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Case Study: Africa
Sierra Leone
Giving a community that feeling of
Permanence
The Rogbere project began small but today includes a junior secondary school along
with teachers’ accommodation, a trainingcentre, anorphanageandaccommodation
for volunteers, and it continues to grow a little more with each passing year.
T
he project began back in 2004 when a small Irish
NGO, Emmaus, purchased 63 acres of land from the
local community of Rogbere Village, a rural area about
42km outside of the capital, Freetown. The vision was
to provide skills training and apprenticeships, and a
Hydraform M7 blockmaking machine was bought as a
cornerstone of this plan.
In 2009, Emmaus got together with another UK-based
NGO, A Call to Business (ACTB), which had received a
big donation to build a school on the site. The resulting
Rogbere School of Excellence (Junior Secondary) was
completed and opened in September 2010. A teachers’
accommodation block was also built the following year.
Marjie Sutton, director of ACTB, explains that Hydraform
technology was chosen because of its ease of use,
cost efficiency and the excellent quality of the finished
product. “The buildings constructed using Hydraform
interlocking blocks are all very attractive, far outshining
the usual cement block structures,” she adds, noting
also that the mobility of the machines is very useful.
In 2012 work began on a new home for a small
orphanage for physically and mentally disabled children
that had been sponsored by ACTB since 2007. The new
orphanage opened in 2013 and now houses about 40
children. Since then a further small accommodation
block has been built to house visitors/volunteers, along
with a new toilet block for the school and another
building to expand the school, hopefully to include
primary and senior schooling.
The NGO’s vision is to see Rogbere Village transformed
into a self-sustaining business hub, providing employment
and income-generating opportunities for the community
and expanding to encompass surrounding villages. As
part of this vision, ACTB runs a successful microfinance/
SME-lending business with around 11 000 clients across
the country, which also benefits the Rogbere community
via loans to groups of women.
Plans are also in place for a variety of business
activities, including agriculture (cassava) and poultry
farming plus other livestock (goats/sheep). All along the
way marketable skills have been transferred to members
of the community and this will continue to be the focus
of the Rogbere project.