Founded by the government of Zimbabwe and opened in January 1984, Lukosi Secondary School serves 7 neighboring primary schools.

With 360 students, 18 staff members in 10 classrooms – it is a large and sprawling suburban school located in the Matabeland North area outside of Victoria Falls.

 

One of our first projects at this school along with Chidobe Primary, St. Mary’s Primary and Mizpah Primary was to refurbish the chalkboards.

Although many schools across the world have transitioned away from chalkboards to SMART boards, Zimbabwean schools, particularly rural schools still utilize the tried and tested traditional chalkboards. This is due to a number of reasons the most important being the affordability as well as
durability of the traditional chalkboards. That being said, due to the ongoing economic situation in Zimbabwe all four of these school facilities, in particular, their chalkboards had become considerably run down. The boards had become overused with time and many of them throughout the schools were unusable as students weren’t able to read what was being written on the worn-down boards.  GCF funded the renovation of all these chalkboards, creating a conducive learning environment for all 1852 students within these schools.

We also learned that the school had not had access to clean and safe water since 2015, resulting in students and teachers walking up to 5km t the nearest borehole to collect water during the school day.  Providing the funds to restore the borehole and install a solar powered pump, ensured that all 360 students and 18 teachers will no longer lose time that could otherwise be spent learning.  Water from the borehole has also enabled Lukosi to establish a functioning garden with a fenced area so the school can grow vegetables to add to students meals.