By Alou Doumbia, Construction & Administration Manager
The construction of new schools is one of the flagship activities of the Mali Rising Foundation. It is a source of pride for our donors and supporters, and arouses great hope for the people of our partner villages. In fact, a village which builds a school sees itself progressing by several years compared to its neighbors.
The Malian government is no longer able to meet the multiple needs of the villages for school infrastructure. These needs must then be met somewhere else — either by local authorities (town halls) or by technical and financial partners (NGOs and Foundation).
The village of Banko was in particular need of a middle school. For 10 years, the population lobbied the Malian school authorities to build a middle school in the village. Why? The village’s aim was to enable children to study in the village, at home with their parents, instead of being sent far away.
With no middle school in Banko, the children of the village are scattered among the villages located more than 10 km away to go to middle school. Because of the lack of middle school, many students dropped out of school after the sixth grade and simply stayed in the village to become farmers or housewives. Other young people left the village to work, and never returned. Without an education, the village children had no hope of earning a good future, all were doomed to remain unqualified because they had no choice.
Faced with these problems, the village chief of Banko gave the school management committee a mandate to go out to look for partners for school construction, wherever one could be found. The president of the school committee then made a pilgrimage to search from service to service. The school committee president drew on all his personal relations and he contacted politicians and administrative officials.
After their long search for a construction partner, the people of Banko can finally see their new middle school rising from the red dirt of the village.
One day the president of the school committee had returned to a politician, yet again asking for his support for the construction of their school. The politician was not able to meet this need, but he told the president about Mali Rising Foundation.
When the envoys from the village arrived in our office in Bamako, they were very tired and expressed their need. They said "we can no longer go back to the village without telling the people that we had hope". That day it was not easy to give them a promise but it was all based on the luck of the village. The only way for the village was to hope.
Because of the generosity of the Norris Family and Highland Capital, their hope was answered, and I was able to share in their joy when we announced we could partner to build their school. The neighboring villages did not believe Banko’s luck, and continually ask the school committee members how this village managed to find this project! The people of Banko respond whenever it is due to the long work of the village and the belief in their strength to find what is important to them. They say, "With a valiant heart nothing is impossible.”
