Background information

Gassi-Gassi was in desperate need of a middle school structure. The existing school was built in 2012 and currently serves 245 students divided into 5 classes. The school not only serves students of Gassi-Gassi but also surrounding small villages of Yovokope, Kolka, Tantako and Konkassi. With a new school building, further villages will probably show interest in attending this school as well which would result in about 50 additional students.

Until now, the school operated under two large straw-roofed, open-walled structures, in addition to two borrowed classrooms and an office from a nearby Catholic elementary school. For the following school year, the school is projected to have over 300 students. Therefore, Education Togo decided to build a middle school for the community in Gassi-Gassi to improve the school and class structure in their village.

Gassi-Gassi is very motivated for education development projects. The community has an active Parent Teacher Association that meets regularly and gets involved in school-related issues as well as provides maintenance to the structures. The association and the rest of the community are willing to help on this project and improve education in Gassi-Gassi together with the Education Togo team. They contributed a great deal to the realisation of this project. As with every school project in the past, we also cooperated with a peace corps member located in the area. The organisation also contributed financial help so the total costs were shared between Education Togo (21.000€) and the Peace Corps Organisation (6.000€).

The reason behind the raise of costs compared to former projects is the fact that we cooperated with a new architect this time. We continually search for ways to improve our work so our goal was to provide our students with an even better, more eficient and sustainable school building and we are very happy with the results.