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, cause 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
From 2015 to 2017, IDAY-Burkina tested with success the feasibility of the creation of school gardens in 17 test schools. The present project extends this first phase with supplementary schools with the aim to : (1) meet the needs for training in the cultivation of Artemisia annua with a farmer who in 2016 cultivated the plant with success ; (2) verify the medical impact in the schools ; (3) reinforce the advocacy with the government by extending the experiment with another 10 schools ; and, (4) supplement the school gardens with kitchens equipped with lox energy consumption ovens. The new school gardens will benefit from the seed and plant produced in the first-phase project schools. The project will also raise awareness among parents about the importance of education. The project also comprises advocacy campaigns to convince officials to scale up the project. Finally, the financing includes support for institutional build-up of the local coalition and the international network.

The goal is to contribute to the improvement of quality education by fighting malnutrition and tropical diseases. This project seeks to decrease poverty (being a prime cause of school dropout) by bringing economical and nutritional autonomy, practical skills and knowledge to the youth.
IDAY has shown in several countries that the implantation of such school gardens leads to spectacular improvements in school results, the decrease of health costs and a better understanding of ecological issues. The project will seek to convince the communities that they can solve their health problems largely themselves with less dependency on foreign exchange. Government will be contacted to get it to scale up the project at national level.

An additional 5 000 students and 80 teachers will be protected against malaria and other infectious tropical diseases. Education quality will be significantly improved in participating schools through the reduction of absenteeism. Furthermore, better nutritional norms among students and teachers shall cause cognitive capacities to increase among students and dynamism and commitment among teachers. Health costs for children and their families will drop by as much as 30 to 80%, according to the results of a similar project in Kenya. Teaching of mathematics and biology will be improved by using school garden operations as illustrations of the curricula. Rainwater 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 comparison with traditional open fires with positive 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 emmissions 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.