In Makwati, Zambia, three volunteers began a pre-school and primary school. They started these schools in a poverty ridden neighborhood. Their building is a church that is under construction with a tin roof, packed mud floor, and no walls. It has no running water or electricity. The children sit on make-shift benches (mud bricks with rough planks) which often tumble and fall. A small toilet has been half built with donated bricks. During the rain, teaching becomes hard as the children are getting wet, and the noise on the roof is very loud!
The children there come from poor homes and often arrive late because they have house-hold duties to complete before coming to school. Many come unwashed and without having eaten. Only a couple of children bring a snack for the day, but they share it with their friends. A lot of the children have attention problems, which can be due to the lack of food and the lack of routine in their life. Everything they are doing now in the school is new to them, as they don’t have books in their home, let alone anything else. It is a challenge for the families to provide even one exercise book per child.
Every morning begins with devotion and prayer. Our aim is to raise Christ-like children. The children don’t know how to play games during break time because they have never been taught any. So they all sit around on the bricks and wait for break time to finish. We have to teach them all the things we take for granted; for example, how to use the toilet instead of ‘going’ wherever you sit. The children are improving a lot – one of the children used to cry every time he came to school. After a week, he turned to his older sister who brought him to school saying “you can go now, my teacher has come.”
Our goal is to build a school of 9 classrooms, including a well and a finished toilet, to accommodate 200 students. A gift of $300 per child will accomplish this goal. The ongoing cost to sponsor the teachers is $45 per student.
