Senegal: Ready to learn
When Mariama Diallo started her final year of elementary school, the sixth grader was met with new challenges: harder courses, longer school hours and an entrance exam she would have to spend the next year preparing for. But despite these challenges, there was one welcome change for the students this year: a new school building stocked with school supplies.
“I like the building because it is very beautiful,” says eleven-year-old Mariama, who lives in a rural community about 450 kilometres southeast of Dakar. “The rooms are very large.”
Stocking classrooms
World Vision helped construct a two-classroom building for Mariama’s elementary school in 2008. With the support of Canadian donors, the organization also helped build a classroom for another elementary school nearby. Donations from World Vision Canada’s Gift Catalogue — an alternative Christmas shopping guide that offers a way for Canadians to send gifts to impoverished families abroad — helped stock the classrooms with supplies for the elementary students.
Adama Traore has been the principal at Mariama’s school for the past six years. “When I arrived, I found that this school was really in need,” he says. “The number of children was very high and they needed more classrooms then what I found here at the time.”
Established more than 12 years ago, the school began its first year of operation without a building. Instead, the children studied under a single shelter made from millet branches and leaves. Although the school received a classroom building the following year, it could only accommodate two classes at a time. That meant that most of the students would have to learn outside under three makeshift classroom shelters.
Growing numbers
“Since the number of children grew, we had to add shelters every year,” Adama says of the school, which had been using three additional shelters alongside its original school building before World Vision built the new structure this year.
When Mariama attended grades 3 and 4 at this school, her classes were held under one of these shelters. Studying under these conditions, however, was particularly difficult during seasonal changes.
“When there was rain, we would take all of our language books and copy books and run into the building,” she says of the old structure. “There would be five students sitting at one school desk, so it was overcrowded.”
Lack of shelter
Since the rainy season begins in June when the school year ends, the students don’t have to face these conditions for long. But while the children are off on holidays, their classroom shelters often get destroyed by the inclement weather.
Using the millet branches from their own field, the parents of the elementary students build new classroom-sized shelters for the school every year. This, however, would sometimes affect the start of the school year.
“If it’s during harvest time, then parents will not have time to build shelters,” Adama says of the start of the school year. “The parents of the children are busy and cannot leave (their fields) all day to come and build shelters.”
With more than 175 students attending this school, the start of the school year in fall would be delayed if the parents failed to build the shelters on time. “It would be very difficult if World Vision had not built these classrooms,” Adama says of the current school year. “We would have had to wait until maybe December or January to start the courses.”
Crucial year
Since Mariama is in her final year at the elementary school, she needed to start her courses on time this year. In order to get to the next level of her education, she will have to take an entrance exam by the end of the school year. Her score on this exam will decide whether she will continue on to grade 5.
“I want to continue up to university and learn more about the world and maybe to find a better job,” says Mariama, whose favourite subject is history. The grade 5 and 6 students of the elementary school learn in the new building.
“My vision, as a principal of this school,” says Adama, “is that in the future this school will get more developed with many buildings and look more attractive so that students will enjoy themselves here. They will not see any difference between this school and the schools that are in Dakar.”
Greater and greater success
Although this school has lacked proper classroom facilities for several years, Adama is proud that the students have still managed to succeed in their education. “This can be illustrated by the results that we have each year,” he says with confidence.
Although 31 per cent of the sixth graders passed their entrance exams in 2005, that number grew to 54 per cent the following year. By 2007, there were 63 per cent who passed the exam — more than double the amount of students than there were two years prior.
“Our hope is that all the children that are in this school will succeed in the future so that they will be able to help their parents,” says Adama.
