Thank you!

Janet O., who has been living in Dakar for a few years and will soon be moving back to the United States, is one of the DWG members who visited the school in May. She was so touched by what has been accomplished there that she gave us a donation for the sponsoring fund in June.

Now Janet wanted to give special attention to the school's teachers for the end-of-year holidays (Tabaski and Christmas) and has donated a "Holiday bonus" for each of them. Thank you very much, Janet! (and I won't forget that you had tears in your eyes when you gave me the envelope - you saw for yourself, you know it's a worthy cause)

Christiane A. came back from her trip to Germany in October with a contribution to the sponsoring fund. Thanks!

Janet P. teaches ESL as a volunteer in her county and has decided to give the collection her students gave her to Ecole Ousmane Sembène: "for textbooks and fun reading". Mr Diatta is supposed to write up a list of books but he just has not got around to it yet. As soon as I have the list, I will go and buy the books, Janet, and put up pictures on the blog.

Guy W. knows the school personally and is particularly devoted to getting the school a better computer equipment. He sent the printer in the summer and he hopes to send a larger donation and/or some computer supplies in the near future. I'll keep my fingers crossed, Guy.

Thank you very much! You all are making a difference.

But - and I hate to say this, because it sounds like begging and I hate that - it's not enough. Please, please, if you want to do something, send a couple of euros or dollars - for books, for dictionaries or for the sponsoring fund. It is needed and it will be very appreciated.

Antoine Diatta, me, Mrs Diatta and baby Patricia Christine

On the rails again

School started a month ago and the school is now full.

Many parents wait until November to send their kids back to school, because that way they don't have to pay the tuition fee for October when school only starts on the 13th or so. Mr Diatta was expecting about 500 pupils, he had 556 last Tuesday. Honestly, I don't know where he puts them! But he says it's so difficult to refuse the kids. So they're just as crammed into the classrooms as they were last year.

The flooding has gone back, as it hasn't rained again. There's only the odd puddle left.

The 12th classroom has been installed in a part of the library and a wall has been built to seal it off.

Mr Diatta has been very, very busy with the start of the school year, with the school's anniversary on November 11, but also on a personal level: his wife gave birth to a baby girl on October 21. 

I had been told to expect what followed then...: I'm proud and honoured to announce that I am a godmother again! Little Patricia Christine is a happy, pretty baby and I'm only waiting for Elke to send me her photos to put one up here.

It has now been exactly a year since I got involved into this project. The first donations to the sponsoring fund are coming to an end (I always divide donations into 12 equal parts for the following 12 months), so if you aren't going to spend everything on Christmas presents - think of giving a poor family the opportuntiy to lighten their load by helping pay for their child's tuition fees.

October 6, 2008

Today Christiane and I went to the school in order to hand over the money for the sponsoring fund of July, August, September and October.

We had bad news for Mr Diatta - unfortunately, the funding request for the pharmacy armoire has been rejected by my friend's company. They were looking for a more innovative project than a simple "école de quartier".

The school itself has not been flooded, but there is water on every dirt road in the area. In front of the library, there is a puddle that keeps coming back. The water seeps up through the cement floor, that's how high the ground water is over there.

In the school's main building are 6 classrooms, in the annex are 5. Mr Diatta had planned to use a separate room down the road for a 12th classroom. But this room is totally flooded. Now he is thinking he might use one of the two library rooms as a classroom. Seems a bit difficult to me, but the kids have to go somewhere!

The results of the 6th graders have come in. 77 pupils took their "certificat" (a test that marks the end of elementary school). 73 succeeded. 

Also, 69 out of the 77 pupils can go on to collège (middle school). Ecole Ousmane Sembène's goal is to train students efficiently, so that they can succeed in public collège and don't have to go on to private collège (where parents have to pay). While we were in Mr Diatta's office, a lady came to ask for advice. Her son passed the certificat but not the access to collège... he will have to do the year again and try again next year, if the parents don't want to put him through private collège.

News in October

I can't believe it's already October and I haven't written anything here since May.

Guy in the UK donated a CPU for the school. Unfortunately, some things went wrong and what arrived here in Dakar via Paris was not the CPU but a printer. Well, it will be used anyway.

Mr Diatta has been encouraged to put in a new funding request at Dakar Women's Group, and he has done so. The school is asking for school books for the 6th grade. Until now, the school books are bought second hand by the families. If the school has its own books and rents them out to the family for a small fee, the families will spend less money and the school will be able to renew the books little by little. But for this project to work, the school needs to buy the books. Hopefully, the DWG will be able to help.

I have also found a company that is considering a donation for a pharmacy cupboard. If the company doesn't follow through, I will have to find other funds for the pharmacy and first aid kit. 

I've received few donations since May. A couple of dictionaries, some money for the sponsoring fund. So far, the monthly contribution to the sponsoring fund is roughly 50.000 CFA (76€ or 105US$), which is more than half way to the 90.000 CFA/month I am aiming at. 

I must admit I'm not confortable at all with asking people for money. I tell them about the school, and if they offer to help, great. If they don't, I'm not going to beg.

We've been back in Dakar for over 3 weeks now, and we have witnessed a lot of deterioration. The rains have been heavy this year. The whole area around the school was flooded. Mr Diatta managed to protect the school buildings, but people's homes have been flooded several times. The floods are also the reason why I haven't driven over yet. I couldn't have accessed the school.

Also, food prices have gone up. In less than two years the price for rice has doubled - rice is the main food here in Senegal, the change of price is a huge weight in a family's budget. Many people are ill with malaria but don't go to see a doctor. That's why it's so important that the children attend school and get an education. 

Classes haven't started yet, but they will soon. The sponsoring money for July, August and September will help the families to buy their kids' school books. Next year, when hopefully at least two classes have books provided by the school, the summer money will go towards the school book fund.

I will finally be moving back to France this year at Christmas. But there will be a local contact here who will hand over the money every month.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

Donations

Following Linda's advice, I added a "donations" button to the left of this page. You can click on the button "Faire un don avec Paypal" and can then donate any amount you want to the Sponsoring Fund. Even if it's just one euro or one dollar, we'll be grateful for your help.

I tried to configurate the donations thingy so that it would take either dollars or euros, but it seems that's not possible, so I chose euros (I'm working this out as I go). But know that 1 euro amounts to roughly 1.58 US$ these days and that your Paypal account should convert the amount into your currency by itself...

Figures and numbers

A short update on the sponsoring fund:

Preschoolers and 6th-graders are not included in the sponsoring fund, so far it's only for grade 1 to 5 (CI to CM1). As we started in the middle of the school year (January 2008), we thought the 6th-graders were going to leave the school in a few months anyway, that's why we didn't include them.

In May, I brought 47,000 CFA to the school for the sponsoring fund, the highest amount so far.

The sum was then equally divided by 24, for the 24 neediest kids of the school. 

I'll do the math for you: it amounts to 1958 CFA (roughly €3) per child. 

For the younger students, this represents nearly 2/3 of the tuition fee. For the older students it's 1/3.  I am aiming at a monthly amount of 90,000 CFA, which will then be divided un-equally among the students, in order to pay 2/3 of the tuition for each of the 24 children - and maybe we can also add a couple more kids.

Tables & benches

Now that EOS has new tables and benches, I was wondering what they'd do with the old ones. Mr Diatta told me he was selling them at 1000 CFA (€1.50) a piece, to other, smaller, private schools. More than half had already been sold when I had an idea.

I had visited another DWG project recently, the Aminata Mbaye center for mentally handicapped children in Grand Yoff. Here it was just the other way round: the center has lots of space but not many students and not much furniture. One large classroom especially had nothing in it. Suddenly it clicked in my mind - what these people needed were the old tables and benches from EOS! They were too small for 4 kids to sit on, but for 1 or 2 kids, they'd be perfect. I spoke to Mr Diatta who was enthusiastic about it, he even offered to donate the money he had got for the units he'd already sold. (I wasn't very comfortable with that, so I said no.)

So on Sunday, I went to the school to pick up some of the old tables and benches and drove them to Grand Yoff. I borrowed my husband's car which is bigger than the one I drive, but still only managed to fit 6 of each into the back (it's a small pick-up truck). The center was very happy with the new furniture, they had been dreaming of benches for the kids without being able to buy them. There are still 15 old tables and 15 old benches left at EOS, and they will be getting those, too. 

In the end, one good thing turned out to be two good things!

Welcome to the blog

I started this blog without telling anyone. Now I think there is enough material to "go public". You might want to start at the bottom...

Visiting a family & gifts from America

My on-line friend Mary Beth has made a very generous donation of school supplies to the school. As it is not a very good idea to receive regular mail in Dakar (much of it gets lost and we have to pay exorbitant fees for the rest), she sent two packages to Dominique's address in France and I brought everything back with me when I went to France in March/April.

There were pencils (one for each child, that's 550 pencils!), flashcards, stickers, erasers, pencil sharpeners, magnetic letters, foam letters, calendars, world maps, rulers and much more... it filled an entire suitcase. I was stopped at Dakar airport because they wanted to know what was in that suitcase (the lined-up pencils must have looked strange through the x-ray machine - or whatever that machine does), but in the end everything went fine.

I took all the supplies to the school in April, with also 550 animal cards my mother collected in Germany. I was accompanied by a French elementary school teacher who was visiting one of my friends.

First, I handed over the April money for the sponsoring fund. Then I asked to meet one of the needy families. We were led into the "quartier" behind the school and introduced to this family.

The father (left) is a respectable man in his 50s, he has no work but is involved with the local mosque. He has 5 children with his first wife (2nd from the right) and 4 with his second wife (in pink - just a note here: our visit was unannounced, it was the 2nd wife's day of cooking and cleaning, that's why she wasn't "properly" dressed). None of the children has gone to school. One of the older sons (in the middle, with the red cap) is a mason, and he worked for the school in the past. The youngest son (in front of the two women) is 13 and when Mr Diatta (the school headmaster, in brown) realised the situation last year he decided to offer him tuition for free. The kid is in first grade now.

The family invited us into their home, a very clean single room with a large double bed, a small chest of drawers and a piece of cotton fabric hanging on the unpainted cement wall. (On the picture, we're standing in front of the door to this windowless room.) This is the first wife's room, the second wife has another. They share a common kitchen and very simple bathroom facilities with a dozen other families.
A couple of other older men were sitting there, too, pillars of the local community, and then there was quite a lot of talking in Wolof that translated roughly to "thank you very much for what you're doing for our son" and "it's an honour to welcome you here". I then spoke of the importance of education and that the sponsors in France, Germany, America, England and Australia, that I represent, are happy to see that our money is going to a good cause. Then I adressed the kid with the parents and said we hoped he realised the opportunity that was given to him, that he owed Mr Diatta big thanks and that he should make efforts to benefit as much as possible from this chance he is given. Mr Diatta translated all this and it took much longer than what I said so I'm not sure if he just put all the necessary "flourish" to what I said or if he took the opportunity to pass a few more messages he wanted to bring across.
Then I said a few nice things in French to the boy, but he didn't understand much of it. After all, this is his first year of French...

Then, we went back to the school and unpacked the big bag of supplies from the US.
Mary Beth, they loved everything, but they were especially happy with the world maps. These are going to be framed and put up in classrooms. The pencils will be saved for when school starts in October, and every pupil will get one. I had to explain what flashcards are (and I must admit I had to ask an American friend how they are used, because they are not a common feature in the French or German systems either), and they will be used by grades 2-6. The headmaster didn't know yet whether they would be used in class or if they would put them in the library to allow the children to work by themselves with them. The flashcards will also only be used in the next school year.

The stickers and letters went to the little ones and their teacher:



I have a much nicer picture of this moment, but I can't figure out how to turn it around, sorry! Also Stéphanie (the French lady) took plenty of other nice pictures with her (much better) camera, but it was stolen the following day and she hadn't transferred the pictures to a computer yet... so this is all you get, sorry! (Especially Mary Beth, I'm so sorry - she had this great camera that took great pictures and now it's all gone, I know you were looking forward to these pictures.)

The pencil sharpeners will go one in each classroom, same for the calendars. The rulers and erasers and other supplies will be used as prizes for the end-of-year spelling bees.

They were very happy with everything, and I have been waiting so long to post this because I wanted to take pictures of the framed maps - but forgot to take my camera during my visit yesterday (I was picking up some of the old tables and benches to bring them to a center for mentally handicapped children, also a project suppported by DWG)... Next time! But I'm not putting off this post any longer.

Despite the huge success of this donation though, I have decided not to do this again. In comparison to the local supplies, the things from America were very fancy. I don't think I will ever forget the puzzled look on the headmaster's face when he unpacked the flashcards. *smile* Or when he realised that what he was holding were coloured erasers. And how the French teacher and I explained the concept of magnetic letters.
And while all these things will be treasured and used and appreciated, it took a lot of time and effort for Mary Beth and myself to get them here.

I think it will be easier in the future to send the amount of money that would have been spent there and to spend it here on local supplies. It has been explained to me that this also supports the local economy - makes sense, doesn't it?

I want to express a big, big THANK YOU again to Mary Beth who did a wonderful job choosing supplies for all the children and who has brought happy smiles to many young faces. The teachers also were glad to have new things to use. You are a wonderful, generous person, Mary Beth!

Also big THANKS to all of you who donated money for the sponsoring fund. It is soooo useful!

Tables & benches

Dakar Women's Group paid for 74 new tables and benches for the children. They were ordered in March and delivered in two loads: early May and mid-May. Everyone at the school is really happy, there's only one little problem: the new tables are larger than the old ones, so each class will have a few students less next year because they could'nt fit as many tables into the classrooms as with the old tables. For the last weeks until summer, there are kids that sit 5 to a bench instead of 4. But the comfort for them is roughly the same as before.

Only the tables and benches for the main building have been changed, the classrooms in the annex are too small to fit larger tables.

What has been done so far

So far, Amadou Antoine Diatta, the school's headmaster, and I have set up a sponsorship fund. This fund has the purpose of paying part of the tuition fee for the 24 poorest children of the school. We have decided against individual sponsorships, because situations can change fast in this country - the 24 poorest kids this month might not be the 24 poorest kids 6 months from now, and who can say that we'd be able to find new sponsors for those kids? So we decided to set up this fund.

Every monetary donation that is made to me for the school, I divide in 12 parts and mark them down over the following 12 months. Every month I take the amount for that month to the school.I hand over the money to Mr Diatta, usually in the presence of a third person (parent or other teacher), and we both sign each others sheets with the month and the amount.

We have decided that no family would get the entire tuition fee paid, as we both believe that things that are free are not as valued as things you have to make an effort for. But we are still very far from having to decide about that, as the monthly amount has not been over 1900 CFA per child yet. Tuition fees start from 3500 CFA for preschoolers and 1st graders and go to 6000 CFA for 6th graders.

First message

I have decided to start a blog for my sponsorship of Ecole Ousmane Sembène in Pikine, Dakar, Senegal. It will make it easier to post pictures and updates. Also the donators can find out at any time what has been done with their money.