Helping the HIV/AIDS-Orphaned Children of Bikanka, Burundi

        School Construction at Ndayi Village

            To enable Ndayi children to regularly attend school, to ease overall school overcrowding in the Zone, and to ensure that the Zone's HIV/AIDS orphans receive a quality education, a new school building is required.

            The Muranderera Association has set up an Ad hoc Committee to prepare the construction plans and cost estimates. It is estimated that the construction of the new school including six classrooms on one floor with adjacent sanitary block will cost approximately US$121,000; the proposed assembly hall US$20,000 and the proposed 6 additional classrooms on the second floor US$51,000. (Appendix 2)   

            After discussion between the Association and the Advisory Board, the project components are first, a U-shaped, one to two-story facility that would provide 6-12 classrooms, with at least 6 classrooms on the first floor to be readied for use by September 2007, and a sanitary block adjacent to the facility; and second, a multi-purpose hall that will serve both as a gymnasium, assembly hall and theater for the schoolchildren, and as a resource center for the surrounding community. The latter would provide the venue for organizing HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns, information and workshops run by skilled personnel, as well as for providing health care services to infected/affected persons and psycho-social support. Because both Hutu and Tutsi children will together attend this school, the assembly hall will also serve as a place where people across ethnic groups can gather and learn the values and common concerns of each other. 

            Muranderera’s fundraising efforts for the school construction project began on May 7, 2006 following a visit to the U.S. by Mr. Audace Buderi, the Chairman of Muranderera’s Executive Committee, who reported firsthand (http://www.muranderera.org/2006ActionPlan.htm) to donors on the Project, its achievements to date and the challenges ahead. They have intensified since last November after the second visit of Benoit Seburyamo to the Project and the site of the future school. His report (http://www.muranderera.org/docs/burundi_trip_06.pdf) describes the level of preparations and expectations of the different partners/actors, including the local administration. At the future school construction site, the big question on everybody’s mind was to learn when exactly the construction was going to start.

            Individual property owners in the Ndayi village community have freely contributed small parcels of their land to compensate the owner of the future school site. A few others have contributed money instead. 

            The Bikanka community has made significant donations-in-kind by working hard to assemble at the site local construction materials, such as stone and sand.

               In December 2006 Burundi’s President Nkurunziza visited Mukike Commune area for three days, to thank the population for maintaining good community relations during the civil war. Mukike community, despite its poverty, never sank into inter-ethnic killings. When President Nkurunziza stopped at the school site and saw the large quantity of local construction materials already assembled, he stated that he would personally donate 100 bags of cement and 100 corrugated iron sheets for the roofing, and promised more materials, if the need arises as the construction proceeds. Bikanka community and their leaders, including the Administrator of Mukike Commune and the members of Muranderera Local Steering Committee were gratified by this unexpected message of support. It raised their expectations to see the construction started. Briefly put, all the conditions for local and community contribution to the school building project, and even for presidential contribution now appeared to have been met.

            This is the Muranderera Project 2.

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Last modified: 12/24/07