This paper examines how schoolyard design in low resource communities can create a natural,
restorative environment to not only foster learning, but also trauma recovery. Research has
shown that nature can provide much needed cognitive restoration for children who have limited
access to nature. However, there are no existing applications of sustainable schoolyard design in
developing country contexts.
We provide a case study of our schoolyard redesign project with More Than Me Academy
(MTM), a girl’s school in Monrovia, Liberia. MTM aims “to make sure education and
opportunity, not exploitation and poverty, define the lives of the most vulnerable girls from the
West Point Slum of Liberia.” We used human centered design methods to uncover the cognitive
and curricular needs of the students, staff, and community. Through this process, we discovered
that the school needed enhanced caretaking (including safety, hygiene, and responsibility),
opportunities for play and expression, restoration, and community. While the project was
interrupted by the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Liberia, we offer a guideline for how other
multidisciplinary groups can approach redesigning a sustainable schoolyard to increase cognitive
restoration in low resource contexts.