Education in the Bush

                  

The African Wildlife Foundation is hoping to do some tricky medicine on the world at large, to stop the planet's lungs from collapsing.

The organization's CEO , Patrick Bergin says, "If you think of the world as having two lungs, the Amazon rainforest is one lung, and the Congo Basin forest is the second. It's a place everyone should be concerned about in a time of climate change." 

Over the next decade, the African Wildlife Foundation is building 15 conservation-themed primary schools in some of Africa's most remote regions that are highly strategic from an environmental standpoint. The schools are designed to be state-of-the-art, built with attractive faculty housing that will hopefully lure some of Africa's best teachers.

Bergin notes that when it comes to education in Africa, resources go first to schools in the city, then to those in the surrounding towns. "Kids that live in the Bush are likely to be deeply disadvantaged," he says.

It is precisely that segment, he argues, that needs access to good schooling to protect the future of the continent.

Construction has already begun on the first school in Ilima, an extremely isolated village in the Democratic Republic of Congo that sits on the corridor between two protected areas.  Getting there involves a two-day motorized canoe trip from Kinshasa, followed by a five-hour motorcycle ride. What that means is that getting materials in and out of the area can prove troublesome.

Architectural firm Mass Design Group has partnered with the African Wildlife Foundation to build the schools. It was imperative that the designers used locally sourced materials. "If there's a need to repair or maintain the school 45 years down the road, the community has to be able to do it without depending on materials like steel or cement, which would be hard to locate," says Andrew Brose, the project manager.

(CNN reports)

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