Operation Hope began a relationship with the Global Revival School in 2014 when we enrolled the 3 orphan girls that we began caring for into the school (read more about the girls here). When we inspected the school we were shocked to discover that some of the classrooms had over 100 children in them, making both teaching and learning very difficult. We also discovered that alot of the children in this particular school are orphans.
The school desperately needed more classrooms to reduce classroom sizes and improve teaching. Their vision was to build either a single storey building with 4 classrooms or a double storey building with 8 classrooms.
Last year the wheels were set in motion with foundation trenches dug by the parents and concrete laid early this year.
Operation Hope also held two fundraisers in 2014 in Australia to see how much money we could raise to help fund this project.
Over the last few weeks we have met with the Swazi government’s Micro Projects Team and are happy to announce that to date we have passed all the initial inspections. The plan now is that we (Operation Hope and Global School) are to build to the roofline (concrete blocks and doors) and then the government will come in to finish the rest.
We are currently working on costing materials for the 4 classrooms only as initial quotes indicate this is most likely what we can afford. We will also sign a Memorandum Of Understanding with the government in the next week or so once everything is finalised.
We had a parent meeting a few weeks back encouraging them to continue to volunteer their time and energy in helping to build the classrooms and fulfilling this much awaited vision. The atmosphere was fantastic as they acknowledged that we can truly make a difference when we work together.
We will keep you posted on the progress as news comes to hand.
