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!

Posted: April 1st, 2008 under The Foundry, Updates from Mama.
Comments: 2

Mama Lucy provided this update today as well as some new pictures of the classrooms. Needless to say, we’re ecstatic at the incredible progress she has made. In her own words:

By this end of January, at least we have seen a real picture of the building of what will be an amazing Shepherds Junior School. Although we do still have miles to go, everyone at our school is so excited! This is incredible!

Things are moving simultaneously, just to make sure that, at least by the end of February, we are able to move into our very own beautiful buildings at a very cool place! What I believe is that, with support from different people, our dream is coming to reality.

So far, we have been able to do the following, concerning the construction of the school:

• Finish up the roofing woodwork, and 2 classrooms have just completed the work of iron sheets! The other 2 classes are still on roofing work i.e (putting iron sheets).

• Nearly finished with the septic tanks (A round one and a rectangle one).

• We’ve started to build the toilets, the first 3 stalls for girls and 3 stalls for boys plus urinal section.

• Nearly finished with the plaster work inside and outside.

• The windows are ready, just waiting to be fitted.

Some of the building materials have been given to us on credit, but at least things have moved so far. I’m very thankful to people who have given us things on credit (since credit is very rarely available in our country) and also to Epic Change, of course, for providing the loan.

Thank you so much for your support!
Lucy

Posted: February 4th, 2008 under Updates from Mama.
Comments: none

We got a note from Mama Lucy recently and wanted to share a few pics of how construction of the new Shepherds Junior school is coming along. It truly is incredible what she’s been able to accomplish in 30 days with just $30,000. We’ve even learned that she’s tapped water on the land, which is incredibly exciting!

It’s often said that things happen “Pole, pole” in Africa - Swahili for slowly, slowly. (Notably, “pole” also means I’m sorry for you!) Mama Lucy, though, somehow manages to consistently move “haraka, haraka” (hurry, hurry!). This is a woman on a mission.

Posted: January 28th, 2008 under Updates from Mama.
Comments: 1

Happy New Year!! I made it home to Florida on Christmas Eve, and have since been enjoying some much needed downtime over the holidays with my family and friends. Of course, while I rested, Mama Lucy has continued to work at breakneck speed. A few days ago, she forwarded this blog entry to keep us updated on her amazing progress:

“This is incredible! It’s unbelievable to me. The dark days of almost a year now have changed to bright days with good hope for Shepherds Junior thanks to the efforts of Epic Change.

The month of December 2007 has so many things to be remembered and cheered for.

• With the loan provided by Epic Change, we were able to purchase about an acre of land and begin construction of the new school! The land is beautiful with a stream on the property and it is conveniently located to many of our current students who live near that area.

• On 15th Dec, the architect and an engineer visited the land. The architect was able to finalize the blueprints on 18th Dec, and the work of digging the foundation for 4 classrooms started on 19th Dec.

• As the land has many banana trees, clearing the property for building and for the access road to the site was not an easy task. It took more than 4 days to clear the site for initial construction and we are still trying to make it better.

• While some were busy with the work of building classrooms, others continued with the work of building a small bridge across the stream so that the construction trucks can easily reach the building site.

• We built a storage room for keeping building materials such as cement etc. in 3 days.

• Now we’ve laid 3 rows of bricks for 2 classrooms!

As you can see from some photos, the work is quite encouraging! Special thanks to those who made their donation to Epic Change which made all these possible. While we’re making progress, we still need your support so as to achieve our goal of completing necessary buildings.

Thank you so very much for your continuing support. I’ll continue to inform you of our progress!”

We hope you’re as excited as we are to see what we’ve been able to accomplish together our non-profit status was approved by the IRS in September. In less than four short months, we’ve raised nearly $30,000, made our first loan to purchase the land and have started construction; thanks from the bottom of my heart for all of your help in 2007! With your continued support, 2008 promises even more success . . . I can’t wait to see what this year holds for Leah, Naomi, Glory, Gideon and all of the beautiful kids at Shepherds. As we begin the new year, we’ll be sharing more of their incredible stories here, so stay tuned . . .

Posted: January 1st, 2008 under Updates from Mama.
Comments: none