THE FOUNDING CHARTER

Ecoles de la Terre seeks to help disadvantaged children

• through education and professional training
• through awareness and health support services
• by boosting families' incomes
• by encouraging communities to be financially independent and developing their ability to take the initiative

Our code of conduct

• We provide aid regardless of race, creed or nationality; this aid may not be used in the service of political or religious convictions.
• We do not act as an instrument of government policy.
• We strive to respect the culture, structures and customs of the communities and countries in which we operate.
• We rely on local skills and are committed to building on these skills by recruiting staff, purchasing equipment and dealing with businesses locally.
• We invest all donations collected in our primary goal with no overhead costs deducted from the funds we receive.

Our programmes

Education and professional training

• We create and manage informal, preparatory schools for disadvantaged children who do not attend school mainly in urban areas and in secondary rural areas. Our aim is to enable them to become enrolled in an official school as close as possible to their home as soon as possible.
• We create and manage state-approved nurseries and primary schools, which teach the official curriculum, in poor and isolated rural areas where schools are sorely lacking. Our ultimate goal is to enable our pupils to continue their studies at secondary level.
• We offer our pupils and former pupils, as well as children enrolled in other schools, career guidance, learning support and extra tuition related to the official programme.
• We create and manage apprenticeship centres that provide training in the manufacture of handicrafts and textiles, and in livestock management and agriculture. We also organise IT training and education for individuals. Our aim is to enable young people who do not wish to or cannot continue their studies to have access to decent work prospects through training and apprenticeships.

Health initiation and support

We organise awareness campaigns about hygiene, birth control, infant care and vaccinations.We organise health and family planning camps.We create and manage dispensaries and travelling health clinics to provide medical care and treatment to our pupils and, insofar as possible, their families and communities.We build and manage wells and water purification plants to provide disadvantaged families with clean drinking water.

Boosting families' incomes

We organise microfinance programmes to promote the creation of micro-enterprises to provide the mothers of disadvantaged families with an income;
We provide training for these mothers throughout the selection, loan granting and repayment monitoring procedures; 

We develop and manage loan management software developed to track outstanding repayments.

Encouraging communities to be financially independent and developing their capacity to take the initiative

Our aim is to prevent disadvantaged individuals from becoming dependent on handouts, and to implement the necessary means by freeing up the financial resources generated by our own activities.

We provide the necessary capital outlays for microfinance programmes and allocate all the interest generated by loans to the financing of schools, apprenticeship centres and health programmes.

We create and manage mineral water production plants where the profits are used entirely to finance education and health programmes. We plan to set up and manage companies operating in other fields for the same purpose.

This charter, initially drafted on 4 February 2011 and approved by the board members at the general meeting on 10 February 2011, was updated on 15 August 2018 and will be submitted for approval at the next general meeting in January 2019.