Happy New Year! And what a happy new year you have given to our community Schools in Zambia! I am absolutely delighted to report that thanks to your AMAZING generosity, our Great Big Christmas Card Campaign raised an unbelievable £14,000 which has paid for our Schools of Good Hope Project!!

Almost 300 people “signed” our Great Big Christmas Card and helped us win the GlobaGiving UK fundraising competition our campaign was competing in. The race was on right up until 22^nd December to get as many names and donations as we could, to help train the untrained volunteer teachers in eight Zambian community schools.

This January, our Schools of Good Hope Co-ordinator and qualified teacher, Vincent Heselwood, took our great big Christmas Card with our long list of supporters to each of the community Schools. He asked the communities what they thought about the fact that so many people from around the world, knew about them and had personally put their hands in their pockets to see the lives of 23 teachers and over 1000 of Zambia’s poorest school children transformed.

“The world is not as it was twenty years ago. Fields and cattle are not enough and when people are counted it will be those with education that stand above the rest. By helping with our school you are investing in peoples’ lives and in their futures.”

Teacher in Charge at Kafefwe Community School. 

“Even as you leave today I don’t think you truly appreciate what you have done for these schools. You have given us confidence and we believe that we can improve, because people believe in us”.

Headteacher, Matimba community School

So what exactly has your money paid for? Your generosity has meant that we now have the funds we need to deliver our Schools of Good Hope Project in full. Each month, over the course of a year, Vincent Heselwood is going to each community school and delivering a free course of teacher training to all the teachers and community members who want to help run the school. They close the school for the day to concentrate fully their training and then Vincent goes back later in the month to observe the teachers and mentor them in practice. Your money helps pay for all of this from the fuel Vincent uses to get out to the rural community schools to simple resources that will help transform life in the classroom. Things that we take for granted are helping revolutionise the learning environment!

 Teacher toolkits

As well as a copy of the Zambian National Curriculum, our Teacher Toolkits include simple things like a hardback book, where teachers can keep a record of pupil attendance and grades as well as having something to write their lesson plans on. Prior to our Schools of Good Hope Project, teachers had nowhere to write such things.

 Classroom starter packs

These contain lots of basic resources such as blue-tack, enabling them to stick things on walls; flip charts and paper, so that they can create their own displays; learning aids such as 2 dice and a pack of cards that can be used for numeracy games, helping make lessons engaging, instead of the traditional “chalk and talk” approach.

Did We Say Thank You?

Due to an error on the global giving donation page, many of your kind donations came through to us as anonymous. If you ticked the box that said “share my details with the project I support”, it actually meant that your details weren’t shared with us! We know that many of you gave very generously, but because we were unable to see that it was you we couldn’t extend our personal thanks. For all those who didn’t get a personal PEPAIDS thank you at the time, please accept this MASSIVE retrospective THANK YOU! We are tremendously grateful to you!

Links:

• Check out our website!
• Watch all the fantastic work being done!
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