Well maintained school is doing great!

Project update van 10 mei 2019 door Mussa Nyirenda

We were warmly welcomed by the community and look back on a positive meeting in Kasambankholi.

During an extra visit in April 2019 together with Eric van Solingen we had a fruitfull meeting with the community. The school is doing well and the community has done a lot to create a good learning and teaching environment. For example they are working on 3 more teacher houses in order to create a good place for teachers to live close to the school. One of these houses is already finished and a teacher is living there. The teacher house build by the WS team is not completely finished on the outside, but a teacher is living here already for quite some years. The classroomblock and the latrine block with girls changing rooms is well maintained and looks fabulous!
Eric stated that based on the observations done at other schools that he and Mussa visited this week, that this latrine block was the cleanest and best maintained block. So the community really makes a big effort in creating a clean and hygienic environment for the children to go to school. Another example is the small garden in front of the school block.

Some of the things the community shared:
On the question of what they still remembered from the team: The community liked their attitude to spent the night in local huts and helped to prepare the diner. While getting water for the building, some team members brought water to a nearby village because they carried so much water to the building site. All things they did together; fetching sand, cooperation with bricklaying etc. Also the church service they had together was very beautiful. And of course playing football together. They still remembered that Sarah learned how to pick chicken feathers after it is killed and learned also to cook a traditional meal. Finally they also mentioned the good interaction at the building site.

When we asked the children what they remembered they said: we did a lot of nice activities with the team and we received a lot of stuff for the lessons. The team gave us a lot of attention. But the team also learned from us how to make fire and of course playing football together.

The learners that were in de meeting, told us that they are more motivated now to learn and have a good job later on.

The change in the community is that they are more focused now and they work on a better future for their community together.

There was one bricklayer in the meeting, he told he was very surprised by the high standard of good cooperation, organization and willingness to work. He was very pleased with it.
With the result the community is very happy. Now they have more space for the learners and expect that they will have better results because of a better learn environment.

At the moment there are 602 children in school, verus 506 children last year. This is a big increase again so the school has to make sure that the circumstances created to teach these children are efficiently used. Even though they had higher number like this before (school year 2015-12016). One of the things the community has done for example are building a shelter that is being used to hand out the meals when the feeding program is on going, but also as a classroom. This is showing the school/community is making use of the opportunities they have or create.
The performance of the children is also good as is indicated by a low drop-out rate (2.7%), a high pass rate of primary school (84%) and quite a number of pupils continuing to secondary school (26%). For a school so far in the rural area and from the main road this is really good.

The school feeding program stopped after 3 years in 2018 as planned. But the community is aware of the added value and does apply this system, when the circumstances are really difficult. That gives the children in school the chance to have enough to eat but at the same time doesn't give too much pressure on the community than needed.