Location
Thiargny, Linguere District, Louga Region, Senegal
Community Description
Thiargny is a rural village located in the Linguère Department, Louga Region, of north-central Senegal. The village of about 1,500 people is 30 km into the bush off of the paved road.
The members of the community are almost all ethnically Pulaar, Muslim, and most of the population relies on animal husbandry as a source of income. In addition to livestock raising, there is a women’s group that produces and sells milk and yogurt. Some compounds have fields and small family gardens.
There is a functioning health post in Thiargny that serves the village and the surrounding smaller villages in the rural community. The main health concerns facing Thiargny are malnutrition, anemia, and malaria during the rainy season.
The Thiargny Primary School is staffed by one school director and four teachers and attended by 200 students. The extremely motivated and hardworking school director and teachers of the school recently successfully advocated for and received a school well from the local government. This allowed them to start a school garden, which will serve as a teaching tool and provide much needed nutritional vegetables for the school lunch bowls.
The school garden is being used to combat malnutrition. Within the two months, since the garden was started, a fence was built, a vegetable nursery was started, and tomatoes and eggplants were out-planted into ten garden beds.
Lessons on nutrition and gardening have been conducted with the students, and a garden club is being established so that a small group of motivated students can take over most of the daily maintenance of the garden.
Problem Addressed
Gardening is not easy in Thiargny due to the hot, arid conditions of the Sahel environment. Though there is a fairly reliable water tower, water can sometimes be cut off for days at a time, which can cause the loss of most of the crops.
The garden is meant to be cared for primarily by the older students (9-12 years) in the garden club. Because there is not a water storage facility, watering must be done using cumbersome hoses from a single water tap.
Project Description
This project is to build a small water basin at the primary school to store water to be used for hand watering in the new school garden.
The basin will be 1.6 m wide by 1.6 m long and 60 cm tall. For structural integrity, it will be sunk 20 cm into the ground, with a rebar-reinforced poured-cement bottom, and built 4-5 layers of brick tall.
The holding capacity of the basin will be 1,536 liters, which is enough water for 2 days of watering the garden at its current area (200 square meters).
The school director has identified a local mason to construct the basin.
Water Charity funds will be used to pay for the cement, rock, sand, rebar, transportation of materials, and labor.
Project Impact
200 primary school students and 10 teachers and gardeners will benefit from this project.
Peace Corps Volunteer Directing Project
Leeya Correll
Comments
The water storage basin will enable the students to water the garden efficiently. In addition, it will preserve the crops when the water supply from the village is cut off.
Dollar Amount of Project
$170.00
Donations Collected to Date
$170.00
Dollar Amount Needed
$0.00 – This project has been fully funded by Girl Scout Troop 574 – Tallahassee, FL, Girl Scout Council of Florida Panhandle.
This project has been concluded.
We encourage others to continue to donate using the Donate button below, and we will notify Peace Corps Volunteer Leeya Correll of your donation. Additional funds will be used to fund the next project by Leeya and/or those of other PCVs in the country of service.
