Ousmane Pame

Mr Ousmane Pame Founder and President of REDES

Dr. Ousmane Pame is an educator and a community leader. He earned his PhD in 2002 and Doctorat d’Etat in 2015 at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar (Senegal). He is a lecturer at Dakar University and has taught French and English languages, African literature and traditions in several American study abroad programmes in Senegal

He also worked as the resident Academic Director of Living Routes at the Dakar Earth Rights Ecovillage Institute. This Institute trains international and Senegalese students in ecovillage design and organizes service learning programmes in villages in Senegal.

For the past two decades, he has been actively involved in community development projects in rural Senegal (capacity building, permaculture, fish farming, drinking water, nutrition and food processing programmes He has been supporting deprived schoolchildren in rural areas through distribution of free school material and classroom construction. Thanks to his programmes, 35 village schools have received donation of materials and over 600 hundreds have access to formal education every year.

Dr Pame introduced the ecovillage principles and practices into his small town, Guédé Chantier (7000 inhabitants) in 2007. Two years later, he was elected as mayor of Guédé, the first in the history of his community. During his mandate, he strove to transition his municipality in an eco-community through various initiatives. He also developed an inspiring and productive twinship beween Guede and Damanhur eco-communities.

He is the founding member and President of REDES (Network for Ecovillage Emergence and Development in the Sahel) (www.redes-ecovillages.org). REDES current projects include an important school green programme and the transformation of 35 Mauritanian and Senegalese villages into an ecovillage hub.

He has been the president of the Global Ecovillage Network/ Africa since its creation in 2012 in Sekem, Egypt. He co-organized the first World Ecovillage Summit in Dakar in December 2014.

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