Progetti
Alice dandora
Our second school, at the foot of the dump
Thanks to a web charity competition launched by Fondazione Mediolanum, an innovative project has been created: Dandora school.
In Dandora, the dumpsite occupies around 6000 child workers that, for less than one dollar per day, clean up waste from recyclable, therefore saleable, material. The dump is organized by gangsters in collusion with powerful groups.
For those who work in the dump (the biggest open-air dump in Africa), there is no hope for the future. Hygienic conditions are extremely serious, and dioxin combustion and polluted air cause infections and lung diseases.
The average lifespan in the dump is very, very low.
The interventions from Alice for Children have been multiple: we have sustained and sponsored the St. Claire Primary School, run by our partner Claires Community Center, which today counts around 800 children, from nursery to middle school (when we began, in 2014, the children were 150).
To keep the children away from the dump, we also organized a deal with the families of the dump: if the kids went to school and were kept away from the dump, every day the families would receive a dinner. The kid, coming from school in the afternoon, would bring the food.
The deal was successful.
We also founded Alice Music Academy, a small music school that has played the role of social inclusion and rescue for the kids of Dandora, helping with reintegration in the school education for more than 400 children.
IN DANDORA THE CHILDREN’S DESTINY IS NOT ALREADY DOOMED
The path inside the school of Dandora aims at uprooting the children from the reality of the dump, through a journey of assistance and rescuing: for them, going to school is the ground for a more prosperous future which can take them away from that degrading reality.
400 of these kids are sponsored by our sponsors: without the intervention of child sponsorship, these children, which are selected by our social workers because in desperate conditions, could not go to school, have a warm meal a day nor a complete medical assistance.
The school of Dandora today
In 2019, thanks to our main sponsors Fondazione Mediolanum, Cristina Manuli e Locauto SPA, we could rebuild our school from scratch, with new classrooms, a library, restrooms for girls and boys, big rooms for the nursery’s babies, teachers’ offices, a kitchen and a cozy place to meet families and children looked after our social worker.
The nursery has been named Virginia’s Day Care, in the name and memory of Virginia Chimenti, one of our volunteers who was the first to work and study the project of Dandora in 2014, tragically passed away on the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash on May 10th, 2019. The association VIVING, created in her honor, has been sustaining our projects in Dandora since that day.
In 2021, the school of Dandora will be expanded for the arrival of 300 more children.
