In addition to offering schooling and professional training to over 200 students who attend classes on a daily basis, the Daara also acts as a home and safe haven for up to 70 underprivileged young boys between the ages of 6 and 14 years old.

Born into a life of poverty and abandonment, many of these boys were victims of systematic child exploitation and grew up begging in the streets of Senegal. They are now provided with a safe home and quality education at the Daara de Malika.

This rescue centre for street children first opened its doors to 16 boys in January 1981 thanks to the great help of President L.S. Senghor, who generously donated the land and provided the financial resources necessary for the school’s construction.

The Daara de Malika works towards the active elimination of all forms of child exploitation in the streets of Senegal. It provides homeless children, formerly forced to spend their days begging alone in the streets, with a positive and caring environment in which they receive access to:

– in short, all the elements required to guarantee the complete social rehabilitation

of these at-risk children.

The school relies on several revenue-generating activities to ensure its ability to operate as a financially-autonomous and self-sustaining non-profit organisation. Such projects include a fully-functional poultry farm, woodworking shop, and health clinic, which provides medical care to the children of the Daara as well as to the local community.

At the request of its founders, the Daara has been managed by the Senegalese chapter of the Association internationale francophone des aînés (AIFA) since February 2005. This organisation has undertaken the challenging task of revitalising the Daara after its temporary closure in 2004, an event brought about by a combination of mismanagement and a lack of financial resources.

An agreement has been signed with the National Ecovillage Agency