A Community Effort

Students at School #196 in Hovsan, Azerbaijan recite poetry at a celebration of their school's re-opening. Community members provided labor and funds to repair the school. Photo: Mercy Corps Azerbaijan

Dressed in colorful traditional garments, children of the Hovsan settlement greeted guests with obvious pride and joy. The occasion was the opening of School #196 which was reconstructed recently by the local community with assistance from Mercy Corps and CHF's Social Investment Initiative program (SII) in collaboration with the Surakhani Executive Committee. The children are now able to attend school safely and comfortably.

The school, with an enrollment of approximately 600 children, was built in 1953. Due to decades of neglect and lack of funds for rehabilitation and maintenance, it was in a terrible state of disrepair.

The Hovsan community can take pride in playing a leading role in the completion of CHF's first rehabilitation project in the urban area. Local community members worked with CHF staff over seven months, to plan and implement this community-initiated micro-project.

The community organized a voluntary labor force that, along with four hired workers provided by the Surakhani Executive Committee, carried out repair and paint jobs around the school and installed lights in the schoolyard. The heating system was repaired and windows and doors were replaced to ensure children do not have to endure extreme cold during winter months when school attendance would drop due to illness. Electrical rewiring solved the problem of exposed electric cables, which posed a dangerous threat to schoolchildren. Rehabilitated water and sewage systems improved sanitary conditions for the entire community as well as those attending the school. The Executive Committee provided plants, flowers and benches for the schoolyards.

The Hovsan community further displayed commitment to the project by expanding the initial project scope to include the upgrading of all classrooms to provide an environment more conducive to education. (The original project scope included the rehabilitation of the heating, sewage and electric systems and replacement of doors and windows only.) Families and teachers are optimistic about better school attendance records and grades.

With no existing contribution fund, this community has implemented several micro-projects in the past, each time collecting no more than $50. Working under the SII program, Hovsan residents proved their dedication to implementing the much-needed project by contributing close to $5000 - roughly $1,200 of which was a cash contribution. The successful implementation of this project has firmly established the community's faith in its ability to address and solve its own problems.

Most children at the school are from internally displaced or conflict-affected families in the community. The resulting integration between local, IDP and conflict-affected families will support future community development and encourage cooperation in future efforts to solve problems. A regular contribution fund has been established to support operation and maintenance of the school, and the community group was trained in fund management by CHF to ensure sustainability of the project.

Mercy Corps and CHF continues to work with more than 35 other schools in reconstruction projects to give hope to hundreds of children in other communities throughout Azerbaijan.