General Meeting on Saturday, May 12, 2024
Like every year, our members and supporters can come and find out what we've been up to in the field, and what we'd like to do next year.

This year, Simone and Mona, who accompanied us for 2 months, will tell us what they discovered on their first trip to a sub-Saharan country. Simone is preparing a special kind of safari for us!

Of course, we'll also be talking about the inspection of our latest elementary school project in Dalaba, and the future of our 37 sponsored girls.

As for our 2024-25 projects, it's quite possible that we'll have a chance of obtaining co-financing funds, enabling us to apply to Bengo Engagement Global /BMZ to help Kignéro, the 3rd largest village in the sub-prefecture with 6,500 inhabitants, obtain its health post to improve the health of children under 5 and pregnant women.

Of course, we'll also be deciding whether to propose a 2nd summer camp for our sponsored girls to continue filling their gaps!

Mona's report
Pictures of welcome parties

Presentation of rings and kits to our 37 sponsored girls
Big meeting with our 37 sponsored girls from primary and secondary schools, with primary and secondary school principals, teachers, APEAEs from all over Balimana and our responsible partners, Madame Konaté, Monsieur Camara and Monsieur Traoré.

In front of a full house, we reiterated our objectives for this sponsorship, which since the beginning of 2023 have been less focused on food, supplies and school fees, but essentially on the acquisition of the fundamentals, such as reading, writing, comprehension and arithmetic.

To ensure that our support over 10 years really does enable the girls to have an ordinary schooling that will enable them to obtain the BEPC. This was not the priority of the previous managers, nor of the girls, who didn't take school seriously and came mainly to get the bag of rice!

Then we distributed the kits, made by Laurence Chaminaud-Doumeng, our manager in Germany, with a little surprise inside.
Needless to say, after the reception all the girls were around Madame Konaté to exchange rings to get the right one for their fingers.

Handover of clothes, books, toys and school supplies
As luck would have it, Roman Tasso was on a one-week mission to Guinea to train a cement company in the company's management software, when he met Mona on the shuttle back from Kassa to Conakry.

His French company regularly collects the surplus from their employees, which is stored in cellars or attics, to bring to each mission in Africa. That's why Roman offered us 2 suitcases full of books, clothes and toys, as well as an envelope of 100 EUR for our educational projects.

By mutual agreement with our local partners, it was decided that Kignéro, the 3rd village in the sub-prefecture (population 6,500), which until now had received nothing from our NGO, would receive the donations.
For the donation of 100 EUR (one million GNF), we asked Mr Mamadou Diané, the new principal of the elementary school, to draw up a list of the school's needs in terms of notebooks, pens and maths boxes for its 132 pupils.

The microscopy session
We brought along teaching aids and all the measurement tools needed to learn all the units of measurement, such as lengths, units of mass, volumes, surfaces, time...

Above all, we focused on learning how to reason and solve problems, getting children to be creative and come up with all kinds of solutions without judgment or punishment. And to gradually lead them to find the common element in the problem statement, such as converting Kg into grams to compare units of mass.

Then we prepared a microscopy session with the chemistry, mathematics and biology teachers for the middle school and 6th grade primary classes. The teachers made the tools and their settings their own, using prepared slides. It was a great discovery for young and old alike, and one that we hope the teachers will continue!

Lastly, Mona and Simone organized two sessions of scientific games in junior high school on magnetism, electricity, physics and mechanics... and in primary school with puzzles and construction games. Two sessions which, even after 2 hours of fun and application, didn't want to end...

The only thing we didn't get to do was the telescope session to discover the macroscopic world, which the physics teacher will have to do on his own, or wait for our next 'staycation!

Faso Demen and their organic market gardening plan
The "Faso Demen" (L'aide au Village in Malinké) youth association in Fodécariah is starting to grow organic vegetables under the guidance of a Malian agricultural engineer.
Their fields are located very close to the Milo river, which, with a pump, allows manual watering without any problems.

We are taking advantage of this infrastructure to launch the "herb garden" project with the schoolchildren under the responsibility of Mr Camara, the biology teacher, to replace the Magic Cube in the long term. Magic cube is the most widely used seasoning in West Africa, and is a slow killer. All the women put some in the pot every day to satisfy the taste.
This leads to Type II diabetes and hypertension guaranteed from age 50!

Traditional African medicine
We would like to thank Yakouba Keita, our AJDPE partner, for introducing us to his friend Dr Mamadou Kotèban Camara, who devoted over 2 hours of his time to explaining the foundations of traditional African medicine in comparison with Western and Chinese medicine.

Traditional African medicine is characterized by its use of plants, animals and minerals. It is both a natural and a spiritual medicine. Traditional healers try to determine the root cause of illness, looking for the imbalance between the patient and his or her social environment or spiritual world. Everything counts, even the song of a bird, the brightness of the sun or the encounter with an animal on the way out of the house!

Most of our Guinean friends, even the young sub-prefect, use traditional remedies to treat themselves (malaria, migraines, wounds and abscesses, fevers, rheumatism, infertility, etc.).

Of course, we didn't just want to know the theory, we also wanted to try out the practice! He unveiled a few therapies for our health concerns, which we'll be experimenting with...

Stay tuned in 3 months to see the first results!

Children's festival in Fodécariah
For 3 hours, the children of the Fodecariah primary school deserted their classrooms to take part in the children's festival that our partners had so carefully organized. Mr Dansoko, the principal of the elementary school, warmly thanked us for this event, which he would like to have every year!

Many educational games on classifications, antonyms, recitations, reading, as many fun games like the sack race, musical chairs..., to accumulate bon-points and be part of the 14 best, the winners proud of their prize!

See the video of the children's festival broadcast on RTG national television

Kignéro & Balimana welcome us
We were also treated to a welcome party by the community of Kignero Balimana, the 3rd largest village in the sub-prefecture. The elders, the young sub-prefect, the local authorities, everyone came to parade in front of us, and the children came to recite and sing.
And of course, the show ended with a performance of Soundiata Keita's epic.

Watch the video of Soundiata Keita's epic

This village of 6,500 inhabitants, which lacks boreholes and a 3-classroom building, has been waiting for over 2 years for a health post to improve the health of children and pregnant women.
We're working on the project, but there's still no guarantee that we'll succeed.

Dalaba & Balimana welcome us
At this reception, the elders waited for us under the mango trees, the pupils recited poems under the watchful eye of the teachers, the local authorities thanked us for their new elementary school and we finished our inspection with the playground for all the children to enjoy.

Mona then gave the children a Frisbee lesson to the delight of young and old alike.

Dalaba & Balimana welcome us
We came with all the players who contributed to the success of our last project to check that everything was up and running.

After a warm welcome from the community, we visited the elementary school building with its 6 equipped classrooms, borehole, sanitary block with 8 toilets, water tower and communal washbasins.

This improvement has increased the number of pupils from 387 to over 500.

Fodécariah & Balimana welcome us
For the first time, this young sub-prefect brought in artists from his former sub-prefecture to put on an extraordinary show that went on until late into the night, with masks and figures we had never seen before.

• See the video of the fairy
• See the farmer's video

Fodécariah & Balimana welcome us
Our heartfelt thanks go to Mr Ibrahima Sory Condé, the new sub-prefect who has been in post in the Fodécariah & Balimana sub-prefecture for 5 months, for his very warm welcome.

After being welcomed by the schoolchildren and teaching staff, we were received by the community and of course, as usual, by the Condé mask.

Faso Demen (L'aide au village in Malinké), the youth association, gave us an overview of all their activities in the field, starting with street cleaning and maintenance, school infrastructure cleaning, garbage collection, construction of a housing estate for teachers, and most recently, market gardening with the help of a Malian engineer for modern, organic farming.

The visit of the Alliance des jeunes dynamiques pour le progrès éducatif (AJDPE)
We were delighted to welcome our partners from the AJDPE, with whom we discussed a number of current educational issues.

As Guinean pan-African youth become more aware of the need for a modern Africa that resembles their own, we discussed the need to use the N'Ko language, or the harmonized alphabet proposed by the IRLA Institute for Applied Linguistic Research, to teach local languages at primary level.

The harmonized alphabet is proposed by (IRLA) to transcribe the most important languages such as Sousou spoken in Lower Guinea, Poular spoken in Fouta Djalon in Middle Guinea, and Malinké spoken in Upper Guinea.

Pre-university textbooks and curricula in Guinea are in French, the working language. Unfortunately, there is a lot of resistance to learning in French.

• Is this due to the colonial past?
• Or the poor training of teachers who don't master the language?
• Or the lack of good conditions, such as learning in small classes (35 students) with good textbooks for each student?

Of course, it was difficult to find the right strategy and the right solution... to be continued.

A visit to Lansana Conté University in Sonfonia, Conakry
We'd like to thank Mr. N'Valy Condé (the man in the hat), research professor in Philosophy at Lansana Conté University in Sonfonia, Conakry's largest social science university with 20,000 students, for showing us his workplace and his work as an epistemologist.

More on the university's website: https://uglcs.org/home/

Follow Mr. N'Valy Condé, this well-known columnist and expert on education in Guinea, on the weekly program TEG (tout sur l'éducation) every Saturday on Djoma TV.

Or live on Facebook: https://fb.watch/qTSwUXyjnL/

Or on YouTube:

• 16.03.2024 broadcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdhcp9g3CQY
• Broadcast from 9.03.2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nrq_IgrC08&t=233s

Visit to ATLAS private schools in Sangoya Matoto, Conakry
We'd like to thank Mr. Kemi Mali Fofana, General Manager of ATLAS private schools, for taking us on a tour of all the facilities under his responsibility, from kindergarten to high school.

We wanted to compare a benchmark private establishment with the general obsolescence of public schools that we have observed throughout the country, with a low or even non-existent success rate, as in Fodécariah & Balimanan in 2023.

The secret to good management is rigor and control with all those involved in the running of the school, from the janitor to the administrators, teachers and pupils. On the other hand, his long days start at 5.30 a.m. and end at 7.30 p.m.!

As for the 94% success rate in exams at all levels, from primary to Baccalauréat, this is due on the one hand to the school's close relationship with its students and, on the other, to the rigorous learning conditions, with classes of no more than 35 students and teachers who are better paid than in the public sector.

Discover this visit in photos (pdf)
See in Facebook: Atlas

The 2024 delegation
Our 2 adventurers dared to come and discover Guinea in West Africa for 2 months, starting in September 2023. It was almost their first visit to sub-Saharan Africa, and they have a lot to tell...

We arrived in Conakry still tired from the trip. Follow them step by step in their discoveries and observations by reading their report

Mona's report
Pictures of welcome parties

Dear godmothers and godfathers!
First of all, we would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

As we did last year, Laurence and I, as the people responsible for supporting girls in our association, would like to inform you about the current situation.

The start of the school year was supposed to take place on October 3rd, but serious strikes regarding the permanent employment of teachers jeopardized the start of the school year, as promises regarding salary payments and permanent employment were not kept in time. This has led to much confusion and uncertainty.

In Fodécaria, the start of the school year was carried out in two stages, first for the middle school and then for the elementary school. The directors of the two levels were changed. For the elementary school, this change gives us hope for the future of our girls, as there are now six teachers present instead of four.

We have paid all the school fees which have increased because part of it is used to pay teachers who are not permanent.

The first distribution has now been completed. The students received new backpacks and all the necessary equipment (notebooks, pencils, pens, math box, pencil case) as well as a pair of shoes and 50 kg of rice and beans.

The elementary school also received the necessary materials (math box, pencils, pens, exercise books, pencil cases, etc.) and bags, which we had made on site.

During the summer camp, we noticed that the girls unfortunately did not take good care of the equipment provided by our association. They even damaged or misplaced it. The summer camp was an opportunity to emphasize the respect that must be shown to this equipment. By mutual agreement (parents, guardians and supervisors), we made the decision that the school uniform would not be replaced this year in order to restore elementary values. For more than a year, we have been focusing our priorities on education and success, which has meant a significant financial outlay on our part for the summer camp and support courses set up to raise the girls' very low standards.

For example, during the vacations at the end of December, the eight pupils in Year 6 received a week of extra tuition. From the end of January until the national school examination at the end of May, the 6th grade will have a weekly preparatory course tailored to the examination.

Today, after a significant and meticulous sorting out of pupils who are unwilling to learn (absenteeism, triple or quadruple repetition of classes), we are responsible for 26 pupils in elementary school and 11 pupils in secondary school. Each of our goddaughters is known, followed and supported by our sponsorship. Through the summer camps and the work of the counselors, we have created a climate of trust and hope to have a positive impact on school education.

You can also follow these initiatives and their results on our website: Promoting Girls

This is the latest news from your sponsored children.

Thank you for your support.

Almut HILDEBRANDT, Laurence CHAMINAUD

2023 has been a very complicated year worldwide, ending with massacres between Israel and Palestine.
Unfortunately, it's frightening to see the number of conflicts and tensions developing in different parts of the world. The propensity for violence is increasing dramatically. Europe is turning in on itself, democracy is on its last legs, and the arms race is growing at an alarming rate.

Guinea is not excluded from this turbulence, and the 18,600 contract teachers who have been badly treated for so long still see no end in sight. Without good, motivated and well-paid teachers, it is virtually impossible to prepare the future of a country.

This was also the year when many young Guineans fled their misery to migrate to Europe. According to statistics, Guinea is in the top 3 for migration: migration-flows-to-europe

Despite this high-voltage retrospective, our association is extremely proud to have been able to help the village of Dalaba Balimana in the sub-prefecture of Fodecariah 6 Balimana, by building an elementary school with a sanitary block and a playground.
Primary school project
Playground project

Despite all this, we wish you all a happy festive season and hope that diplomacy and peace will return in 2024.

I have a dream...
"I have a dream..." No, it's not Martin Luther King, but a university professor in Conakry who dares to dream of a prosperous Guinea.

On the occasion of Guinea's Independence Day on September 28, 2023, Mr. Pr Alpha Amadou Bano Barry, research professor at the University of Sonfonia in Conakry, set the room alight with his speech for a rich and prosperous Guinea.

I invite you to follow his dream

Read the speech