We just received this email from Mama Lucy and wanted to share it with you. This past weekend, Shepherds Junior School held an auction to raise funds for the school and celebrate the end of the term. Epic Change had asked Mama Lucy to hold a fundraising event as part of our original loan disbursement terms and needless to say, all of our expectations were surpassed! Read on:

On Saturday 29th March 2008, the pupils of Shepherds Junior School proved that they can fundraise for their school too!!! The function started around 10:15am. Earlier in the day, the children brought different things from their parents/guardians like: sets of glasses, flower vessels, a Bible, a thermos, a cake with the name of school, khangas, vitenges, batiks, hens, etc.

We invited all of the parents, local leaders of the Moivaro village, the Ward Educational Officer, villagers and friends.

The children know that before anyone can put his/her hand in their pocket to give you money, you must show that you deserve to be given. So, the children prepared different things for the pre-auction performance to show their ability in various subjects.

The children performed:

1. Three songs from the lower classes (Baby, Intermediate and Pre-unit classes).
2. Academic activities from the primary classes (standards 1 - 4). Below is what they presented to amuse the guests:
• Math (Class 4) - Glory Abraham and Gideon Gidori solved different types of mathematical problems and showed how they got the answer.
• History (Class 4) - “Evolution in Mankind,” with an explanation from the first stage to the last stage, as presented by Leah Albert.
• Science (Class 3) - “Germination in Plants,” with an explanation given by Linner George and a practical demonstration by Amani Herman.
• Arts (Class 2) - Lourine Paul and Luta performed an experiment mixing two different primary colours to get secondary colours.

After each of their presentations, they invited questions from the audience. You can’t believe how confidently and correctly they answered those questions! This shows that the subject was well understood by the students. Everyone was so impressed! Then followed the auction.

Wow! As everyone was so excited with the performance, the auction was so successful. We were able to raise cash Tshs. 487,000 and other things were bought on credit, worth Tshs. 1,180,000 (a total of nearly $1,500 USD). Those who bought on credit promised to pay no later than early May; when we’ll begin the next term. We’ll reopen the school on the 5th of May 2008.

Since the children brought so many items, time was inadequate. So some of the leftover items, like 36 pairs of khangas and vitenges, were left to be auctioned in the next term.

We do hope that those parents who bought on credit will pay within a timely manner so that we can complete the work of fencing the school.

The function ended around 5.00 pm and the school was closed happily until the next term!

More good news is about the photocopy machine we’ve wanted! At our last Parents Meeting, I informed the parents about the necessity of having a photocopy machine, and they agreed to contribute money to purchase one. They contributed, and on March 8th, we finally got our own photocopy machine and we started using it immediately. We even used it to copy the March exams!

I’m sure you’re as happy as we are!!! Cheka kubwa (Big smile)!!!!

Yes Mama Lucy, we are ecstatic about your successful fundraising event! I can truly say that this is an fantastic accomplishment, and congratulations to all of the students for doing a wonderful job. It’s so good too for the children to learn that, even though they’re little, they have the power to make a real difference. It’s an incredibly powerful lesson for them to learn at such a young age.

Have a nice end-of-term break, you deserve it!