Lou Calen and Baraka Community: working together for a better education in Zambia
Lou Calen is actively involved in solidarity projects around the world, in partnership with Baraka Community. Founded in 2007 in the UK, this charity supports work towards improving education, health, access to drinking water, and sanitation, in rural areas in Zambia.
In Zambia, where access to good education remains a major challenge, the Baraka Community allocates around 80% of its funds to the construction and improvement of infrastructure within schools. The action is focused on the involvement and improvement of local communities, because the best change comes from within. The communities are involved in each stage of the project, in particular by contributing voluntary labour (for example, parents participate in construction or maintenance of school buildings) and contributing basic materials for construction or maintenance.
The impact of this partnership goes far beyond educational infrastructure. By supporting these initiatives, Lou Calen is participating in a broader movement that aims to promote the right to education, a fundamental right often claimed by children themselves.
In this region of Zambia, young girls are on the front lines demanding access to education, as shown in this song filmed at the Kapiri Mposhi Safehouse. This is a fight that Lou Calen and Baraka Community have decided to support.
The Mount Camel Project
One of the significant action projects of this collaboration is located in Mount Camel, a small town in the Kapiri Mposhi district of Zambia. With a population of 20,000 inhabitants, 60% of whom are adolescents and children, the town has only two schools to meet the growing educational demand.
The Mount Camel school already accommodates 2,500 students supervised by 43 teachers. It faces an evident lack of space and adequate infrastructure. Teachers take turns to teach in the nine available classrooms or outside in the shade of a eucalyptus tree. To overcome this situation, the local community, with an admirable spirit of solidarity, has undertaken the construction of three new classrooms. However, these efforts are limited by insufficient resources, and the project remains incomplete.
This is where Lou Calen’s intervention comes in! In partnership with Baraka Community, Lou Calen will finance the roof construction of the new classrooms as well as all the necessary finishing touches to the building, so that these rooms are quickly operational.
Furthermore, Lou Calen is committed to co-financing, with the local community, the construction of perimeter walls around the school to keep students and educational staff safe. These three new rooms will accommodate 350 additional children each day, thus offering more children from the community the opportunity to benefit from quality education.
Through important actions like those being undertaken in Mount Camel, this partnership not only contributes to improving educational infrastructure, but also to offering a brighter future to the children of this community. Each new class, every donation of equipment, and each gesture of help strengthens the right to education, thus creating a bridge to a more just and equitable future for generations to come. This is a commitment that goes beyond infrastructure. For example – recently, after a charitable clothing collection was organised among Lou Calen employees, the idea of a football team collection emerged, with equipment and uniform, thanks to the initiative of Pierre Sube.
This partnership is proof that the commitment of companies, combined with the determination of local communities, can truly change the course of things in the future of third world countries. Baraka Community, with the support of Lou Calen, thus demonstrates that access to education is not only a local issue, but also a powerful lever to fight poverty on a global scale.
