True Value

In 2013, MASS kicked off a partnership with the M² Foundation to renovate and expand Mubuga Primary School, a low performing school in the Musanze District of Rwanda. During an immersive pre-design phase, the research team recognized that the challenges Mubuga was facing in providing quality primary education were symptomatic of conditions across the entire country – and in fact, the entire continent.

Along with the Ministry of Education and the burgeoning African Development Centre, MASS conducted a research project to analyze the role of the built environment on educational outcomes. Focusing on both the classroom and the campus, the team tracked design and construction elements that have been shown to lead to improvements in educational attainment and cognition, student social engagement, and parental and community engagement. The research conducted at Mubuga creates evidence suggesting that classroom and landscape architecture, along with a community-driven construction process, can better a school and community’s educational experience in rural Rwanda, an area with a limited amount of existing research.

MASS is currently working with the M² Foundation and the Ministry of Education in Rwanda to replicate and test the intervention and findings from Mubuga on additional schools in the district.