Nour Al Bayane Wal Houdah

Nour Al Bayane Wal Houdah is a school I co-founded in Bassar, my hometown in northern Togo. I first imagined it in 2017, when I was twelve.

In 2025, a $10,000 Davis Projects for Peace grant let us turn the unused upper floor of a mosque into six classrooms. Today, six volunteer teachers teach 56 students.

The school is not meant to send students away with diplomas. It is meant to raise young people who love their community, notice its problems and opportunities, and act on them. Lessons combine languages and academics with farming and practical skills. Students work a school garden and demonstration farm of about one acre, and a seed-yam plot helps the school earn its own income.

We want the school to pay its own way, so it answers to its students and not to donors. Fees stay low so no family is shut out. A community fundraiser I co-organized with Ana Flood raised more than $8,800 for textbooks, meals, teacher pay and student transport.

Next on the list: paying our teachers, a computer lab, a space for sports and play, and trips to historic sites, metal-working sites and local businesses.

In ten years, I want the students we teach to be the ones who volunteer, run activities and mentor the next generation.