1 June – 1 September 2023 ~ Kassi Kunda, Gambia

Banko Foundation

Would you like to help design and build a unit of a vocational skills centre with and for the community of Kassi Kunda, in rural Gambia?

Who

Anyone within fields related to architecture and design, including; current students, recent grads and longterm professionals. The opportuniity can be used for internship, thesis, research or as a personal project.

What

Design, lead and build a unit of a vocational school in an eco-arts village, using earth construction and local skills.

Why

Gain hands on experience, help others, provide jobs, support a grassroots organisation seeking a sustainable future, cultural exchange, develop personal and professional skills

Location

Kantora vocational training centre, Kassi Kunda, upper river region, the Gambia

When

Workshop including international volunteers can start from june 2023. You have between 3 and 6 months to finish building your design.

Background

The challenge is to design and build one of the following types for the school: a house type for the international volunteers and visiting staff, dormitory type for local students, cafeteria type, a classroom type, office building type, or dwelling type for the local teachers.

You have 10 months to immerse in the local community, conduct site analysis and with some international volunteers build your design through use of local earth and other materials. Keep in mind that you are designing for a student population of 200 people. Local assistance will be available to serve as trainees and provide manual labor and access to local resources.

Our workshop model is a fee-based model. Each workshop runs for about 12 weeks. We need between 30 to 40 international participants with a participation fee of €400 ($450) to run a building workshop. However, the 10-month project can be organized as one big project that runs for whole 10-month period or as two separate workshops, one at the beginning and the other toward the end of the period. What would be next, choose a date for your project residency and we will do the poster design to announce the project date.

The Banko Foundation

Banko is a non-profit organization registered in the Gambia that exist to enhance community development in rural Gambia to help them drive their own community development. To accomplish this goal, we run a developing Eco-Arts Village with vocational skills programs through which we host volunteers from diverse backgrounds involving university students, gap year person’s, working professionals and retirees, to live like locals. Spend time volunteering or learning by doing on community arts and earth architecture projects, social projects and social businesses.

Further information

Contact the project director Jim Njie for an application form:

• email: bankofoundation.info@gmail.com
• telephone: +220 32 59 348

Visit our website: bankofoundationinf.wixsite.com/website

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