Our fourth School Project – C.E.G. Kalanga

Our fourth school has beenbuilt in 2015 in Kalanga, a medium-sized village in the Bassar region of Togo.

  • Year

    2015

  • Place

    Kalanga (Togo)

  • Cost

    € 20.000 (including the library)

  • Size

    300 Children

The community of Kalanga was fascinatingly motivated in constructing a schoollong before our project took off.

Members of the community had already started teaching secondary school classes 3 years before. Since this is the only CEG for at least 10km, class sizes are huge as students come from dozens of neighboring villages to attend.

In 2014, the school had been holding free summer classes to students as a way to promote the importance of education. These classes were being taught by volunteer university students from Kalanga.

The classes were held in a building borrowed from the local primary school which had to be returned, and under an apatame (traditional shed/pergola). The surrounding terrain had been donated by the government and the village for possible future construction. The apatame worked for some time but forces of nature such as heat and rain were issues, not to mention the snakes. There had been students injured due to this problem.

These examples showed us the motivation of Kalanga’s students, parents, and community, and the importance of constructing a proper school building.

So we were very keen in raising the money and couldn’t waitfor this – our fourth – school building to be built.Construction work started in January 2015 and the building was completed in May.

The community was very excited,students and teachershad been looking forward to this moment for so long. However, as the school community had been growing very fast,they didn’t have enough school books. The Peace Corps Volunteer in Kalanga, Scott, had the idea to establish a library, and together with the financial support of our donor Kremsmueller, it was possible to establish a fully equipped library with school books and other teaching materials at the school in Kalanga.