"If you educate a man you educate an individual, but
if you educate a woman you educate a family"
Attributed to the Ghanaian scholar
Dr. James Emmanuel Kwegyir-Aggrey (1875-1927),
one of 20th Century's greatest educators.
Dreams are taking shape, the first secondary school dedicated to girls in Chama District, north-eastern Zambia has opened its doors to the first intake of 30 girls — but we still have a long way to go. We aim to empower 1,000 girls in Chama with education, life skills, confidence and hope, and we urgently need your support.
The school will be completed in yearly stages.
We therefore need your help to:
Drill and line more boreholes
Complete the first phase of the kitchen and dining room
Construct the first phase of the new boarding house to accommodate over 250 girls
Construct further classrooms and ablution blocks
Install solar lighting
Commission an agricultural consultant to plan how best to use the 750 hectares of land for grazing, growing and harvesting produce and planting trees.
Build a science laboratory
Obtain equipment, such as library books, pencils, blackboards, desks, chairs, etc.
Develop and improve agriculture in order feed the school and give girls life skills for the future. The sale of produce grown on the land owned by the school will help sustain the school.
Improve healthcare for the school and the community.
Please
help us by making a donation.
Your support would be much
valued in helping to bring about this change for the better in this far-flung community. We would be happy to hear from you, if you would like to discuss any aspect of the school in more detail. All donors will be kept up-to-date on progress through annual e-newsletters.
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contact
Please
help us to make this school possible.
This first block of 4 classrooms, 4 teachers' studies and 2 administrative offices is now completed. This is drone footage was taken in late 2021 just after the roof was raised. All the windows, doors, glass panes, grill bars, hard-wearing flooring, plastering and rendering has been done. We are just waiting until the end of the rains in April when it can be inspected and passed by the authorities. It will open to local girls initially and then once the main dormitory is constructed it will open to girls from further afield.
St Mary's Anglican Secondary School for Girls opened its doors on 12 May 2025 to the first intake of Grade 8.
The school will expand year on year behind this first intake. What we need now is dolar-powered electric fencing to protect the school and crops from wild animals, especially elephants who love nothing better than to raid the crops, and a new dormitory.
Three hectares of land has already been cleared for crops and a kitchen garden, which will supply food for the pupils and staff.
The first harvest was a great success and surplus produce was sold locally bringing in income which was used to purchase missing supplies such as salt, payment to millers to grind their corn and make maize flour for making Nshima, a staple diet in Zambia.
The girls will receive quality education in a safe environment.
They will study the National Curriculum and also learn life skills such as how to grow and harvest crops, sell produce, which will give them valuable life skills for the future.
This first block of 4 classrooms, 4 teacher's studies and 2 administrative offices is now completed and awaiting inspection by the Ministry of Education. We are hoping this will happen as soon as the rains have finished and the roads in the district reopen.
The local community commitment and investment in this school ensures long-term sustainability for the school.
Add to this the Zambian government will be providing all the teachers, paying their salaries and paying for their accommodation once the school opens.
The local Chief has donated 750 hectares of land
to the school which will become a substantial community asset and help
with practical education on managing agriculture for the girls.
Food grown, cattle grazed and trees planted on this land will enable the staff and pupils to have a well-balanced diet. It will give pupils the opportunity to learn how best to grow and harvest food and any surplus can be sold locally. All of this will help sustain the school long-term.
We commissioned a hydrology expert to undertake a study on where underground aquafers and rivers are located and to map it.
This will enable our agricultural consultant to identify the best sites for more boreholes, a dam, irrigation, where to plant trees, graze animals, sow crops and create a kitchen garden for the school.
Meanwhile, three hectares of arable land have been cleared for growing maize and creating a kitchen garden.
Local villagers have volunteered to make and fire all the bricks needed for the school. They work hard during the dry season stockpiling bricks ready for the next construction phase.
To date, they must have made over 400,000 bricks.
Their investment in The Chama Project is vitally important for the long-term sustainability of the school.
The rains in Chama this year were abundant, causing a great deal of flood damage. Roads were impassable. But this didn't deter a group of strong volunteers from the villages from walking their bicycles to the riverbank where bricks had been stocked piled. They stacked them on their bikes and slowly walked the five miles through the deep mud and puddles all the way back to the school so that the construction of the ablution blocks could be finished.
Two ablution blocks are ready and waiting for the first intake of pupils and staff. These consist of eight showers and WCs for pupils and four for staff.
In 2014 a group of 14 pupils from St Mary's School Calne girls came out to make a start on construction. These girls gave up their half-term holiday in the UK to come out to Zambia and work in 45º October heat– not only did they work hard and achieve a lot, but they returned home with the benefit of having learned a huge amount about a very different culture and way of live to their own back in the UK.
A second contribution in 2014 came from the Diocese of Edinburgh, which raised £10,000 through their Bishop's 2013 Lent Appeal. This paid for a borehole to supply fresh water for the very first time to Tembwe and replaced the small, deep and very muddy well, which had been the only source of water in the district and for the new school. Remaining funding went towards a building equipment and materials, ensuring a strong start to the construction phase I.
The Grassmarket Community Project volunteers and friends, led by Tommy Steel held a sleepout outside their community centre in the heart of Edinburgh's Old Town to raise funds for their trip to Chama. It was a cold, wet winter's night following the Scotland vs Wales Rugby International. They raised a lot of money, with one young man donating a massive £7,500.
Binalesi (16) lives with her family and has no school to attend.
Racheal (17) dreams of going back to school but faces the same barriers as thousands of other girls in the region.
Rachael (15) became pregnant at 14 during her last year of primary school; she and the father, both still children, could not raise their baby, and Rachael’s grandmother now cares for her newborn.
Alice (17) dropped out of school when her daughter Melita was born; she now has little chance of continuing her studies
Thousands of girls like these four need your help now.
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