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Professional rehabilitation of street children in Dakar

through organic farming training in Senegal

The Air Liquide Foundation is supporting Village Pilote in the development of a farm-school for the street children of Dakar.

Our support during the Covid-19 pandemic

In view of the health situation linked to the Covid-19 epidemic, the living conditions of street children, who are more isolated than ever before, are deteriorating to an unprecedented degree. Village Pilote is adapting its response to continue to protect them and proposes an emergency response in the streets at night despite the curfew set up between 6pm and 6am. Village Pilote has organized the collection and distribution of meals: mobilization of volunteers to help prepare meals; organization of collections in partner supermarkets.

The objective was to provide 300 meals a day for thirty consecutive days while waiting to organize emergency accommodation for 300 street children. 

Faced with the consequences of Covid-19 and the increase in the number of beneficiaries, Village Pilote must adapt to respond to emergency situations but also to make the care of street children sustainable. New training programs in agro-ecology, micro-farming and food processing are being set up to improve the quality of the professional training and move towards food self-sufficiency in the Lac Rose center. The new professional training programs benefit the 150 young people welcomed in the Village Pilote Center.

Facebook - Village Pilote

The Village Pilote

Since 1994, Village Pilote has been helping street children in Dakar with prevention, protection and rehabilitation programs.

The Village Pilote project supported by the Air Liquide Foundation aims to facilitate the professional rehabilitation of street children in Dakar, in particular by teaching them about organic farming. The aim is to provide each child plots of land to young people within the three-hectare area available in the Pilot Village's allotment. With this project, the farm-school helps both to educate children and to ensure they have enough to eat.

Village Pilote

Training in the Pilot Village is divided into several phases

  • adaptation and learning about various professions: construction, woodwork, electricity, agriculture, and institutional catering
  • an 18-month course specializing in organic farming
  • basic education: reading and writing

The support of Air Liquide Foundation in 2014 and 2020 allows the association to build two wells in the vegetable garden in order to extend the farm-school's farmable area. In 2021, the grant will be used to purchase the equipment needed to carry out the agro-ecology, micro-breeding and food processing activities as well as to contribute to the salaries of the teams involved in the project

Awarded at the Air Liquide Foundation Awards 2016

The depth and viability of Village Pilote’s work earned the association the Air Liquide Foundation Award for Social Innovation in 2016. Discover the interview of Loïc Tréguy, Chairman and Founder of Village Pilote.

The 2016 Air Liquide Foundation Awards: interview of Loïc Tréguy, Chairman and Founder of Village Pilote