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The charity Casamasanté was created in 2013 to promote access to healthcare and education for vulnerable people, especially children and teenagers, in the Oussouye district in Casamance, Senegal. It works in close collaboration with its sister association, Casamasanté du Sénégal, focusing on 3 main areas: Health, Education and Health Awareness.

The motto of the Health division, ‘prevention is better than cure’, is put into practice in two main programmes. For the last nine years, a school healthcare campaign has been supporting 2,600 nursery school and primary school pupils each year in Diembéring. Since 2016, the small health centre run by a mutual health insurer has been dispensing basic healthcare to over 350 members.

The Education division began its work in 2016, distributing back to school kits and promoting reading skills, with a library and reading workshops set up in 2018. Since the Maison de l’Enfance et de l’Adolescence (Children and Teenagers’ Centre) was opened in 2021, it has welcomed nearly a hundred children a week to take part in reading-based and other fun and educational activities.

The Health Awareness division mainly focuses on the issues of menstrual hygiene management and sex and reproductive health education, identified as the main obstacles to keeping girls in school. Every year, 4,000 secondary school and sixth-form pupils, both girls and boys, are taught about puberty, periods, reproductive health and gender-based violence. The goal of this awareness-raising work is to reach a new balance, accepted by all, where girls and boys have the same opportunities to take the place they’ve chosen in society.