As mentioned in her last blog, the students from Alexia’s old school raised 190 euros for the refugee school by organising a bake sale. Later in the spring her sister and other members of her family managed to raise additional funds to make many needed improvements at the school.
Alexia takes up the story.
I bought some things for the school with that money and gave the rest to… [the Head] and she used it to repair the broken walls at school (they are doing this literally whilst I am writing to you so this is a live update!)
My sister is part of a club at my old high school which has also donated 300 euros.
Another ongoing project is to buy pads for the girls at school….. I thought it was unacceptable that these poor teenage girls didn’t always have pads and sometimes missed school (a common problem in the developing world – Ed.) so I was going to buy a bunch of them for the school to keep there. I told E…[Volunteer coordinator] about this and she suggested that we buy re-usable and washable pads instead. I thought it was a great idea and because these are quite expensive, we thought about finding people to sponsor the project. I told my mum about it and she has been able to get a phenomenal response to her appeal! This should allow us to buy the packs we wanted. It’s from a brand called Bamboolite. …..I’m so excited about this!
In fact, with the additional money we have been able to fix so many things that need to be fixed at school. We bought a new printer; we are about to repair the floor in A class and change the carpet in C and D class as well as buying two new tables for the small kids. We will also fix the toilet doors and get a new water filter to replace the old broken one. If there is any money left, we will get a new computer for the IT room and give the rest to the volunteers currently at the school so they can use it to buy school supplies.
Alexia has just left the school finally after extending her volunteering period several times. M…and M… our most recent volunteers are there with Miza now and have been an enormous success. He has been teaching the boys at the welding academy and both women have recently run a woman’s empowerment seminar.
