“I am lucky to be able to interact with people who have great human wealth, who are very generous and who want to support us, but above all help us to support them,” This is how Laure Alonso, president of the Schola Africa association and M1 student in the EDHEC Grande École Program, describes the enrichment that this experience brings her in 2021.
What is Schola Africa?
Schola Africa is an international solidarity association promoting primary schooling in Senegal and Burkina Faso. The association was founded in 2000 by an EDHEC student and a Burkinabé teacher in order to jointly improve educational conditions in rural areas as well as professional training for women.
Describe Schola Africa’s values in three words
Follow-up : When implementing our projects, we ensure their successful completion as well as their sustainability. We go to Senegal 3 times a year, since 2018, in groups of 8 students, to check the status of our projects as well as potential improvements to be made.
Participatory development: Participatory development is about helping people to help themselves. We systematically involve the populations as well as our local partners during each stage of the development of our projects. When Schola Africa finances the construction of a classroom, the members of the association carry out a prospecting of schools in advance to identify needs, meet principals, local populations and really see how the school works. Then we try to find a way to meet these needs, by financing a classroom for example. The development of the project is carried out by local populations since we employ local masons. These masons also receive help from the populations, who bring aggregates and monitor the construction site.
Awareness: This is a strong axis of our action through which we want to raise awareness among young people in the Lille metropolis to allow them a good understanding of the problems of West Africa. This “understanding” is achieved in particular thanks to a project that is dear to us: the epistolary exchange. An exchange of letters between students from a school in Lille and a school in Senegal.
What are your major projects in Burkina Faso and Senegal?
Since 2002, we have managed a sewing training center in Burkina Faso which has since enabled more than 320 women to graduate. In addition, since its founding, the association has built 24 classrooms which allow each year to educate more than 1,300 children.
In order to improve academic success, 1,562 solar lamps were distributed between Burkina Faso and Senegal. This project was born from an observation that night falls early in these two countries and children cannot work in the evening. Thanks to the solar lamps, their academic success is improved and their chance of reaching college is optimized.
Although we have not visited Burkina Faso since February 2018 due to the geopolitical situation, our actions have not stopped. Our co-founder, Karim Gominawith whom we maintain a close relationship, monitors our projects.
How is your action evolving in the context of COVID?
The strength of Schola Africa is to be able to continue working despite crises. The coronavirus crisis has pushed us to rethink our organization. This year has been conducive to thinking about new projects.
In Burkina Fasowe want to improve our living space. It is a meeting place for the local populations of Sarfalao, a district located on the outskirts of Bobo Dioulasso. To date, more than 460 people have registered to benefit from access to the library, board games, but also magazine subscriptions. In addition, no less than 40 children go there daily to be able to work in an optimal setting.
We also want to build an impluvium – a rainwater collection tank – to provide easier access to water for children and families in the neighborhood. This is a central project of our action. In order to guarantee their achievement, we have just launched crowdfunding from February 15 to March 14, 2021. In fact, 1 euro given to Schola Africa is one euro given to the project.
In Senegalthe quintessence of our action would be to be able to build a school in a neighborhood of Saint Louis. We therefore want to continue to explore in this area where there are not enough schools for the number of students. We would like to set up libraries so that children have better access to culture as well as reading. Finally, another objective would be to succeed in setting up a partnership with a local association to identify children in Senegal, as has already been done in our schools in Burkina Faso for years.
How would you describe the internal workings of Schola Africa?
Schola Africa is 40 students who all work together on these projects in Lille. To be efficient quickly, the training of each new member of the association is essential. Despite the context, we dedicated 3 months of training so that our members know the schools and the different institutions with which we work.
Being a member of Schola Africa means investing in a project that has been growing for 20 years. Many values are transmitted by this heritage such as solidarity, open-mindedness, rigor and perseverance.
Where do you get this energy from?
I often refer to the quote from our co-founder, Karim Gomina: “ We can’t save everyone, but we can do our best to help as many people as possible. “.
Article written by the Schola Africa association
