Rock of Ages School provides pre-primary education for children, with the long term aim to offer training for adults too.
Latest News - Success at Last!
In Zambia it is difficult to get into Government schools because a certain level of literacy and numeracy is required, let alone the uniform requirements imposed by Parent Teachers Associations. WACIA supports Rock of Ages in order to give shanty town children this chance in life and in December 2009 twenty-three Rock of Ages children were accepted into Grade 1 in local Government Schools! This is fantastic proof that this project is worthwhile as and another 23 children can now be enrolled at Rock of Ages. Pastor Isaac plans to follow the progress of the children in their new schools and ensure that they are reaching their potential.
Re-building the walls of the school under the new roof erected in January 2009 has continued, thanks to hard work by Pastor Isaac and his team, funded by generous donations from supporters. The walls have been built on proper foundations, using baked bricks to replace the earlier rubble and cement blocks so should now withstand the rainy season. Funds have also been donated to provide a large water tank which will collect and store rainwater from the new roof.
However, funds are still desperately needed to complete the re-building, for secure windows and doors, more benches, basic educational supplies such as exercise books, pencils, crayons, chalk, reading books, a long-drop toilet, plus wages for the teachers.
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 with a safe and shiny roof on, they softly whisper,"twatotela sana sana". The morale has been boosted; you can see it on their faces. Confidently they boast, "I learn at that School"."
Vision
The long-term vision for Rock of Ages includes working with other local groups to provide a smooth transition into primary and secondary education, providing training for the local ladies, possibly in tailoring, to provide both work-skills for them 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.
DONATE SPECIFICALLY TO ROCK OF AGES by clicking on the picture on the right. 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 the 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 people in Kandabwe 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. By January 2010 the new walls were nearly complete and eventually there will be internal, fold-back partitions to make a multi-functional community building.
The school runs five days per week, with over 50 children attending and 2 teachers paid a token amount each month. The Rock of Ages Church meets in the building at weekends and some afternoons after school, providing another much-needed focus for the community.
For more photographs and further information, see
http://www.pastorisaac.celticswan.com/
