EZANA ELEMENTARY SCHOOL – AXUM
Ezana Elementary School is a small government school located in the eastern part of Axum. Ezana was one of the early Axumite Emperors. The school started in 2006 with basic funding . However, the capacity for students who want to attend is not sufficient and there is a waiting list of students who enrol but are unable to attend because there are not enough teachers, supplies and classrooms to accommodate them.
Project Pencil Case has been delighted to provide support to this school from UK educational grants in 2011 and 2012, with hundreds of real books (the school had none!) and shelves for their library and classroom furniture and pencil cases.
The local education department is usually able to only just and very basically fund and equip schools by providing land, basic school buildings and salaries for teachers. Other essential and standard western resources are often lacking such as chairs and desks, books, stationary and uniforms – it is then up to the schools to fundraise and seek community support to obtain these items.
The great thing is that although we expected only to be helping the students who after all are at the heart of our charity, these books also helped the teachers with lesson planning and they appeared to be just as excited about the arrival of these books as the students were!
We were really pleased to also be able to source all the books locally from the one bookstore in town and to get the shelves made by local craftsmen thereby helping the local economy, which made a difference to this small town and was appreciated.
PROJECT PENCIL CASE 