Other social infrastructure and services

Most West African countries have considerable ethnic diversity. This is also the case in Burkina Faso, a country of 274,000 km2 with a population of nearly 18,000,000 inhabitants, which include a mosaic of nearly 60 different ethnic and linguistic groups.

Among these, there are the Senoufos. Their territorial area consists of southwestern Burkina Faso, southern Mali and northern Côte d'Ivoire. They are thus straddling these 3 countries. The Senoufos are farming people focusing on growing cereals as well as cotton.

This project was started in June 2009 and successfully ended in May 2011. The main aim of the project was to increase the educational and economic opportunities for people who have physical and mental disabilities. This skills training centre for handicapped people improved the chances for employment and income generation opportunities for youth with special needs. The project trained 169 men/women with various disabilities.

The project provided practical training in welding, electrical house wiring, car driving, tailoring and computer skills to 482 unemployed youth and students. The project funds covered the running costs and trainers’ salary of the Training Centre, which was set up with the financial support of the European Commission and the Austrian Government in the year 2001. Necessary training equipment, machinery and furniture were provided by HOPE’87 from its project “Hope Technical Training Centre in Old Dhaka”. This project aimed at creating employment opportunities for unemployed youth.

Ms Tan Yen Lin from Dunman High School, Singapore, expressed her experience in this programme with the following words: “It was definitely an eye-opening, life changing trip. I see things differently now. The trip beyond the objectives of assisting the locals in the communities of Bangladesh was a journey of self-discovery”.