School for Baka children

The aim of this project: the acquisition of a minibus to enable Baka children to go to school

The nearest school is located more than 9km away from the village of Doumassi. This represents a walk of almost 3 hours through the rainforest for these young children, some of them being only 3 years old. To hope to arrive there on time, they would therefore need to leave in the middle of the night, and would take the risk to come across elephants, snakes with deadly venom, as well as all sorts of insects and animals that would be better to be avoided.

Since the construction of a school is not currently possible, the aim of our project is to address this situation by acquiring a minibus that will pick up the children every morning and bring them to the nearest school.

The importance of this project: the access to education can no longer wait

The Baka, sometimes referred to as the «forest people», are a hunter-gatherer people with a beautiful but threatened culture, whose way of life is deeply linked to the forest. Thus, the ideal would be to build a school inside the village of Doumassi and develop a culturally appropriate school programme, but the lack of funds and the administrative slowness make this ideal still unachievable and, year after year, Baka children continue to be denied access to education.

But, partly because of the fact that the progressive loss of their culture is responsible for a high rate of alcoholism, the village chief and the parents want more than anything else these 50 children to have access to education and do not want to continue to wait for a school to be created in their village. The beginning of the new school year in Gabon is only a few weeks ahead, and the parents do not want to postpone once again their children’s schooling.

While hoping that a school will be built to welcome these children for the beginning of the October 2022 school year, a temporary solution must be found for this school year and we need your help to make this happen!

The purpose of your donations: the access to school finally provided to Baka children

We estimate that the purchase of a second-hand minibus would cost around CHF 6,000. A reliable driver would be willing to commute every day for an annual salary of CHF 4,000. To ensure that the project lasts and that the children are taken to school every day, expenses such as petrol and various variable costs for repairing and maintaining the vehicle must be taken into account. An amount of CHF 2,000 is therefore to be budgeted for this.

To finally offer access to school to these 50 Baka children, we are therefore counting on your generosity to collect the total sum of 12’000 CHF!

Every additional cent received will be used to purchase school supplies, and then saved for the future construction of a school in their village, for which the amount of CHF 30’000 is needed to be raised.

Thanks to your support, this project will change the quality of life of these children and of this people!

We commit ourselves to write on the bus (with your agreement) the names of all the persons, companies and organisations that will have helped us to realise this beautiful project, and to send to all of you a photo of this hope-bearing bus!