OUR FOURTH BUILD
We’ve partnered with Baraka Community Partnerships to help build a STEM-focused secondary school for girls in rural Zambia, providing life-changing education opportunities.
This time we are teaming up with Baraka Community Partnerships, a charity helping to improve education, healthcare, water and sanitation in Zambia and Laos. This project is a secondary school for girls, a groundbreaking initiative aimed at providing high-quality, annual education to 400-500 young women in Zambia. It will be located next to an existing Learning Centre also run by Baraka.
Baraka’s Co-Founder, Andy Mckee, said “Zambia’s education system faces significant challenges, particularly in rural areas where access to quality secondary education is extremely limited and often struggles due to over-crowding.”
“Relatively few students graduate with the ability to attend continuing education. It is estimated only 27% of girls in Zambia will complete secondary school, and among the poorest children, this figure falls to 3%. Poverty often leads families to withdraw their daughters from schools and prioritise education for boys. Girls are deemed more useful in the home environment and in addition, keeping girls back in their villages is significantly more likely to lead to early marriages, underage pregnancies, sexual harassment and abuse. These are some of the many reasons why our school will target girls.”
“Our vision is to create the best girl’s secondary school in all of Zambia, offering STEM-focused education and alleviating severe overcrowding at the nearest secondary school. We hope that this school will set a new standard for academic excellence in Zambia and serve as a model for future education initiatives.”
The project will include a science block and a technical and vocational workshop providing skills in carpentry, brick laying and welding, something fairly unheard of at girl’s schools in Zambia. The project will also include an admin office, toilet block and landscaping as well as various maintenance costs for the first year.
A small team from Saavan’s Trust will head out to Zambia in October to get involved with the groundwork, see the project first hand and meet the community.
You may see a few fundraising efforts in the coming months and please remember 100% of our donations go directly to our projects. Your generosity really makes a difference, so we really appreciate any donations big or small.
For more information on Baraka, visit barakacommunity.com and keep an eye on our Instagram for more updates.