Preventative Maintenance Day at Hope School
Spark Ventures
| community programs, education, organization, partnership trip, report from the field, travel, zambia | No comment
When I arrived at Hope Community School mid-afternoon for the second day of computer training with Teacher Lewis and Teacher Angela, I found the students just leaving their classrooms and heading out to the big open yard in front of the school to participate in what Head Teacher N’goma called “Preventative Maintenance.”
Each of the students at Hope helps maintain the school grounds – doing tasks that are assigned based on their grade. The grade 1 students might collect stray pieces of trash, while the grade 3 students sweep, and the grade 6 students help with a bit of the gardening. They do these tasks each week, to keep the school clean and orderly. But, each year, in the first week of the school term (here terms are on a calendar year) they take on projects that are a bit more in-depth. This year, they helped build defined plots for grass and flowers in the front of the school building.I was impressed with the enthusiasm with which each student joined in. There were 5 hoes in use to dig out the boundary of each bed. They passed from hand-to-hand seamlessly and never sat idle. At the command of one of the teachers, a whole gaggle of kids jumped up and headed off to a corner of Hope Village’s property, and returned carrying one brick each, made from the red clay dirt that comes from massive ant hills here.
At the end of the project, Hope’s front yard was left pristine. And, the children who attend school here can take pride in the fact that they had a hand in improving their facility in a permanent way.
The students were dedicated workers, but not so focused that they couldn’t stop to make a few silly faces…
More fun to come soon, as our group of Partnership Trip travelers arrive this weekend!