Dorica talked to us about the impact of the new literacy resources at her school
I am Dorica and I am 18 years old. I am in grade 9 and the 5th child in my family of 8 children. In our village teenage pregnancy was a way of life and considered normal by the communities until School Club Zambia intervened and conducted several activities about teenage pregnancies. This intervention was a pathway to freedom and a better life. As we talked more about why child marriage was wrong in the villages, the cases have reduced. However, I believe the major challenge affecting youths especially school going children, is illiteracy and an inability to read, which caused a decrease in the exam pass rate.
I was among the students who were falling behind in class mainly due to a lack of conducive place to study after classes. In addition, at home parents give us a lot of house chores to do such as looking after cattles, sweeping, fetching water among others and by the time we finish we are tired and looking forward to sleep, leaving us with no time to study or do our homework. This is what it means growing up in rural Zambia where quality education is compromised as a result depriving pupils of relevant school infrastructure such as the library.
Fortunately, School Club Zambia embarked on a new project of constructing a library at our school and upon hearing this news, I was very excited! It’s exactly what the school needed. The library is now complete and equipped with a variety of educational books. I now utilize the opportunity of studying before and after school, thus seeing a tremendous improvement in my performance in class. I can assure you that I will pass my grade examination without doubt.
Thank you School Club Zambia for enhancing the quality of education at our school.
Memory has seen the impact of returning to school and starting her own business
I am Memory and I am 23 years old. I dropped out of school in grade 9 due to teenage pregnancy but after I delivered I did immediately re-enroll back in school as the baby was still small. While waiting for the baby to grow I completely lost interest in school my dreams were shuttered. I couldn’t even establish a small business to help me generate an income, due to lack of capital and insufficient entrepreneurship skills. Growing up in rural Zambia without quality education means missing out on opportunities that offer vocational skills and falling behind on everything so was my situation.
Fortunately, School Club Zambia partnered with Mayanda Primary School with the aim to bring girls back in school through football but accompanied with several activities such as sexual reproductive health and rights, entrepreneurship training, savings group, extra literacy and numeracy lessons etc. Any interested girls that were out of school under the age of 25 were required to apply and undergo the interview which I did and qualified. The first few months was occupied with trainings and after all the trainings were all the beneficiaries were given the (seed) startup capital of K315 to execute their skills.
I invested the money into selling prepacked kapenta (a small white fish) and tomatoes. I chose this business after doing market research and finding that accessing this service was a challenge for people living in my neighborhood. At the moment I am selling kapenta and tomatoes but in addition I joined a savings group to help me save more money. My plan is to buy the school requisites and enroll back into school next year. I commend SCZ for your counselling, knowledge and the startup capital. I am excited to be back in school and my view about education wouldn’t have been the same if you never intervened in my life.
Martha learnt entrepreneurship and agricultural skills that she is now using outside of school
Martha is my name, I am 17 years old and a 5th Child in the family of 7. I live in a rural village in Sinazongwe.
Growing up in rural Zambia without quality education means receiving a basic education which doesn’t contain vocational skills. As a result, many of us children leave school with few skills to survive through life.
Kariba South, my school, was one of the schools that never had any businesses for pupils to learn from. However in 2013 after School Club Zambia partnered with my school, they introduced different types of business such as the organic garden, tailoring centre, computer centre, chicken business and the Agriculture Hub. All these businesses had some pupils working and learning from them and I happen to join the Agricultural Hub shop.
I was so passionate about the operations of the agri-hub and it impacted my life in several ways. To begin with I now know what types of seeds to order for the farmers living in Sinazongwe district. I learnt how to attend to customers when they come to your shop and the tools that are needed to run a hammer meal machine besides that, I also know how to manage and operate a hammer meal machine which grinds maize.
These skills I obtained will help me in the future to manage my own shop and own an organic garden which is my dream.
I really thanks the SCZ team for the rare opportunity they gave us, huge thanks once again.
Mweemba had always dreamt of being able to use a computer
Mweemba is my name, I am 16 years old and a 2 child in the family of 3. I stay in the village with my parents. Since my childhood I have been going to school and that’s where I am at the moment in grade 9.
I knew I lived in a world of creativity, innovation and technology and our new school curriculum for grade 9 had information technology and IT skills. However, it was very difficulty for me because I live in the rural area and my house does not have electricity. As if that’s not enough the school didn’t have any computers at school.
After a few years, 3 computers were donated to the school but we didn’t have the storage facility to use them regularly. It became a big issue and the school had to pack them in one of the classrooms where we had to arrange to use them after school.
In 2022, School Club Zambia built a new IT centre and library at our school which has over 600 children. This centre meant that we now have enough space to put the computers and they donated more to us. This enabled the teacher for computer to start conducting the computer lessons which were impossible to do before.
I am so happy that I am now learning computers as this will open the opportunity for employment in café or IT center in the future, thank you School Club Zambia.