School Renovation

Saly Carrefour and N'Dioufene

The children deserved a real school. Not plastic bags for walls, not slate boards in place of notebooks. They deserved solid walls, windows, and a future. This is how we built it.

The Starting Point

A patchwork tent for a classroom

When we first visited the school in N'Dioufene, we found children taking lessons under a roof sewn together from rice sacks and plastic sheets. The walls? The same: a patchwork of bags, with sunlight shining through. No real shelter. No real learning environment.

In Saly Carrefour, the situation was no different. Reed-walled classrooms let in the heat and the noise without barrier. Children sat packed together, no ventilation, no privacy, none of that sense of security that should come with a place where you learn.

The original makeshift tent classroom, with walls made from stitched-together plastic rice sacks — BeforeThe patchwork tent: rice sacks as roof and walls

Children sitting in a makeshift classroom with reed walls and a dirt floor — BeforeReed walls, packed earth, a small chalkboard as the only learning material

What the Children Had

A slate board. No notebook.

Many children came to school with a small black slate. They wrote on it, wiped it clean and wrote again. No trace of what they had learned. No way to practise at home, flip back to an earlier lesson, or look something up. Knowledge that disappeared every day.

Baobab Group started with the supplies. Notebooks, pens, chalk, geometry sets. Every year, for both schools. Small things with a big impact on a child's confidence.

Two children sitting at a worn desk with slate boards, working in a run-down classroom — BeforeA slate in place of a notebook. Learning meant starting over every single day.

The transformation

What Was Built

Solid walls. A real floor. A school.

In Saly Carrefour, we built new classrooms with brick walls, a concrete floor, and real windows. We installed a sports hall. We painted the walls, laid out gardens, and made sure the school looked like a place children could be proud of.

In N'Dioufene, we renovated the existing schools in the village and the surrounding communities of Ndjamadji and Bekaye Ardo. Not patchwork, but real renovations: structure, ventilation, lighting. A school that works the way a school should work.

New bright classroom with solid walls, proper desks and smiling students — AfterA real classroom: brick walls, new desks, daylight. The same village, a very different school.

Going Further

A computer lab

In Saly Carrefour, we went a step further. We installed a fully equipped computer lab. For most of the children, it was the first time they had ever touched a computer. They sat there wide-eyed, thumbs up, ready to explore a world that until that moment had been completely out of reach.

Children sitting in front of computers in the new computer lab, smiling and giving thumbs up — AfterThe computer lab in Saly Carrefour. For many children: their first computer.

Every Year

School supplies for every child

Alongside building and renovation, we delivered a shipment of school supplies every year. Boxes full of notebooks, pens, pencils, rulers, set squares, colours, and chalk. Bought from local suppliers and handed out to the schoolchildren of both schools. Every child could show up the next day with what they needed.

Children and adults posing with boxes of school supplies, notebooks and stationery — ImpactBoxes of school supplies, ready to be handed out to the children of both schools

"A school is more than four walls. It is the place where a child learns that they matter."

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