Teachers' Packs

One of the alternative gifts you can buy from our website is a 'Teacher's pack'. A bundle of
goodies to support the teachers in our community schools.

These gifts amounted to around £200 in total last year and so our Zambia team have been spending the last few weeks pricing up and shopping for school stationery. We also had a few donations of pens, pencils and coloured card in storage which we have have been able to add to these packs.

So this blog is a big thank you to all those who have ever bought a teacher's pack from us. We are very grateful and take great pleasure in handing over a gift that will mean so much.

Previously in each school we discussed what type of stationery the teachers prefer and what would make teaching and learning a little easier. Resources to make their own learning posters were top of the list... as well as the red pens you'd expect!

With these small gifts our teachers can get really creative; making colourful learning posters, flash
cards, name cards and much more and we are looking forward to seeing these resources in action.

                     

Each teacher received .....

A teacher's bag (for carrying around files and taking books home to mark)
2 Blue pens
1 Red pen
1 ruler
1 sharpener
1 eraser
10 colouring pencils
Pair of scissors
5 paper clips
2 writing pencils
1 A 1 piece of card for making posters

Homemade learning posters

Admin stationery

The teachers with their new pencil cases

                   

Meet Anaene Situmbeko

This week our team member Elizabeth interviewed a Janna pupil...

Meet Anaene Situmbeko, a Grade 6 pupil at Janna Community School. He is 12 years old and has been at Janna School for 2 years after moving from Hope and Faith school in Lusaka. He lives with his Aunt and Uncle and their three children with Anaene falling in the middle. 

Anaene starts his day like many children in Zambia, with bread or rice as his breakfast. He will then do the washing of the plates at home and any other chores he needs to do before heading off for a 7 o' clock start at school. Luckily Anaene doesn’t live too far from school, with a 10-15 minute walk before settling down for school from 7am until 12pm. 

As Janna has its feeding programme in place, he has nshima and rice for his lunch with a possible bean, beef or chicken extra and vegetables to accompany it. As nshima is the staple food for meals, Anaena also has it for his dinner as well as lunch. 

When I asked him about being at Janna his first response was that he really liked going to school and coming to learn. He was quick to answer that science was his favourite subject at school and he enjoys doing English and Bemba lessons as well. When I mentioned social science he made a face of disgust so that was quickly decided as his least favourite subject of them all. He eagerly went on to tell me that once he’s finished school he really wants to be a pilot so that he can explore the world. He really wants to be able to visit America and the UK and when he goes to America he wants to be able to stay with his cousin who is doing medicine. But for now he’s content with playing football with his friends and reading stories at home whilst he makes his way through education.

                                   

                    

Partners We Salute You!

Last week I wrote about celebrating the end of pack sending season. And in particular, how sending the child sponsorship packs out highlighted the significance of the information they contain and the impact that has on the children at our partner schools in Zambia.

This week I wanted to mention something else that stood out to me as I was sending the packs to our wonderful sponsors - the huge contribution our key partners here in the UK make to all we do.

We are so fortunate to have such faithful and generous partners, in the guise of schools, businesses and churches. No partnership looks the same as another and each contributes in their own way.

Here are just a few ways:

Fundraising events, awareness, sponsoring children, donation tins, gifting their services and expertise, and so much more!

Partners we salute you!

A special thanks to…

The Schools:
Cranleigh School
Cranleigh Prep School
Mount Grace School
Roding Valley High School
St Joseph’s in the Park
St Joseph’s in the Park Pre-School
St Margaret’s CE Primary School
Wanstead Church School

The Businesses:
Big and Red Storage
Stephen James BMW & MINI
Studio-40

The Churches:
Be Church
Bush Hill Park United Reformed Church
Enfield Missional Community
Restore Community Church

Pack Sending Season!

Every year there is a week that brings us as a team great joy and celebration – it is the week that marks the end of ‘pack sending season’!

And this year, this is the week! (Feel free to celebrate with us!)

Since the interviews in November, when we met with every child and their parent/guardian at our partner schools in Zambia, we have been working on the information gathered to create sponsor packs for every Beyond Ourselves sponsor child.

We are so thankful to everyone who sponsors a child with us and are happy we are able to send you an update on your child each year. The pack includes up to date family, school and health information and a brand new photo of the (hopefully smiling!) child.

It can take weeks (a few months in fact) to work through every child’s information, check everything is correct and create the documents and data that we need. Not to mention the time it takes to send out several hundred sponsor packs to you, our wonderful sponsors.

The good news is, this was our most efficient year yet - thanks to all who have helped make that possible. A special mention to Melissa who works so many extra hours during ‘pack sending season’ and to Karen and Celeste who helped share the load. Thanks as well to all of you who helped us interview the children back in November and input the data, without your hard work and contribution it would be a very long and daunting job for us.

The interviews were not just about gathering information for the sponsor packs. Sadly, they highlighted some serious situations in some of the children’s homes that we are now following up, working together with our school partners to ensure these children are safe, secure and able to flourish.

It’s important to remember ‘pack sending season’ isn’t all about the admin but that each sponsor certificate and photo that we send to you is a child. A child who is being empowered and has the opportunity to learn and thrive because of our partner schools.

And that’s definitely worth celebrating!

Donut Fundraiser!

Hi, this is Tammy, from Canada. My sister Melissa works with Beyond Ourselves. We, my mom, my two boys and I were excited to partner with Beyond Ourselves and have our second annual donut fundraiser which was held Thursday, January 23rd. Last year everyone was so generous and we were able to purchase a pair of socks for every child in their three schools. This year the funds would go towards sending students to high school. (They were handing out 40 scholarships but still needed funds for 17 students.) $120 would send a student to school for a year or $10 would cover a month. I posted our fundraiser on Instagram, Facebook and sent out an email and knew God would do the rest. 

My boys loved helping last year and I took them out of school for the day again. School is very important but we loved the fact that they wanted to give of their time and help, with nothing in return other than being able to bless others. Plus we knew that if it was anything like last year, we would need their help:) We started Thursday morning and the orders kept coming. By lunch time we had 26 dozen made. We quickly realized we would have to add a second day as we could not get all the orders done in one day. My mom made all the dough, Cole and Kade helped roll out the dough and cut all the donuts. I fried the donuts and got the orders together. We had a very good system going and it went smoothly. We kept working and the donations kept coming in. People were so generous it brought me to tears. One lady didn't want any donuts, but wrote a cheque to send 2 children to school. Amazing. At the end of the day we had made 44 dozen. 

 

What was also exciting and unexpected was that there were a few teachers who ordered donuts for their class and used this fundraiser as a lesson to teach about the importance of giving as well as teaching them about Zambia. Well done teachers!

Monday morning my mom and I were back at it. Excited to see what God had in store for the day. We were already blown away at our donations. It was around the same number we had finished off at last year and we still had a whole day to go. We had received orders for 14 dozen donuts but knew we could easily make more. We felt we couldn't say no to anyone who wanted to help and give. So I once again posted on Facebook and Instagram and at the end of the day we had made 33 dozen donuts. We smelled like donuts, we were covered in flour and icing sugar and oil splatters, but our hearts were overflowing. A huge THANK YOU to everyone who donated!! Together we helped change the lives of 17 students, who will now be attending high school!

Some of the boys that received a scholarship!

Meet Ivy Nkhoma

Mike sat down with Ivy Nkhoma this week to chat her work at Kawama School….

I would like to thank Ivy for taking time out of her work today and having a chat with me about herself, her family and her time at Kawama Community School.

Ivy has lived in Old Kawama now for eight years.  She has four children; her son Ezra (28) and daughter Dora (25) live in Lusaka, while her other son Buya (22) and daughter Eunice live at home with her along with one grandchild. Ivy is a widow and previously worked selling items on the local market. It was here that she got talking to a regular customer, Pastor Caphas, from the church at Kawama School.  She explained how difficult she was finding it financially to support her family from the uncertain and irregular income she made at the market. Pastor Caphas offered her a position in charge of the sanitation and Ivy jumped at the chance of a regular income. This was exactly three years ago in January 2013.

When asked about her interests outside of work and school she smiled and said with a family house to run she doesn’t get time for things like that but I know Ivy really enjoys cooking and reading, especially her Bible, as we have spoken about that in the past when I have chatted to her.

Ivy says she loves working at the school and is very impressed with the way that the staff there are so professional and work hard with the children. It makes it such a happy and delightful place to work. Being a family person she also enjoys working in close proximity to the children.

Ivy busy completing some of her admin duties

One of her proudest moments happened at the end of last year when she was approached by Mary, Head Teacher and Pastor Cephas to ask if she would like to take over the newly created role of Administrator rather than organising and undertaking the sanitation side of Kawama School. She told me that she could not believe she was being given the chance. She is now relishing the challenge of the completely new role and working with Mary to free her of some of the paperwork and meeting parents so that Mary can concentrate much more on the teaching and training of teachers role.

Ivy with Catherine Louvend and her children Abigail and Frank who

have just started at Kawama

When asked what would Ivy like to see happen now she had no hesitation in coming out with “to ensure that the children’s education continues to get better and better”.

We are really pleased to see Ivy move into this new position. It has been one of our highlights to see Ivy grow and take on more responsibility at Kawama School. We hope we can empower more people from the local community surrounding all our schools to reach greater things.

Restore Community Church Team

We’ve had a small team of men from Restore Community Church with us for the last week or so. Peter, Don and Tim came to visit the team here in Zambia and also feed into some of the beginning of the year activities that take place at the schools.

Last Friday we did our first ever altogether staff day with the staff from all three schools we work with. It’s been on our heart for a long time to do something like this, to gather everyone (teachers, cooks, security guards, and directors) for a day together. Friday we all met together at Greater Joy School for a very hot(!!) but wonderful day of worship, prayer, and teaching from our visiting team. 

 

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of this week we’ve been doing staff training days at each individual school. We’ve been looking back at 2015 and reviewing the successes and challenges and thinking and praying about 2016 and what we plan on focusing on and working towards this year. 

 

It’s been great having the team here from Restore to help us facilitate the days. We only hope they’ll come back again soon :)