Current Projects

Tools for Schools is currently working on two specific projects in Rwanda.

Myenge A School

The Myenge A School provides free public education to students in a rural area just outside of the town of Nyamata.

Myenge A has 1421 students from Grade 1 up to and including Secondary Two. Secondary Three will be added in 2011. Each year new classrooms must be built. The staff would love to start a kindergarten to give students a head start, but there is no money or funding.

There are only 20 teachers for the 1 421 students. This is because the teachers all teach two classes per day so that more students can come to school.

The first group arrives at 8:00 a.m. until 12:00, and at 12:00 -12:30 the teacher supervises a lunch of beans and rice for the group and then these students go home. This is probably their only meal of the day and is provided by the World Food Programme. Students must also bring a piece of wood to school for the fire to cook the food!

When Tools For Schools first visited Myenge, there was a Grade 1 class with over 50 students seated 3 – 4 in a desk and the teacher had another 50 plus seated on the floor because their teacher was on maternity leave; there are no substitute teachers. The only teaching tools are the concrete black board and chalk. No books; no cupboard; nothing to store! No sports or play equipment.

School is free up to Secondary 3 but students have to wear a uniform and need exercise books and pencils, which many can't afford. The average income is $1 per day. The irony is that if the children don't go to school then they don't have the food from the WFP.

Tools for Schools is helping to provide basic teaching materials to Myenge, including benches, books, and cupboards. For the students, Tools for Schools is providing student uniforms, improved learning materials including books, paper and pencils, as well as balls and skipping ropes.

If you'd like to contribute to the Myenge school project, please donate or volunteer today!

 

Nyrere Nursery School

Tools For Schools first went to Nyrere Nursery School to help with school fees for fourteen vulnerable children. These orphans had been identified for Tools For Schools by the locally elected leader for social services. The school itself is a care worn, mud-brick building, with no windows, only stick shutters pulled over gapping holes in the walls.

John, the headmaster, is sixty six years old and genocide survivor. He started the school in an old unfinished Methodist church because it was needed. The children pay a small school fee of $28 a year when they can. There are between 120 and 150 children in two groups. The numbers vary because in the rainy season the children have nothing warm and dry to wear.

The two teachers are poorly trained. Each has attended secondary school and neither has had training to teach young children yet they teach between 50 and 60 children each morning.

There is no school in the afternoon because there is no food for the students and the journey to schools and back is too long to to return home for lunch.

The school has a cement floor and rows of desks grouped together at either end of the building. Each two-seater desk fits four children. There aren't enough desks. There is a small flat piece of wood on a stand used as a blackboard for each group. That is all…no teaching materials; not a block or a ball or a pencil or a toy! Not a picture or a piece of paper to be seen.

Tools for Schools is helping John and the Nyrere Nursery School to improve the facilities for both teachers and students. This includes paying school fees for vulnerable children, providing uniforms, buying more desks for students, basic teaching supplies, and providing basic learning materials for students. In western terms, the cost of such supplies is small, but they sure make a big difference for Nyrere Nursery School.

If you'd like to help please donate or volunteer today!