André & JSO

André Rieu Training Centre

In January 2006, the Committee’s new permanent contact person in Burkina Faso, Pierre Kaboré, told us of changes afoot in the country in the development and management of natural resources such as soil, vegetation and water. In future these tasks would no longer be carried out by the central authorities, but would be decentralised and passed to local managers. A sound knowledge of the relevant matters was required to ensure success in handing these tasks on.
Hence Pierre Kaboré’s request for a training centre to be built in Méguet (Kakim) in order to pass on this knowledge and to apply it in practice at the same time. The request was supported by the residents of 25 villages. The centre would train villagers to work as advisers, and they would return to their villages after completing the training and carry out projects there themselves. 

Since 2000, Pierre Kaboré had been the contact person for the Committee, under whose leadership many fantastic projects had come about.  On the basis of its experience with him and the way he works, the Committee felt confident about agreeing to his request. In fact, the Committee even suggested that as well as building the centre, they could put the knowledge into practice by creating four vegetable gardens and planting trees on a piece of land running to 15 hectares over three departments within the province of Ganzourgou.

All of this work was to take two years. The municipality of Maastricht supported the project by making 500 trees available on the occasion of the communal tree planting in Malberg in 2005.  The Committee’s patron, André Rieu, also supported the project and lent his name to the centre which was named the ‘André Rieu Training Centre for a green Burkina’.

In June 2007 Willemien Lenders visited the centre and reported back:
‘The centre is there, the first literacy courses have been delivered, all sorts of activities are taking place around the centre and the local people have seen who André Rieu is.’

On 22 February 2009, the André Rieu Training Centre in Kakim was officially opened.

Currently there are various literacy courses going on. About fifty people are enrolled on technical courses. And the centre now plays a clear part in the life of the village: there are always people there and activities going on.
However the centre is still in its infancy – there are more plans and ideas for activities within the grounds. These are also activities that are needed to make the centre self-supporting.
The technical training courses are demand-led; in other words they respond directly to problems people experience.