Nyankunde Schools Project
Could you help to educate:- 1 child for £5 per year (42p a month)
- or 10 children for £50 per year (£4.17 a month)
- or even 50 children for £250 per year (£20.83 a month)?
If so, please contact us.
April 2013 - School Funding Update
Last month there were 7,096 children at the 24 schools. There has been a slight increase in the number of teachers now being paid by the DRC. government – 146 out of 255. However, parents are still expected to pay a monthly school fee to supplement the salaries received. Nearly 1,500 of the children are orphans and we are concerned that this number has dropped slightly. Jean-Luc, who helps manage the project for us, says that a few families have moved back to their home areas and their fields since security has improved but that there are no schools in their villages. Other families remain near Nyankunde but cannot afford to send their children to school. Exam fees for the 501 finalists are due soon and these amount to about one month’s salary for the secondary students and $6 for the primary children. It would be very sad if these children could not take these exams and so we are hoping we can pay these fees for the children. The total cost will be $6,700. We have some funds available and hope that we can at least pay for the orphans’ fees. If you are able and willing to help us pay for more students, please do get in touch.
February 2011 - decision to cease our fundraising for the schools
We started supporting the schools at Nyankunde in 2006 and have given £65,000 for this. In November 2009, we appealed for funding since the monies were running out. The results of the appeal extended our support until June 2011. We currently receive each month £900 in donations for the schools but have been paying out £2,200 for the 120 teachers who are not paid by the DRC government. We cannot continue as we are, and £900 a month is insufficient for 120 teachers (about £7 a month salary). But we know that these children and the community will be devastated if they can’t go to school. We have heard that another 21,000 teachers are to be added to the DRC payroll this month, funded by the World Bank. In addition, the DRC budget for teachers’ pay has gone up by 40%. So our decision, as Trustees, was the terribly hard one to stop the funding at the end of the school year in June with the hope and prayer that the DRC government will pay all the teachers by then. If you feel strongly about continuing to support the children and are able to give for this purpose, please do let us know, since we will be keeping a close eye on the situation and may be able to review our decision.
October 2010
At Nyunkunde nearly 6,000 students have returned to school for the new academic year. Of the 232 teachers, 117 are paid by the government and our funds support the remaining 115 at $30 each per month. We received letters from students, teachers and parents thanking us for the support last school year. One student, Esperance (Hope) wrote that he could not have completed the school year without our help and would have been sent home. On behalf of the parents, Albert wrote ‘During 2009/10 you carried the burden of studies of our children; we continue to be grateful to each one of you’.
We continue to financially support a project in Beni enabling orphans to go to school. The end of the last school year saw some of these orphans graduate from school!
May 2010
The schools at Nyankunde continue to function. In March, the 232 teachers received nearly $9,880 between them - an average salary of $43 each. This was a combination of money from the DRC government and funds from us. We can continue this funding at least until the end of this year thanks to our supporters.
November 2009
Having run out of money to continue to support the Nyankunde schools, teachers and children after next month, we have this month launched an urgent appeal for help, via our quarterly newsletter. Please read our newsletter here and consider whether you can help be a solution to this critical need. If you are able to give by monthly standing order, or a one-off donation, we would love to hear from you. Our gift aid and standing order forms, mentioned in the Nov 09 newsletter, are available to download below. Please contact us or write to us at our registered office (address at bottom of page). Thank you.
February 2009
Friends of CME Trust supports schools in Nyankunde - paying local teachers´ salaries, purchasing basic materials (books, pens etc) and ad-hoc school building work. We have, since 2006, been funding teachers´ salaries at £1,100 per month and enabling 3500 children to attend school. Now there are 6030 local children (many recently returned to Nyankunde) seeking education across 21 schools, which we could provide at merely £1,800 a month (£3.50 per year, per child)! This includes extra help for orphans (who make up approx. 1800 of the 6030). We currently have sufficient funds to maintain this support until Dec 2009. However, we do need to raise an extra £700 a month for this to be sustainable beyond that time. We are therefore appealing for donations as follows:
Could you help to educate:- 1 child for £3.50 p.a (30p a month)
- or 10 children for £35 p.a (£3 a month)
- or even 50 children for £175 p.a (£15 a month)?
If so, please contact us.
August 2008
During the first half of 2008, we are pleased to report that the schools in Nyankunde, with their 3,500 children, have functioned almost without interruption. Our support, in collaboration with Mission Aviation Fellowship, continues to provide a basic salary of $15 a month to each teacher. In recent months, about half of the 160 teachers began to receive a Government salary of between $50 and $60 a month. They agreed to ´pool´ this salary with the monies received from us and then divide the total with their colleagues. We were very encouraged by this collaboration which enabled everyone to receive an approximately $40 a month combined income.
Unfortunately, with no prior warning, the Government stopped most of the salaries in May. This affected all teachers in the region who then went on strike. After a couple of days with no school the teachers at Nyankunde agreed with the parents to return to work with the parents contributing about 25p a month for the remaining 3 months of the school year (orphans will go free). We hope and pray that the government will see sense and restart the salaries for all the teachers.
May 2007
We need only £5 to enable a child to go to school for a year at Nyankunde. Last November, when we launched this appeal, we started with approximately 3,000 children attending 12 schools in the area. The local community leaders agreed with the 150 or so teachers a salary of $15 a month on the basis that they accept all the children who want to attend free of charge. So we are sending £1,100 a month to CME who then distribute the money. We now support 3,521 children. Thank you to all of you who responded to this appeal. In conjunction with Mission Aviation Fellowship in Uganda, we now have enough funds to keep these children in the schools until the end of 2008! We have already received requests from two other schools to join the project and we hope too that many more children will be able to return to their homes after being refugees for 5 years.
November 2006: Launch of Schools Appeal
In Nyankunde, 3,000 primary children attend 12 schools because we provide £1,100 a month to pay 120 teachers a $15 a month salary. The teachers are not getting any regular government support and the parents are unable to afford the fees necessary. We have funds to keep the schools running until June next year but we would love them to stay open beyond that. It only costs £5 a year to keep a child going to school. If you would like to help, perhaps as a Christmas present to a friend or family member, it would certainly make a child’s Christmas!
These photos show the children and teachers outside their school at Nyankunde.