Pignon High School Project

In Haiti, the majority of the efforts to improve educational opportunities for children and young adults are in the private sector. Many NGO’s help establish individual private schools; however, to remain open they have to charge students a fee that is often beyond what the majority of the population can afford. With the average family unable to afford to send their children to school, the country’s literacy rate struggles to rise above 50% of the population.

 

Haiti Outreach is adopting a different approach to improve educational opportunities across the Central Plateau Region of the country: building public schools. Public schools charge a very nominal tuition (as low as $5 US per year), enabling many more students to attend. They are working with the government of Haiti, who has agreed to provide teachers and administrators, and are giving technical and logistical support to create a sustainable solution, with more durable schools constructed and managed.

In 2003 this process began when Haiti Outreach completed a public secondary school building in the town of Pignon that had remained unfinished for over 3 years. At the beginning of 2007 this process took its second step when plans were discussed to nearly double the capacity of that public secondary school from six hundred to over one thousand students. To achieve this, a building with seven additional class rooms would be required. The IIT student chapter got involved in the project at an early stage, using initial sketches that were produced by students currently attending the school in Pignon as the basis of their design for the new school building.

 

 

In the Spring of 2007 Mark Taylor, Andrew Widman, and Andy Fawcett, with oversight by John Kriegshauser, and Peter Land developed a roof block system that has the potential to allow either a flat roof or a second floor to be constructed. The mold was fabricated in the IIT Architectural workshop and taken to Haiti early in 2007. It was used intensively over the summer to produce enough blocks to cover the roof of the new 5300 sq-ft school building. VIDEO

 

 

Also during the summer an Interprofessional Project Program (IPRO) was established at IIT so students could gain credits while being able to dedicate more time to investigate the structural concerns that arise when working in a country with few quality controls and limited resources. One of the main focuses of the summer course was to carry out material testing to determine if the strength of the locally produced concrete was adequate for the building under construction. Recommendations were made to improve the grading of aggregate materials which were being used with a locally produced Portland cement which appeared not to conform to any recognized standard. The results were slightly better than were expected but understatedly inferior to the standards required in U.S. construction.  

 

 

Preliminary structural analysis of the building system was also carried out over the summer at a pace that had to keep up with the rapid construction of the building in Pignon. This work was carried out by two of the IPRO students Veselin Velichkov and Federico Diaz De Leon Orraca with direction given by Eduardo De Santiago.

 

The improved sanitation required for a growing school still needs to be finalized as does the provision of a regular electrical supply with the hope that a computer lab can be established at the school before too long.

 

 

As Fall approaches, the school building addition is nearly complete. It has been a great learning experience for all of those involved. In the future an assessment of what further improvements can be made to the design and construction process will need to take place. With some of these lessons already learnt a preliminary prototype design is currently on the drawing board. It is hoped that this design will be finalized in liaison with Haiti Outreach and presented to the appropriate local and regional bodies to be implemented in the improved development of the Educational infrastructure the government has for the country.

It is also hoped that a team could be sent out from the US at the beginning of the next school building project to help transfer the knowledge that has been gained so far. Closer interaction with the Haitian construction crews is required and a document that is both in English and Haitian Creole, describing the construction process would also be very valuable. If you would like to get involved in this or future school building projects in the developing world please contact: mark_taylor_designs@hotmail.com