I am planning to be moving two ex British Double Decker into Tanzania and Malawi in the next few months. Why?? See below
Anyone up for a challenge.
? AFRI-BUS ?
For many years the people who are working on the AFRI-BUS project have been living and working in various parts of Africa, they were working within Aid, development and charity agencies, mainly within orphanages, schools, children’s hospitals and education. Much of their work has involved them in developing and funding projects to assist children from poverty level villages to access education to enable them to be able to escape the poverty trap caused by the lack of education.
They are now based in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, currently they are developing the prototype of a fully self contained mobile school complete with a resource center, library and computer suite to assist poverty level villages in Africa, the vehicles are based on converted double decker buses.
The basic idea being that each vehicle will work with a small group of villages, providing a complete resource center to the village, the local educational facility and helping to deliver a range of lessons which cannot be currently provided by the local school, either because of a lack of teachers or lack of facilities, and even in some cases lack of a school premises at all. In each country, the vehicle will work alongside the Ministry of Education, and local teachers, and the local curriculum.
In the daytimes the vehicle would work with school children to assist the national curriculum, in the evenings and weekends it would work with adults assisting various aid organizations to deliver health and adult education programs.
The classroom/library would spend two – three weeks in each village, and then move on, this visit to be repeated every 3 months. The villages are fairly close to each other perhaps only taking 1/2 days drive between them so the bus would work with 8 villages in all.
Each bus would be converted to have a library, resource center and computer section on the bottom floor, a classroom on the upper floor, the bus will be fitted with a pull out canopy on the outside to create a second classroom or reading area. That way we can educate 20 children on the top floor, 30 children in the canopy area. So if you take 50 children per day, and we teach for just 6 hours a day that's 1500 hours of education per week. So in one year we are:-
• Assisting 6 villages,
• Teaching 500 kids
• Providing about 78000 hours of education.
All of this without calculating the hours worked and benefits from the extra curriculum activities for children and adult education classes planned for the evenings and weekends. These will include:-
• Health. (a point of interest, we have been asked if we can supply a bus equipped as clinic)
• Skills development.
• AID’S awareness.
• Alternative technology.
• Reading and writing for adults.
• Small business development. (a point of interest, we have been asked if we can supply a bus equipped as a small business
advice and training centre)
To give you a very basic idea of what is planned for the bus.
Lower Floor
Lending and reference library containing 3000+ books.
There will be a small computer resource section powered by a small generator and solar panels, complete with a large selection of educational and informational information based on hard disks, CD’s and DVDs.
At each village the bus visits, a small library will be left, this will be replenished/exchanged on each visit, therefore ensuring the local children have a constant supply of reading materials.
The ground floor will also be used to store and transport the collapsible tables and chairs that will be used in the outside classroom.
Outside classroom
Along the out side of the bus will be a pull out canopy with drop down sides, this area will become a covered classroom area which will be set out with collapsible tables and chairs. Seating 30 children, and a teacher.
Upper floor
This will be the design of the year, because here we are going to create a multi use space that will house
• A small living area complete with bathroom and toilet area for the staff who will travel with the bus.
• A small kitchen area.
• A classroom area, complete with audio visual equipment, TV, Video, DVD player, CD player, tape unit and seating for 20 children. Also to be used as an adult education area in the evenings and weekends.
We have been given a variety of ideas that will be integrated into the conversion of the bus, we would welcome any ideas people may have.
The first bus has now been delivered ready to be converted.
The plan is to complete the first conversion within 3 months and get the bus shipped overseas to get it to work as soon as possible.
Durability/sustainability
The driver will be a driver/fitter to ensure the vehicle is kept mobile, and spares will be shipped with each vehicle, should the point ever be reached where a bus breaks down beyond repair, then the vehicle will be moved and sited in one village on a concrete stand and become a permanent facility for that village, therefore no vehicle will ever be wasted.
where Africa comes to you..
