How many rubbers build a shack?

The year started in a rush for a local bank’s initiative to help shack dwellers by selling token bricks to supporting donors. Standard Bank announced this week, the start of the school year serves as a trigger for the bank to accelerate its Buy a Brick campaign, offering it as a vehicle to major donors to support communities in informal settlements.
The Buy a Brick campaign sells erasers as token bricks at N$5 a piece to sponsors. The erasers are then donated to learners while the donation goes to the campaign coffers.
FaanBergh Winckler Projects became the first commercial enterprise to make a substantial contribution to the Buy a Brick project late last year when they bought 2000 erasers in the form of brick facsimiles for the learners of Dr Aupa Frans Indongo Primary School in Babylon, Katutura.
The erasers went to the school this week to enable each learner to have his or her own when the school started. By buying 2000 “token bricks” FaanBergh Winckler Projects has donated N$10,000 to the Buy a Brick project.
Standard Bank launched the Buy-a-Brick Project in Windhoek in October selling erasers to donors. Each eraser looks like a small brick and for each eraser sold, a donation goes to the Shack Dwellers Federation. The bank and the federation has a relationship covering the past eight years.
The Buy a Brick project was launched jointly by Standard Bank’s CEO Vetumbuavi Mungunda and the First Lady, Monica Geingos as the patron of the federation.
“This is our call out campaign to all schools to join us in helping these poor communities by giving them the opportunity to have a proper place they can call home. The housing challenge is everyone’s responsibility so play your part as a good Namibian citizen,” said Sigrid Tjijorokisa, Custodian of the Standard Bank Buy a Brick initiative.
As part of this CSI project, Standard Bank started distributing order forms to schools countrywide.