Expenditure breakdown on last page

Rainbow School Project

First of all I would just like to say a massive thank you to all those who offered support to my project (a massive £415.00) and a special thanks to Pamela Ryan for organising the fund raising. The money raised has made some huge changes to a small community and will give the local children a far better chance of getting out of the village and into proper education. As well as the building itself I will now be paying a wage to the volunteer teacher in this school – this is part of a new project within the organisation after a fellow volunteer organised for some of the teachers to go on a training course. It’s incredible just how far money goes out there and the long term benefits that projects like these can provide.

Here is the short and sweet before and after of the outside:

(At this point I had already whitewashed the windows)

And the inside…

And for those who want to know more, please read on!

Background10 years ago Tikondwe Organisation was started up by a young Malawian boy called Joshua aged only 15. It started off very small and focused mainly on agriculture since this was a way to bring money into the village. The charity started to grow and he managed to get some funding to build a chicken hut for the village. This was a great step forward and the sponsors gave enough money for the locals to build, structurally, the best building outside of any Malawian town despite being only a simple brick building. Unfortunately, the plan was not thought out too well since the villagers could not afford to feed and look after the chickens and so the building became useless.

Progress with the charity was slow until 3 years ago when Joshua got in touch with a company called Original Volunteers who then began to send out individuals to help, and put in place a coordinator to help him run things. Over the first 2 years of these changes being enforced the organisation had built 6 small community schools in 6 of the surrounding villages and the chicken hut became one as well – Tikondwe School!

These community schools offer an education to the local children who cannot afford to go to a real primary school. The teachers are locals who volunteer – they have no training and get paid nothing – they simply want to give the kids the best opportunity to get out of the village. The problem with this is that attendance is very low for both the students and the volunteer teachers because each day they all face the same decision – Do I go to school or do I earn money? Or do I look after my siblings so my mum can earn money? Or do I help my dad with his work so we can get money? In that situation it is hard to have the foresight to see that the only way out of this is to go to school.

Tikondwe SchoolThe former chicken hut turned community school, having been funded and built by the organisation, should be the school that is leading the way for progress in many aspects. It is already used by Tikondwe Organisation and others who are trying to reach the outskirts, to host HIV awareness clinics, Child Malnourishment clinics as well as Womens Empowerment groups and the likes. For this reason I decided it needed a re-vamp – here is the breakdown!

I began with a whitewash; the dark cement walls (that you can see where I haven’t finished the windows) meant that even in the middle of the day the school was dark. The white wash instantly lifted the room but took so long to do – getting into those windows was a nightmare!!

The next stage was to paint over the whitewash with some decent white paint and then put the washable, oil-based blue for the bottom half of the room.

Next, I painted each of the windows a different colour inside and out. Colours are not seen in the village and so this stage stirred up quite a lot of excitement!

One of the biggest jobs was the ceiling, as you can see the corrugated iron roof, despite being sturdy, is not very appealing to the eye. The heat would also conduct through the metal making the room really hot – and I was there in their winter!! So I bought plain material to cover it up and painted the beams with white as a base and then colours to match the windows (you can see they started off very dark in some of the other pictures)!

The final of the big jobs was the outside of the building – with the help of the local builder I built the gutter to protect the building in the rainy season. This involved getting river sand delivered by ox and cart! We also made the sign and plastered the far side of the building that you can’t see in this picture. While this was getting done I asked for the local Painter to paint the doors, and the top border which you can see here in cream.

The Finishing Touches!

After all the slogging and doing all the bits that really didn’t feel very rewarding at the time it was so nice to get to the final stages where I got to put my own mark on the place and finish it all off!

I painted the alphabet along one wall and 1-10 along the other along with shapes all as resources that can be used when teaching.

The giraffe was inspired by a ruler I found and so I made it into a height measurer on one of the walls.

The table and box were made by the local carpenter and we decorated them.

To finish off the outside we wrote common phrases in English, Chichewa (Malawi national Language) and another local language.

2 Signs were painted on using the official Tikondwe Organisation font. The locals were really proud of how the school turned out and asked that their village name be written on the side of the building as well as the school name!

My final little decorative touches!

The finished article!

We made 4 notice boards and painted them, bought a new chalk board and got

some benches made!

And last but not least I have to give a massive thanks to my team…….

Top left: Christon – although he wasn’t really hands on in terms of his help his translation certainly came in handy!

Top middle: Andy – he is a volunteer also who gave me loads of support throughout. He helped me with painting and tried to keep my spirits up when things weren’t going so smoothly. He also started his own project in conjuction with mine funding a teacher training course for 11 of the most dedicated local volunteers!

Top right: Medson – The village builder! A great guy whose laugh you could hear from the other side of the village. He helped me to make the signs and the gutter.

Bottom Left – Rapkin – local painter and cycle fixer! Couldn’t have done the high bits without him and his hand-made ladder (which you can probably spot in some of the pics) – I worked out the hard way that standing on a chair on top of 2 tables was not the greatest idea!

Bottom right: Chiquana – The carpenter who made the sports box, notice boards and new chalkboard.

Thank you so much for taking an interest, my trip to Malawi was absolutely incredible and the school wouldn’t have made anywhere near as much progress if it wasn’t for all the kind support I got so, from me and the villages that the project will affect – a massive thank you!!

For anybody interested there is a breakdown of where the money got spent below.

Item Amount (£)Paint and brushes – including heavy duty blue and cream paint

184.11

Cement and river sand including hire of ox and cart

58.00

Furniture 67.65Toilet 24.00Ceiling Material 36.40Labour 60.00Sponsoring teacher 120.00TOTAL 550.16