This Sunday afternoon, Fouad Ben Ahmed and his magic chair are expected like the messiah in the building without elevator of Lujibica in Blanc-Mesnil (Seine-Saint-Denis). The 60-year-old woman suffers from serious respiratory ailments and is constantly on medical oxygen. But there, she will finally be able to leave her home “to go for a walk in the garden,” she rejoices. I spent the whole winter in the hospital and it’s been a year since I left ”.
If it can descend its three floors in 4.5 minutes flat, it is thanks to an electric chair mounted on casters which descends and climbs the steps using a lever system placed under the seat. At the maneuver, Fouad Ben Ahmed, founder of Vertical Mobility Assistance (AMV), which operates the machine with dexterity. Its battery allows it to descend 30 floors, 18 for an overweight person.
Deep in the seat, clutching her oxygen cylinder, Lujibica relishes each step taken. Arriving on the threshold of his building, in the open air, a broad smile lights up his face: “You are my savior. I live again, without that, I remain locked in my home, ”she breathes. All it took was a simple phone call to the association to make his dream come true. She remembers with anguish the time when her husband and her stepson carried her on a simple kitchen chair. “It took them 25 minutes to go downstairs and take breaks on each floor. “
The idea was born in 2016 with the collective founded by Fouad Ben Ahmed, “More without elevators”, which has since become an association. It starts from a clear observation: in Blanc-Mesnil, in the Montillet and Blés d’Or districts, cited Floréal and Voie-Verte, 300 inhabitants are aged 65 to 98 and benefit from an adult allowance. disabled. “These people who cannot leave their homes are invisible to the statistics. “
Partnerships with town halls and donors
“Everything is done to fit out the apartments for the disabled but nothing is planned to get out. We are the only ones fighting for this. They look at us a bit like extraterrestrials, ”underlines Fouad Ben Ahmed, who is campaigning for vertical mobility to be finally taken into account in the modernization of buildings.
“We would like to include a health clause that would make it possible to identify people who do not move. In two years with the aging of the population, it will become unavoidable. We won’t be able to put everyone on the first floor! “
Le Blanc-Mesnil is the first city to have entered into a financial partnership with AMV. This alliance, tested since July 2019, was followed by Dugny and the donor Emmaüs Habitat. The association has been able to carry out 750 trips since its creation. “On average, we do around 30 a week,” she says.
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A tour of the news in Seine-Saint-Denis and the IDF
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The initiative creates emulators since the city of Saint-Ouen and that of Villetaneuse will contract. In addition, there are also collaborations with seven donors, including I3F and Emmaüs Habitat. “As soon as there is an elevator breakdown, I3F calls us,” explains Fouad Ben Ahmed. Even the firefighters welcome the experience. A barracks in Val-d’Oise appealed to the association. “Because when they have to help a person trapped at the bottom of his apartment, it mobilizes a vehicle with six people. “
An idea that “changes life”
Thanks to these volunteers, the most inextricable situations were able to find solutions. Thus this woman of 130 kilos who lived on the tenth floor of a building in Asnières (Hauts-de-Seine), who was stranded at home and could not honor her medical appointments. Now, four times a week, the AMV goes home with the famous armchair and begins the descent of the vertiginous spiral staircase, the only escape for her.
Others, like Célia, 9, were able to break their isolation. This young autistic woman lived in a six-storey residence without an elevator. Her mother tried to carry her on her back, but it quickly became untenable. She resolved to appeal, via her landlord, to the association. Every day, she can now go to her school in Fontenay-sous-Bois (Val-de-Marne). Families also appreciate it. Isabelle, whose mother suffers from neurological problems, bluntly blurted out: “It changed her life. She has regained her autonomy and no longer lives cloistered at home. Yet she only had one floor to go down, but a bad fall had dissuaded her from venturing out of her house. “It’s not much of a staircase, but when you’re stuck it’s a mountain. “
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