The NGO Wallah We Can, which has entered into a partnership with the establishment, aims to reproduce this “autonomous school prototype” everywhere in Tunisia, in order to revive a breathless education system, in a country that was once very advanced in this field. .
The college, a three-hour journey from Tunis, welcomes 565 students, 80% of whom are boarders from families living far from school, in the poor and rural north-west.
“The education system has been doing very badly since the Revolution (which brought down the dictator Ben Ali in 2011), not because of the Revolution, but because each government gave in to pressure from the union: we end up with a ministerial budget spent more than 95% on the payment of salaries”, laments Lotfi Hamadi, founder of the NGO.
However, ex-minister and professor of public policy Hedi Larbi reminds AFP, “Tunisia under (its first president) Habib Bourguiba was distinguished by a proactive educational policy: 15% of the budget went to equipment and training teachers”. Result: the school enrollment rate exceeded 95% in the 1990s.
– “What is effective in entrepreneurship” –
Today, 100,000 young people drop out of school each year, private lessons are exploding, the level is falling. Faced with “a resigning state”, Mr. Hamadi wants to tackle the problem differently.
This 46-year-old consultant, son of illiterate immigrants from Kesra, near Makthar, returned from France to “contribute” to the new Tunisia, intends “to take what is effective in entrepreneurship and transform schools into social enterprises”.
After 10 years of effort, the decati college is a spruce “green school”, equipped – thanks to patrons – with 140 solar panels and 50 solar water heaters producing four times the energy consumed.
With these surpluses, the school finances the maintenance of the site and supplies electricity to three other establishments.
The association rents eight hectares cultivated by an agricultural cooperative, named Kidchen, which employs six parents of students, former unemployed, and an agronomist.
Since the summer of 2022, tomatoes, sweet peppers, onions, potatoes or peas supply the college canteen (10% of production), and the surpluses are resold.
Tanned face, Chayeb Chayeb, 44, team leader and father of three children, including two in college, has seen his daily life turned upside down.
“Before I was seasonal with contracts of 5 or 6 months, each time in a different place. Now I work close to my home”, he rejoices.
In the long term, the farmer parents – shareholders each up to 2% of Kidchen – are destined to buy out the shares of Wallah We Can and become owners of the farm: “This encourages us to work more and produce more to earn more. is a project for ourselves”.
– Waiting list –
With energy and agricultural revenues, extra-curricular clubs have been launched: robotics, entrepreneurship, foreign languages and civilizations, media, singing, “e-learning”…
“Not to fill the gaps in the education system, there are too many, but to teach them to learn, to give them the curiosity to open up to the world,” explains Mr. Hamadi.
In a country where a majority of young people plan to emigrate, according to numerous studies, Wallah We Can would like children to “reconcile with their country and discover the opportunities it can offer them”.
Accustomed to the entrepreneurship club, Chahed Salhi, 14, dreams of setting up a tourist business on the ancient site of Makthar: “This experience gave me a lot of self-confidence”, says this student who overcame her shyness by learning “to public speaking” at the theater club.
Chaïma Rhouma, a 21-year-old law student who went through boarding school, provides such enthusiastic testimony.
Daily hot showers, a cinema, a sports ground, a large garden: “With Wallah We Can, everything has been transformed here, also for the (good) vibes, the positive waves”, she explains.
Thanks to the literature and cinema clubs, “I am more curious, I am always looking for new things: here you can study while having fun”, adds this aspiring diplomat eager to “know other cultures”.
With its privileged environment, the college is very popular in the region, assures its director Taher Meterfi, who “has more than 80 applications pending”.
Next step for Wallah We Can: a 40-hectare “agro-energy farm” to supply food and electricity to 23 schools in Makthar (70,000 inhabitants), i.e. 3,500 students.
