Mali Africa Kori-Maounde elementary school cafeteria project

UCOH recently sent a tithe to support the creation of an elementary school cafeteria project led by The Tandana Foundation of Ohio who is supporting development projects in Mali Africa.

Tina Williamson of our UCOH spiritual community and Founder of Women Worldwide, a portal for people to come to and find opportunities around the world to help women and children in need, helped usher forward this abundance through her previous experiences working on projects in Mali with the Tandana Foundation. Below is Tina’s story about her visit to Mali and the blessings of the school cafeteria for the beautiful young lives in Mali:

Mali, January 2009. On that trip, our service project was to donate and plant 85 trees to a school garden in Kori-Maounde, Mali (West Africa). Mali is the 3rd poorest country on the planet, and schools are typically only found in the larger towns, not outlying villages. I found the Tandana Foundation, based out of Ohio, and worked with Anna Taft to develop the project. Anna has been going to the Dogon Country in Mali for several years, and developed a relationship with several villages and NGOs in the area. She speaks French (the business language of Mali), and ours was the first group trip she organized for Mali. She does this in Ecuador, also. She’s an amazing, dedicated young woman. We had the opportunity to work with community centers and some building projects, but the one that spoke to my heart was helping the school in Kori-Maounde.
Because there are no school buses, and no villagers own cars or motorized vehicles, the children were unable to get to school in Bandiagara, 30km away. A French couple donated school buildings, and an Italian foundation donated some (limited!!) school supplies. Daniel, the school director, looked for a way to buy more school supplies, and came up with the idea of a school garden. He got some agricultural training and started the first garden. Anna’s church donated the fence around the garden. The children care for the fruit & vegetables, sell the produce at market, then use the money to buy some more school supplies. They are very organized, with a treasurer and everything! The school started with Grades 1 & 2, then added Grades 3 & 4. Daniel hopes to add Grades 5 & 6 soon.

For our project, we donated 85 fruit trees, and helped the children and villagers dig holes and plant them in their school garden. We also helped the villagers dig a trench, lay a pipe, and create a watering basin, so that the children can water the trees more easily. One volunteer taught the kids how to play Frisbee, another taught them "head, shoulders, knees, and toes," and we lead them with call-and-response to a water hole to bring water for the trees. In the evenings, we gave English lessons to middle school students at a dormitory in Bandiagara.

When there, Daniel told us he dreamed of building a cafeteria. About half of the children walk from surrounding villages. The lunch break is from 12n-3pm, then they return for the afternoon session from 3-5pm. Some of the children walk 1.5 hours one way, so they often don’t return for the afternoon sessions. Traditionally meals are hot – one pot for carbohydrates (rice, millet, etc.) and one pot for the “sauce” (water, spices, vegetables, meat if there is any). Therefore, it’s traditional for kids to go home for lunch. The outlying villages like Kori-Maounde aren’t familiar with the concept of packing a lunch for their children. And if they did, it would be pretty hard to pack and keep (much less heat) these kinds of meals. There are no refrigerators; no electricity; no Tupperware; no sandwiches. So, a cafeteria and food service would help keep these children in school.

That’s the project that UCOH is helping. The villagers will build the school. They make their own bricks out of mud and water in the fields. There is no electricity or running water, so it will be a fairly simple building. Food is cooked on pots over a wood fire, so no “kitchen” like we’re used to. A mason will create the bricks and build the building with the villagers help. The UCOH contribution will help towards buying the cooking utensils, and other things needed to set up the cafeteria. Tandana will work with Daniel directly and report back to us as the project proceeds.