“Make me proud of you!” These were the words spoken by world-famous Ivorian soccer player Didier Drogba to an audience of children as he opened a new school in the cocoa-growing community of Pokou-Kouamekro.

Inspired to help children find better options for the future, ICI joined forces with Nestlé and the Didier Drogba Foundation to build a school with six classrooms, a kindergarten class, a canteen, latrines, teachers’ accommodations and, of course, a football pitch. The new school giving 350 children access to quality education will help to address a problem faced by many rural communities across Côte d’Ivoire – an acute shortage of educational facilities, meaning children often have to walk several miles to the nearest school. Pokou-Kouamekro, which is home to more than 4,000 people, only had a makeshift wooden structure with three classrooms before the new compound was built.