In 2014 ASF Italia was called by 2 Italian-Senegalese associations and the community of Mbakadoou, a rural village in Senegal, to rethink the general project of their school and build 2 additional classrooms.
Together, we started a project combining bioclimatic principles for thermal comfort, local natural materials and sustainable processes, and the direct participation of the village.
Innovation by participation has been the core of the project, combining simple but effective technologies (easy to replicate and transfer, such as sandbags and mud bricks) with local traditional knowledge.
The entire village actively participated in design and construction. Discussions focused on real needs, local resources and skills. Together with a local contractor, women and men of the village worked at the building site, with specific technical training, promoting both autonomy in school maintenance and sense of belonging.
Launched in 2017, the first phase terminated in 2020 with two classrooms, communal spaces, and a boundary wall – including 14 rainwater collection cisterns – to protect from desert winds, and extensive landscaping to contrast erosive phenomena. As the community lives an outdoor life, open-air areas were carefully designed.
The active involvement of the community, women in particular, promoted a subsequent project, “So Much More Than a School,”: it launched in 2021 to address further community needs, including a communal kitchen – working also as school canteen and local bakery – public bathrooms, and a vegetable garden.
Activities involved planting, training, and launching feminine “micro-enterprises”.
In January 2025, a moment of celebration between the local community, the institutions and the project partners sanctioned an important handover: from now on, it will be the community itself, through the micro-entrepreneurial activities implanted, that will take full charge of the school and its related spaces.
