Projects

No development is possible without quality education. In Africa, it is difficult to talk about quality education without talking about health.

Chronic malnutrition has shown a downward trend in recent years, but remains at alarming levels. UNICEF even claims that 37% of the youngest children (0-5 years) are chronically malnourished, with stunted growth. Malnutrition weakens the immune system and reduces intellectual faculties. Hence the need to improve the health of children to optimize their school results.

This project is part of the development of school entrepreneurship in the education system in Côte d’Ivoire according to the government decision adopted in the Council of Ministers on January 14, 2015.The goal of the new framework put in place is to train the leadership of the child, to make him responsible, autonomous and to form a new entrepreneurial Ivorian citizen, a real cornerstone of an emerging and developed Ivory Coast. It is a measure to accompany the policy of compulsory schooling which obliges each parent to send their children to school from the age of 6. It is up to the State to create the conditions to maintain it until the age of 16.

Since 2011, IDAY-International integrates school health in its strategy for quality education for all. Convinced that health plays a major role in learning, the IDAY network introduces plants with high nutritional and medicinal value, such as Artemisia annua, into school gardens.

Following a training session of the members of IDAY-Ivory Coast in Yamoussoukro on the theme of school gardens and the cultivation of Artemisia annua by a Burkinabe agronomist, 12 schools wished to commit to the project.

IDAY-Ivory Coast has been the beneficiary of a building and a plot of land offered as a donation. The objective is to develop them into a pilot center by creating a garden and a school canteen which will benefit in a first time to the 2 schools located on the same plot. In a second phase, the nurseries that will be planted there as well as the expertise acquired during the first year of the project will be used to train and accompany the 3 beneficiary schools in year 2 and the 7 beneficiary schools in year 3 in the creation of their school garden and canteen.

In addition, local women’s cooperatives will be integrated into the project in order to transmit know-how and to have their support in the follow-up of the school gardens.

General

Fight against school dropout and poverty by combating malnutrition and tropical diseases.

Specific

> Improve the health of students and teachers in the targeted schools.

> Improve the quality of education in targeted schools.

> Promote school entrepreneurship.

> Engage youth in respecting the environment.

> Disseminate the ecological school garden method throughout the Ivory Coast.

> The nutritional and health situation of children is improved

> Teachers and education officials are convinced of the benefits of the school garden

> Teachers provide more active instruction

> Students will have acquired a taste for gardening and nature conservation.

> Students learned to master the cultivation methods of high nutritional value plants and medicinal plants

> Students in after-school clubs have developed skills in project design and implementation and have developed their entrepreneurial spirit

> Parents encourage their children’s schooling

> The authorities support and disseminate ecological school gardens.