Projects

Context
Education quality has become a major preoccupation in Africa and for the international community. It has been demonstrated and confirmed by the World Bank Development Report 2018 that poor health conditions of the children and teachers is one of the limiting factors to raise cognitive capacities of the kids, reduce school absenteeism, and hence a serious obstacle to better education quality. The project will raise education acceptability by the local population and hence reduce school drop outs, one of the main causes of persisting high levels of illiteracy among the African youth.
Project description
In 2 schools located in the Yamoussoukro area, the project will establish for youth and employees from the local administration a pilot training centre planted with useful crops of which Artemisia annua, to fight several tropical infectious diseases in particular malaria prevalent in the local communities. In 2017, IDAY-Burkina-Faso sent a trainer in Artemisia annua with adequate seed. With the competencies acquired in the pilot centre, school gardens with these plants will be created in 10 other schools of the country. They will be also equipped of rain water collection reservoirs, school kitchen with low energy consumption and waste digesters. The project will also raise awareness about the importance of education, ta take care of one’s health and save energy and wood consumption. The project also comprises advocacy campaigns to convince officials to scale up the project for which project schools will have reserved part of their land to produce seed for other schools. Medical tests will allow a comparison of sanitary conditions of children and teachers before and after the project. Finally, the financing includes support for institutional build-up of the local coalition and the international network.

> About 1 000 students and 100 teachers will be protected against malaria and other infectious tropical diseases, and education quality will be significantly improve in participating schools through the reduction of absenteeism and marked rises in scholastic results.
> Better nutritional norms among students and teachers shall cause cognitive capacities to increase among students and dynamism and commitments among teachers.
> Rain water collection will save on the time spent on water collection, a burden usually bestowed on girls.
> Wood consumption and hence its collection for school kitchen will diminish by 50% in comparis on with traditional open fires with negative effects on the volunteer kitchen women.
> In general, participating schools will be more« acceptable» among local community members because they dispense an education directly useful for the local population. Schools will contribute to the lowering of CO2 emissions and hence climate change. Advocacy and excess seed production will help extend the project to other schools and teach collective responsibility to the participating youth.