By Marian Reid | SEDA volunteer - media and communications
On a recent visit to the Ban Phao School site, it was clear that the school is in dire need of renovations. The oldest classrooms at the school are still used daily for maths and science even though they are unsafe, unstable and exposed to rain, wind and dust.
Ban Phao is a village of 2,347 people. The school opens to 300 students, ranging from age 4 to age 12. There are also about 100 secondary school students. With so many students the school is full to capacity and cannot teach all the children in the village. Younger children in the village are now attending school late, once a space has opened for them. Infant classes share a space with primary school children and many classes are conducted in shifts.
In 2005, the Australian Government helped Ban Phao renovate existing classrooms. This provides around 10 solid and useable rooms. A second building, built in the 1970s, has no windows and the inner walls of the classrooms are falling down. The third set of classrooms, as mentioned above, are little more than an open wooden hut.
The teachers, students and residents of the school are desperate for repairs and renovations. They wrote a personal letter to the Japanese Embassy in 2007 but received no response.
The school is requesting funds to create 5 new classrooms in the place of the old wooden classrooms. Their second request is repairs and windows for the classroom built in 1970. They are also in need of new desks, chairs, computers and school supplies.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
