From 16 to 30 July 2022, our project manager travelled to Burkina Faso.
The aims of the project are to give the SOS Fille Mere association a lasting structure, to open up access to education for children of school age, and to support the empowerment of young women and their return to society.
The mission was built around meetings with the partners (including SOS Fille Mere), financial reviews, a visit to the shelter, meetings with the site foreman and the local authorities, working sessions to consider new projects, and meetings with various people able to help HAMAP projects take shape in Burkina Faso.
On site, our project manager met the beneficiaries of the SOS Fille Mere association, which currently takes in 13 young mothers and around thirty children. The main activities of the project run with this association are: building the shelter, schooling for the children of school age, vocational training for the young mothers, awareness sessions for the young mothers (family planning, literacy) and the opening of a solidarity shop selling the products they make. HAMAP-Humanitaire has also funded a borehole at the shelter so that it has its own water supply. The SOS Fille Mere association intends to raise awareness among residents of the difficulties faced by young mothers, who are stigmatised. Training and awareness sessions will be run by associations and by trainers paid for by the project (local family planning service, sewing teacher).
Our project manager also met the members of ACTEA, an information platform for water sector actors in Burkina Faso which works above all with development actors.
The Association les Mains Unies du Sahel (AMUS) also presented a new water and sanitation project on which it would like to work with HAMAP-Humanitaire. It is a project to improve access to water and sanitation in the communes of Dargo and Zeguedeguin. Only 10% of residents there have access to toilets (12% in rural areas nationally). The plan is to fund 220 latrines. If 220 latrines were funded for the most vulnerable households, the awareness work carried out in the 32 villages of the
communes would encourage better-off families to fund their own latrine » Moreover, the awareness sessions to come will reach 32 villages. They will cover contamination, the risks and the barriers linked to open defecation, as well as
raising residents' awareness of how to maintain and use the latrines.
HAMAP-Humanitaire works in rural areas to meet the many needs of isolated places, which are sometimes hard to reach, and the Oueleni leg of the mission had to be cancelled. The bonds of trust between HAMAP and its partners nonetheless make it possible to keep working despite the difficulties.