Balouo Salo Center
The home of solidarity for community development
Baghere, Senegal
The home of solidarity for community development
Baghere, Senegal
The Balouo Salo Center was born with the ambitious goal of becoming a humanitarian landmark in southern Senegal. Located in Diebatecunda, in the village of Baghere, it will be a space dedicated to listening, training, assistance, and cooperation.
The center will be a stable hub where the community can find support, participate in seminars, workshops, and educational programs, and actively contribute to identifying the most urgent local needs.
Beyond fostering interaction among local people, authorities, and volunteers, it will host specialists and operators, strengthening the long-term impact of Balouo Salo's humanitarian interventions.
Provide a safe place to listen to and gather the needs of communities, facilitating targeted and timely intervention planning.
Organize courses, seminars, and meetings to promote knowledge, awareness, and development in health, water, education, and rights.
Coordinate direct support initiatives for families in need and emergency situations, thanks to a local operational office.
Offer a hospitality space for operators and partners, promoting synergies in favor of sustainable development.
— Raoul Vecchio, founder of Balouo Salo
Discover the project
The Balouo Salo Center was created as a territorial reference point to promote listening, inclusion, development, and participation in the rural communities of southern Senegal. In a context marked by isolation, poverty, and lack of services, the center represents an essential infrastructure to foster social cohesion processes, access to information, training activities, and psychological support.
The center's realization is the result of a need directly expressed in the field, during public meetings held in villages in the Baghere area. From these moments of dialogue, the need emerged for a safe, dignified, and accessible place to address social, environmental, and cultural issues often excluded from institutional circuits.
The center will be fully managed by Balouo Salo, independently, through a local operational team. It will host permanent and itinerant activities in collaboration with associations, institutions, and local and international professionals, aiming to stimulate active participation and community empowerment.
This physical space thus becomes a symbol: a bastion of solidarity that restores dignity and voice to the most vulnerable communities.
The architecture of the Balouo Salo Center was conceived as both a symbolic and practical response to the climate crisis, infrastructural poverty, and the urgent need to create sustainable building models in the rural African context.
The project consists of several indoor spaces including:
Operational offices for project management and coordination of territorial activities;
Meeting and training rooms to host courses, public meetings, and seminars;
Listening and reception rooms, dedicated to individual and family social support;
Technical workshop for practical and design activities;
Archive and documentation center to preserve data and research on the territory and its social issues.
Each space is designed to be flexible, welcoming, and accessible, promoting an inclusive and participatory environment.
Technologies used
From a construction standpoint, the entire center was built using community self-building techniques, valuing local know-how and promoting employment and training.
The foundations are made of dry-stone rubble, while the load-bearing walls are adobe (raw earth bricks), an ecological, thermally efficient material culturally rooted in the local building tradition.
This choice drastically reduces environmental impact, contributes to climate resilience, and demonstrates how architecture can become a tool for environmental and social justice.
Diebatecunda, Baghere
Baghere Municipality
Sédhiou Region
Senegal, Africa
