ProjectRock of Ages, Kitwe, Zambia

Rock of Ages School provides pre-primary education for disadvantaged children to enable them to qualify for Government schools, with the additional long-term aims of sustainability and adult training.

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Pastor Isaac writes "please.....tell [supporters] how much we value them and how much we are thankful to them. Their names are engraved on the hearts of so many children of Kandabwe. And every time they look at the building, they softly whisper, "twatotela sana sana" [thank you so much]. The morale has been boosted; you can see it on their faces. Confidently they boast, "I learn at that School"."Vision

Vision

The long-term vision for Rock of Ages includes working with local groups to provide a smooth transition into primary education, providing training for local adults, possibly in tailoring, to provide both work-skills and income to make the project self-sustaining. Outside assistance and funding are needed to investigate the long-term security of tenure of the site, for teacher training and teaching materials and equipment for both children and adults, as well as working with others to improve the water supply to the community, which will have knock-on effects of improving health and lessening the journeys made by women and children to fetch water.

Background

Kandabwe is a sprawling shanty compound adjacent to Zambia's second city, Kitwe, in the the Copperbelt area in north of the country, housing thousands of people on an old copper mine waste site. The inhabitants are poverty stricken, many unemployed, with accompanying problems of prostitution, HIV/AIDS, substance misuse and crime. Most children do not have the basic skills required to get into government schools, and struggle to afford the compulsory uniform, shoes and equipment. The land is cratered and too contaminated to grow crops. There is only one slow-running tap for water, so people collect water from the stagnant puddles nearby, where Malaria-causing mosquitoes breed. Two thirds of Zambians subsist on less that US$1 per day, the World Bank poverty threshold.

A small independent church in Kitwe, Comfort Ministries, became aware of the needs of the community and encouraged a young pastor, Isaac Mwewa, to get alongside the inhabitants and construct a community building to be used as a school, adult training facility and church. In 2005 Isaac and the locals started to physically dig up stones and made concrete blocks by hand to build a small hall, with a dusty earth floor, roofing it temporarily with plastic sheets and scrap wood.

With WACIA's and other supporters' assistance, funds were raised to provide a new roof and concrete floor but disaster struck early in 2008 when unusually heavy rainfall caused the gable end of the building to collapse, along with the caretaker's house and a long-drop toilet. In 2010 new walls of kiln-fired bricks on deep foundations were completed just before a terrible storm hit the area and blew the roof off. By April 2011 this had been replaced. The Rock of Ages Church meets in the building at weekends and some afternoons after school, providing another much-needed focus for the community.

So far 60 shanty town children who had received pre-school education at Rock of Ages have been accepted into Grade 1 in local Government Schools, fantastic proof of the project's value. Pastor Isaac plans to follow the progress of the children in their new schools and ensure that they are reaching their potential.