Burkina Faso
ATD Fourth World has been active in Burkina since 1980, with a team of permanent volunteers based in Ouagadougou. Since 2002 part of the team has been active in a rural area 130km from Ouagadougou.
ATD Fourth World’s main areas of activity in Burkina are:
- Creating conditions to allow young street dwellers to be reunited with their families. The team attempts to make contact with young street dwellers through a cultural project called the Streetlamp Library. The friendships forged in this way continue through the “Courtyard of 100 Trades”, a workshop to introduce the youngsters to certain trades. The friendships ultimately lead on to a relationship with the children’s families. The aim at that point is to initiate and support plans for a shared future for the child and his/her family.
- Supporting isolated families in their own communities. Our knowledge-sharing activities in local neighbourhoods in Ouagadougou aim to win recognition from their peers for people who enable children to develop, to discover the world and become aware of their own ability to learn, but who are not usually expected to participate in the life of the community and whose knowledge most often goes unrecognised. These activities create social bonds which provide a form of security for the very poor.
- Being active in rural areas, and supporting the effort of the whole educational community (including families, teachers and literacy centres) to provide a future for all children. In three villages in the province of Ganzourgou in central Burkina, we organise knowledge-sharing activities which bring together all children, whether school-educated or not, to emphasise that every child has knowledge. When these children discover that they are all eager to learn and all have their own wealth of knowledge to share, their parents – and all those who are concerned with the children’s future – feel recognised and proud too.
- Celebrating the World Day to Overcome Extreme Poverty on 17th October. In Manega (a village 60km from Ouagadougou) in 1996 the “Sacred African Stone of the Fourth World”, a replica of the Commemorative Stone at the Trocadéro in Paris, was unveiled in honour of the victims of extreme poverty.
Building vibrant communities; strengthening capacities for justice, equity, and collective action
Side event on the Commission for Social Development organized by Baha’i International
Example of a small project in Burkina Faso and the lessons we learned from that project.We created a workshop: Initiation to weaving and pre-school activities with young mothers and their children.
The stated goal of this project was: “to weave ties between young single mothers, their preschool age children and their communities”.
The minister of Promotion of Human Rights invites an ATD Fourth World Movement delegation
Poor and rich, hand in hand
