Client / Financial Support: Department for International Development (DFID, India)

Duration: 11 mts

An acute shortage of funds led to a decision in 1994 to use Cost Effective Construction Technology in the building of 59 demonstration primary schools in the Rangareddy district of Andhra Pradesh. Many of these models and techniques have subsequently been adopted in other parts of the state, resulting in a significant improvement in the quality of the environment in which students learn, but also lowered costs per square foot of school building. Five years into the project, the Andhra Pradesh government confronted the problem of maintaining, and possibly upgrading these buildings. To get around this problem of ownership, the Andhra Pradesh government, in association with the Department for International Development, decided to involve the students, their parents and the teachers – in other words, the end-users themselves – in maintaining and upgrading their school buildings.