Baraka is a poor suburb of Dakar located between Sicaps Liberté 6, Sacre Coeur 3 and VDN, and has a population of 1,800 inhabitants. Since 2004, the UNESCO Foundation – Education for Children in Need has been a strategic partner of HOPE’87 to improve educational and skills training opportunities in Baraka. In March 2011, UNESCO Special Ambassador Dr Ute Ohoven, President of the UNESCO Foundation – Education for Children in Need, was thanked by the Minister of National Education of Senegal for the tireless work for the inhabitants of this slum area. Meanwhile, the Baraka school has been incorporated into the mainstream school system, in particular into the National Departmental Inspectorate of Education Grand Dakar (IDEN). The Baraka school was built in 2006 and the current construction activities, financed by the Marc Rich Foundation, concern seven classrooms for the full educational cycle (CI to CM2) as well as the rehabilitation of sanitary facilities.

Project Background: 

According to UNESCO, literacy is a right and a foundation for lifelong learning, better well-being and livelihood. As such it is a driver for sustainable and inclusive development. Despite these facts, 774 million adults (15 years and older) still cannot read or write – two-thirds of them (493 million) are women. Among youth, 123 million are illiterate of which 76 million are female. Even though the size of the global illiterate population is shrinking, the female proportion has remained virtually steady at 63% to 64%. For these reasons HOPE’87 has chosen MDG 2 (“Achieve universal primary education”) as the backbone for a successful strategy to achieve MDG 1, namely “to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger”.