District Zina, Northern Cameroon

CarWash for schools in Africa

Grade S4a of the secondary school in Spreitenbach has planned and financed an equally ambitious project: to strengthen the parent associations.

The schools of Northern Cameroon receive hardly any help from the gov-ernment. There is great need for everything: class rooms, teaching staff, food and teaching materials. Education generally is in a dire state. In the district of Zina the school enrolment rate is the lowest in the coun-try. Zina consists of 26 villages and lies in the middle of the flood area of the river Logone. The region is very poor and underdevel-oped, people live in little mud huts, and only in the main town, Zina, are there a few con-crete buildings scattered around. On the other side of the river lies The Chad.

The parents of the children in Zina try desperately to help their local schools; only they do not know how to, they themselves have hardly had any education at all. While in practically every village, there is a parent associa-tion consisting of parents and teach-ers, their scope is severely limited despite good intentions. The parents are happy to work for their schools, e.g. by erecting walls for new school buildings with mud bricks. Every now and then, they raise some funds to pay an untrained teacher or they decide to invest some of the proceeds from fishing into the school. All this, however, happens without any concept - the parents have neither the know-how nor access to the necessary infrastructure.

This is where the project to strengthen the parent associations sets in; it is a “help for self-help” project in its classic form. The idea came from the schools themselves and from the school director responsible for Zina, whose dedication for the schools in the region is exemplary. The project is budgeted at CHF 18,500.

In Switzerland the students of grade S4a of the secondary school in Spreitenbach together with their teacher Aurelio Führer showed an interest in working with IPA. IPA had worked with the school from November 2007 to July 2008. It proposed five potential projects to the students (7 girls and 11 boys). The parent association project was the only “invisible one”; others included, for instance, the building of a new school.

For two lessons a week IPA managing director, Pietro Tomasini, introduced the students to the most important aspects of development work and project management. They learned how to write a proposal and set up a budget and went off to plan various fund raising activities. The highlight was a two-day car-wash campaign in Spreitenbach, which raised over CHF 1,400. The financial basis for the project was laid with the students writing letters to parents, relatives and acquaintances asking for donations. In addition, two foundations contributed to the financing – one of them, “Snow Dreams for Africa”, donated CHF 10,000. On the basis of all this, the project was fully funded.

In Cameroon the actual realisation of the project was split into three phases. Phase 1 consisted of a meeting with the 26 heads of school and 20 delegates from the parent associations. A detailed appraisal of the current situation took place in all 26 schools. Not only the parent associations were assessed but each entire school – ranging from infrastructure and enrolments to students and teachers. The aim was to analyse strengths and weaknesses. Based on this knowledge, multi-day workshops during phase 2 were envisaged.

The delegates of five parent associations would meet at a time to receive training in organising an association, setting up annual plans, establishing budgets and fund raising etc. In reality a slightly different path was chosen: the workshops were shorter but each parent association received individual training. This meant that not only a few representatives of an association but all associates, in total 734 persons, could be included. The result is surprising: The parent associations set themselves high targets and suddenly noticed what was possible once they were better organised. Between January and May 2009 alone a total of 15 new classrooms were built in the region (some of them even with a proper roof), and 36 new teachers were employed. Most importantly, the enrolment rate has risen.

The success rate varies from village to village. Some goals have not been met yet. 554 desk chairs were planned, for example, but so far only 23 have been financed. But the project has only just started, and more results will be delivered over the next few years.
Workshops for the education of the parent associations.

Phase 3 finally deals with the evaluation of all results. All schools and parent associations have been revisited. The project provoked positive reactions both in Switzerland and in Cameroon. “It feels good to help poor people”, says one of the students involved, and another: “It’s a pity that it is already over”. It is interesting to observe that, while it was the boys who pushed this ambitious project, it was the girls who clearly showed more dedication in the end.

Aboukar Mahamat, the IPA partner on location in Cameroon, entitled his final report for the project: “Simple ideas sometimes lead to spectacular results”, and a teacher from the village of Ivié summarised his frame of mind with the simple sentence:
“Finally I’m getting recognition and respect in the village”.