BUILDING SCHOOLS FOR AFRICA
This organization has already been registered
Someone in your organization has already registered and setup an account. would you like to join their team?Profile owner : m******e@b**********************a.o*g
Mission Statement
Building Schools for Africa is a small UK charity that is run entirely by volunteers and works to improve access to education across all regions of Cameroon. We work exclusively with our Cameroon-based partner NGO, Strategic Humanitarian Services (SHUMAS). Every penny donated to Building Schools for Africa goes directly to our projects in Cameroon with absolutely no deductions made. Our stated aims are to: 1. Facilitate the advancement of education in Africa by financing the building and refurbishment of schools, equipping schools with basic furniture and teaching materials and providing financial assistance to help children without funds of their own to meet educational expenses. 2. Facilitate the advancement of health in Africa by financing the provision of safe drinking water, toilets and basic medical provisions for the benefit of pupils, teachers and the local community. To this end we fund the construction of boreholes to provide reliable fresh water supplies and we fund the construction/refurbishment of rural health centres and the provision of new equipment for these health centres. Where possible we also provide solar power for refrigerators and incubators. 3. Facilitate the relief of poverty in Africa by financing the development of income generation schemes and by financing skills training programmes for early school leavers and Internally Displaced People. Since the start of the conflict in Cameroon between the francophone and anglophone regions, we have extended this brief to include the provision of emergency humanitarian aid for IDPs who have been forced to flee their homes because of violence. This includes the provision of Shelter kits, WASH kits, nutrition etc and Education in Emergency facilities for IDPs who have fled to remote jungle and bush areas for safety. We are now also providing training in small business management for female IDPs who have relocated to other cities in Cameroon together with their children and elderly family members. These women are destitute but find themselves to be Heads of households and need to earn a living to pay rent and buy food. The training, and provision of start-up materials, means that these women can support themselves and their families and can send their children back to school. The majority of IDP children in Cameroon have been out of school for over 6 years and there is a real need to provide safe spaces where they can catch up with their education.
About This Cause
Since our first visit in 2006, we have developed a very strong relationship with our partner, SHUMAS, which has enabled the school building programme to develop extremely quickly across the whole country. We have been able to build new classrooms at nursery, primary, secondary, high and technical schools. We have also funded other projects related to the well-being of school children. These include the refurbishment and equipping of rural health centres and the construction of community drinking water projects, as well as ad hoc projects such as the construction of a bridge to enable children safely to attend school. The key to our success is our exclusive partnership with Strategic Humanitarian Services (SHUMAS) in Cameroon. Because of their preferred model of Participatory Development, which requires the full participation and co-operation of the benefitting communities, we are able to work wonders for very small amounts financial investment. SHUMAS is scrupulously honest and transparent in all its work and we are able to provide our supporters with full reports and detailed budgets and final accounts, which encourages them to come back to support us again and again. Since 2007 we have raised just under £3 million and for this amount of money we have funded: 1. the construction of 343 fully furnished classrooms at 116 schools across all 10 regions of Cameroon – each school also benefitting from a school office/store and a new latrine. Also the construction of 5 science labs at secondary/high schools and the provision of all necessary equipment to allow pupils to study Chemistry, Physics, Biology and Geology to A level. 2. the installation of potable water at 42 schools and 11 community water projects 3. the full construction or rehabilitation of 7 rural health centres and new equipment at a total of 17 health centres 4. provided renewable energy in one school and one health centre and 5. assisted more than 50 poor peasant women's groups with micro-credit ranging from 100,000 to 600,000 CFAs to enable them to engage in income generation activities and improve their living conditions. In addition, since the Anglophone socio-political crisis, which started in 2016 and escalated into war during the following five/six years, we have been funding multi-sectorial humanitarian aid projects through SHUMAS. These have been extraordinarily successful and the impact on the displaced communities has been heartening. We have been able to provide: 1. multi-sectorial assistance to 1560 households (7530 beneficiaries - IDPs, returnees and host families) in hard-to-reach areas of the NW region through the provision of WASH kits, Shelter kits, Health assistance, farm inputs and psycho-social support, 2. support for 12 communities in hard-to-reach areas to organise Education in Emergency remedial classes for 10,000 children who have missed school for some years, by paying for teachers allowances and providing learning and didactic materials. We have also funded the setting up of Neighbourhood Learning Centres in 7 communities in the North West and West regions of Cameroon. Here teachers who have been trained in Teaching At the Right Level (TARL) will meet the educational needs of out-of-school children. They will provide accelerated learning programmes for 260 children who have missed school for several years and ensure that at least 80% of these children safely enrol in government schools after one month on the special programmes. 3. livelihood support to 450 crisis affected women in three different regions by training them in income generating activities and providing start-up materials so that they can establish their businesses to generate income which will enable them to house and feed their families and send their children to school, 4. training for 100 adolescents, who had to drop out of school because of the war, in sheep/goat rearing and vegetable gardening and supported each of them with a mature female goat or sheep, farm tools and vegetable seeds to enable them to set up their own farms and provide for their families, 5. COVID prevention programmes in 31 schools by creating health clubs to ensure respect of COVID prevention measures in school and provided tippy taps for washing, liquid soap, face masks etc. Every penny donated to our charity goes directly to the projects in Cameroon, with no deductions being made at all. We are all volunteers who work from home. We use part of the Gift Aid we receive to cover the costs of transfer of funds and annual flights to Cameroon for one or two trustees to visit the projects and assess their impact.