replacement for the old system. “I had to convert the entire exhaust system in order to install the new gas-fired condensing boiler for this project. But I was happy to do it for the children,” says Philippe. “It was clear to me from the beginning that I would do this for free. It was a short-term assignment for me – but to the children it means so much more. A warm and cosy home.”
