Burkina Faso, a French-speaking country in West Africa, is one of the 10 least developed countries in the world. Low school enrolment rate remains a very big problem (more than a million children aged 6 to 11 remain out of the system) and the majority of students are boys. Girls therefore suffer particularly from a high rate of illiteracy.

The action of the Katia van Weel foundation in favor of the education of young girls in Burkina Faso began in 1995, when its foundation obtained CHF 15’000.- by participating in the TSR program “the dream of your 20 years”. Her idea was to build a school for girls only without hope of going to school.

Twenty years later, the foundation has 6 schools across the country!

In each project, local authorities and groups of parents of pupils participate in the construction, for example by providing labor or by providing various services. In agricultural villages, thanks to a small schooling, to the sale of water from the well and to the sale on the markets of the artisanal productions of the pupils, schools must aim for autonomy.

The success met by the approach of the Katia van Weel foundation, its desire to set up structures to be autonomous in the long term, to allow young girls and women with no other hope to go to school and train themselves professionally in the goals of the Hermann Foundation; it therefore appeared fully appropriate to grant it financial support to promote its development (schools, training centers).