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Solidarity Project

Help local organisation to enhance educational program

At SABALIBOUGOU in Mali
From 2006 to 2007
By Architectes Sans Frontières - France
Local partners: Comité des Jeunes pour le Développement de Sabalibougou - Plaisir Jeunesse and ACJAM
Donors: Région Ile de France

As a solidarity project, this building has been made in cooperation with a local organization of young people living in Sabalibougou, a Bamako neighborhood in Mali and two social workers organizations in France. 12 French adolescents were sent from a Paris suburb to participate in the construction of these three classrooms.

The task for ASF was mainly to help choosing the right place to do it, to draw the mainline of the project and to assist the French organizations in their work.

participant
local workers

School and housing

International cooperation

At TETE NGOBA in Congo (the Democratic Republic of the)
In 2007
By Architettura Senza Frontiere Italian Network
Local partners: Congregation of the diocesan and Nuns of St. Francis of Assisi of Tshumbe
Donors: POIM

The project has the general purpose to fight against the increasing analphabetism, unemployment and underdevelopment, plagues that hit young people above all. This plan is part of a project aimed to increase scholarship rates, led by the local partner who acts in the name of the Diocese of “Thumbe”. The project implies the construction of a secondary school centre in an area without any schools for 80 km, where roads are extremely difficult to move on.

Together with the local population and its local partner, ASF Onlus elaborated the following project:

a) construction of an autonomous school complex made of a building with 6 classrooms for 540 students from twelve to eighteen years old and of another building for offices and the direction for the head master

b) building of houses for 18 teachers

c) realization of a well to take out of the water from the underearth stratum

d) being in acquaintance with professional activities linked to building and manufacturing fields through the promotion and realization of professional training, but also through the direct participation of local people in the construction of the buildings themselves as well as in the creation of the furniture for them.

The methodology adopted for the improvement of the different activities of the project is generally based on a strongly communitarian approach and has the purpose of increasing the local cultural and professional abilities, with the aim of creating autonomous capabilities and putting the bases of development for the direct and undirect beneficiaries.

school project's model
school project's plan

Public School

International Cooperation

At ANSE-À-PITRE in Haiti
From 2004 to 2005
By Arquitectos Sin Fronteras España
Local partners: Ministère de lâ Education and Jeunesse et Sports
Donors: Public funding

For Phase 2 of this project, we propose to continue supporting the National Primary School in the border town of Anse-à-Pitre in Southwest Haiti. It consists in building two more school rooms, which would add up to the four rooms already in construction, in order to reach the total number of six required for the fi rst cycle of Primary Education. It also consists in the construction of a canteen and a school orchard, plus the instruction of the APA for them to grow and cook the schoolchildren’s breakfast. Moreover, we propose to further all those activities directed toward the creation of egalitarian bonds among the people inhabiting both sides of the Dominican-Haitian border, through joint actions involving teachers, students and parents from both countries.

The whole project is part of a larger process of cross-border development to promote transnational environmental education. It puts special emphasis on the improvement of the educational infrastructures in both border towns, seen as fulcra for the expansion of a new sensibility towards the physical environment, which on the Haitian side is devastated and on the Dominican side is threatened by industrial and touristic activities, incompatible with the preservation of protected areas. The idea of a refectory furnished with cooking devices powered by solar energy is aimed at putting this special emphasis on the preservation of the environment – the use of clean energies reduces the impact of deforestation caused by the production of charcoal, which is the only existing fuel in the area.

Our project is based, therefore, on the potential capacity of instruction to impinge on a tendency which is decimating the student population in the region, while also causing serious damage to its resources and to the good understanding between the people of these two nations.

Category: Architectural project, Education & Education facility Medium / Technology / Material: Concrete blocks Typology: Primary school
school foundations
roof construction
roof construction

Primary schools

International cooperation

At KARANGASSO VIGUÉ in Burkina Faso
From 2007 to 2009
By Arquitectos Sin Fronteras España
Local partners: Petit à Petit Association
Donors: Generalitat de Catalunya and Fundación Caja Arquitectos

A series of works have been carried out in four hamlets in Karangasso-Vigué rural zone, in the South part of Burkina Faso (one of the world’s poorest countries) to create or complement 4 primary public schools. This project was realized together with a local association, Petit à Petit, and with school directors of this Burkina Faso zone, who have been developing in the last few years a reflection about the “ideal school”. This participative work contributed to enrich the architectonic proposal, improving teaching conditions and allowing the creation of new collective spaces for the village.

Each school is made of 3 classrooms, a library, teacher’s dwellings, school kitchen gardens, and outdoor spaces with outdoor blackboards and paillotes (lightweight construction made of timber and straw resting on metallic pillars that serves as a meeting place for the people of the township, as well as a space for a temporary dining room and shelter for the children).

All of them have been executed with low environmental impact techniques. Local resources were used in a broad process of community participation, accomplished with the support of a network of local craftsmen who contributed to train people from the villages. Around 200 persons, women and men, have participated in the work. A mixed construction was chosen for the classrooms, with metallic structures and laterite stone walls; stones were extracted from local quarries reducing transportation costs and encouraging local economy. For the teacher’s dwellings adobe bricks were employed with the earth vaults roof technique (Voûte Nubienne), using basic, readily available local materials and simple, easily appropriable procedures.

school facility
exterior classroom
water infrastructure

Primary school in Naipa

WHO analysis

At NAIPA in Kenya
From 1999 to 2003
By Architekten Über Grenzen - Germany
Local partners: DESWOS and Anglican Church of Kenia
Donors: German Ministry for Development and BMZ

In 1998, two doctors who worked for the WHO in the Region of Naipa in the northwest of Kenia asked “Architects over Frontiers” Germany to help them to build a primary school for the region. In the follow up process “Architekten Über Grenzen” and the German Development Organization DESWOS were engaged in the school building together with financial support of the German Ministry for Development, BMZ, and the Anglican Curch of Kenia as a local partner.

In 2003, the school has been fi nished and handed over to the local partner. The school has 4 classrooms, a staff room and a directory with a base of 220 squaremetres. For a cost of all in all 35.000 Euros “Architects over Frontiers” Germany and DESWOS were able to build a school in which today nearly 500 children are getting lections from teachers paid by the State of Kenia.

Category: Architectural project, Education & Education facility Medium / Technology / Material: local resources Typology: Primary school
location
wall construction
wall plastering

Primary school

International cooperation

At TIÉMÉLÉKRO in Côte d'Ivoire
In 2007
By Arquitectos Sin Fronteras España
Local partners: Municipality of Tiémélekro
Donors: Public funding

Tiémélékro is one of the newest towns in Ivory Coast. It has undergone a dramatic demographic growth in a very short time. Because of its lack of resources and the increment in the population of school aged children, part of these children cannot attend school due to lack of rooms. As a consequence, some of them start their schooling later or fail to attend school altogether. In the case of girls, the situation is much worse, since most of them help the women with domestic asks. Therefore, only a minority of them has access to education.

The kindergarten plays a key role in introducing children to instruction. It has such an important role for integration that the Ivory Coast Ministry of Education passed a bill requiring every primary school to be associated with some kindergarten. This project started on January 2007 in Tiémélékro and corresponds to the second phase of the Primary School in the district of Sogephia. It consists in the construction and opening of a kindergarten and a library, plus the urbanisation of the site.

The library complements a number of interventions in the area of education with great value for the community. It will be a public library, open both to students of the primary school as well as to the rest of the inhabitants of the town. As for the book supply, we contacted the French Association Biblionef, which provided new books in French to those facilities built through development cooperation projects.

Category: Architectural project, Education & Education facility Medium / Technology / Material: Concrete blocks Typology: Primary school
local workers
foundations construction
roof construction
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