The project began in 2011 when one of our members visited Bomani Tented Camp owned by Imvelo Safari Lodges and situated in a concession on the southern border of Hwange National Park. A visit to the Ngamo Primary School and conversations with the Managing Director of Imvelo led to an undertaking to stock books for a library at Ngamo Primary. This was accomplished in 2012 and from then on the project grew and grew. We now support eight rural schools in the Mlevu Cluster in the Tsholotsho District and in September 2014 we were registered as a Non Profit Organisation (NPO) by the South African Department of Social Development.
Imvelo Safari Lodges remain our partner and their dedicated Community Development Officer, as well as the headmasters and teachers from the schools that we support, help us to identify needs and co-ordinate the distribution of our donations.
Our project is now six years old and during this time we have achieved the following milestones through a series of fundraisers:
Set up the Ngamo Primary and Secondary schools library with over 1000 books
Start box libraries for the other 6 schools in the Mlevu cluster
Delivered teacher and learner resources such as flashcards, text books, exercise books, posters and stationery for the schools on a regular basis
Sponsored anual essay writing competition to encourage learners to improve their English writing skills
Sponsored an anual two-day English language training workshop for teachers from the eight schools in the district
Delivered three manually operated sewing machines, fabric and sewing supplies for the use of the secondary school pupils and community
Provided full sets of readers for the Ngamo primary school
Renovated 5 Early Childhood Development (ECD) Classrooms
Through the support that the schools have received from this project we have seen increases in the learner's ability to communicate in English and an overall increase in pass rate.