WHO ARE WE?

We are a small Oxford-based charity composed entirely of volunteers and friends who work in direct partnership with the local community in Bonou, a small village in the south of the Republic of Benin in West Africa, with the specific goal of educating local girls.

The charity was set up in July 2003 by Laurence Lalanne, formerly an Africa correspondent with the BBC following a visit to the village. The plight of a seriously injured girl who had been to neighbouring Nigeria to find work and had been attacked there prompted Laurence to start identifying with the village Elders and a Beninese friend, Dominique Hounkonnou, a possible solution to the problem of girls leaving the village. Proper education and income generating skills was the answer and the Sonagnon Training Centre is the result. Click here to know more about the Sonagnon Centre.

PHASED WITHDRAWAL

At the beginning of 2013, after 10 years of intense involvement in the funding and running of the Centre, the charity felt that it was time to let the village take full responsibility for the Centre. Consequently, in May 2013, while the third cohort of girls was beginning their training, we started a phased withdrawal of our financial involvement by tapering down our funding over the next 4 years.

Good development practice informed that progressive withdrawal as since the start, two principles had been at the heart of what we have done: the first principle was concentrating our main resources on one main project in order to create a critical mass and therefore avoid the "sprinkling" of resources on many different projects because we are convinced that it cannot make a real difference. The second principle was not to stay too long as this, we believe, creates a new "dependency culture".

We had arrived at a "natural" crossroads as we had achieved our goal to help local people do what they could not do on their own, e.g. build the Training Centre and the magnificent dormitory facility adjacent to it and help setting up a local management structure in the village, therefore empowering them. We strongly felt it was time for us to let go.

At the end of 2016, we therefore made our last transfer of funds to Bonou and in February 2017 we participated in the lively and intensely joyous ceremony organised for the graduation of the third cohort of girls. Laurence had the great privilege of addressing all the assembled 1200 guests (Click here to read Laurence's speech in French). Since then, we had been keeping regularly in touch with what is happening in the Centre and a fourth cohort of girls will graduate in February 2021.

Our friend Dominique Hounkonnou who created an NGO (https://www.berceauxdafrique.org) to continue to support the Centre after our withdrawal, has managed to secure enough money not only to fund the day-to-day running of the Centre and the salaries of the trainers but also to add to the Centre infrastructure: a new reinforced wall to ensure the security of the girls, seven solar panels allowing the girls to have running water (an amazing luxury in a village setting!) and a new "préau" (multi-purpose open hall) which will give the girls more space for their activities, sheltered from rains or burning sun.

Our legacy therefore continues and our goal to help people in Bonou do what they wanted to do has been achieved. However, two very untimely deaths have drawn a dark shadow on that picture as Dominique's closest collaborator, Paulin Noumado, died suddenly in May 2018 and Dominique himself died, also very suddenly, in August 2020. Both these deaths are a great loss for the Centre but also for Benin as a whole as both were reputed agronomists and development experts. The Fondation Berceaux d'Afrique (https://www.berceauxdafrique.org) is however still actively supporting the Centre and we are confident that they will be able to continue educating young girls to give them a better future.