One of the most recent actions of the Burkina Faso Ministry of Education in the fight against school dropouts has been to unify isolated schools into school complexes where education is provided from nursery to high school. The project includes the development of the new Bangre Veenem School Complex from the existing Primary school in the village of Youlou (Koudougou), as well as the construction of the Secondary school and auxiliary buildings (canteen, staff changing rooms, water tank and other service areas). The NGO and the City Council have subsequently completed the intervention with the construction of the Nursery and the Central Administration of the complex.

▼项目概览，general view © Milena Villalba

The mayor’s office and the neighbours make more than 8 hectares of land available to the project in order to complete the infrastructure, since schools in Burkina Faso’s villages are usually formalized as multiple ground floor pavilions scattered over large areas of land. The first decision is to compact the proposal to reduce the intervention area by 40% (5ha) in order to affect existing housing communities and their farmland as little as possible. In addition, it has been decided to divide the property into two zones, North and South, with an “outside” area in between, a large public square for access but also for transit. Most of the intervention is concentrated in the central area of the site, arranged in three horizontal strips, where the intermediate one is the great void to access, in the North is located the Secondary School, the Central Administration and its parking spaces, and in the South the buildings for the Nursery, the Canteen and its auxiliary and parking areas.

The proposal foresees the construction of the main buildings – Secondary School, Nursery and Administration- with walls and vaults made of compressed earth bricks (CEB) and with a double upper protective roof, and the auxiliary buildings, together with the closing walls that make up the central access plaza, in thick weather-resistant stone walls.