Beauty Nzila with staff and students
In the poorest neighborhood in Lusaka Zambia, families live on less than a dollar a day. Crime is rampant. Here, a mother began to teach her child, as education was not accessible or affordable. Soon other mothers dropped off their children. Before long, this resilient mother, Beauty Nzila (pictured at left in the top photo above) had to find some abandoned buildings for her school. She called her school Blessed Vale. Dr. Farzin Rahmani, a physician from Great Britain, volunteers much of his time to building clinics and schools in Africa. He discovered the project, added another building, and put us in touch with Beauty, and soon she was requesting assistance in the form of training for her teachers. Maureen Mungai first visited the school and then teachers embraced Full-Circle Learning.
A series of volunteers followed in her footsteps. Antoinette Wright (pictured in the green scarf above) spent a summer at the school after a bout of tuberculosis had cause a school closure in the spring. She helped keep the school open and taught the students to improve their community as they applied the Habits of Heroes curriculum. During the Advocacy unit, students went out into the community to ask its members what changes they would like to see. People quickly realized that only education would end the cycle of poverty and crime in the neighborhood. Soon children were marching down the street after them, shouting, “We want change!” In the fall, the school’s population had jumped from 300 to 600 students. As of 2012, it is nearing 1000 students. The students themselves taught the community about the need for universal education.
Antoinette was not the only one to touch the children’s lives. When volunteer Shirley Marks then came to Chebolya, she and Farzin Rahmani, a member of the trustees, had a chance to join Beauty in setting up a meeting with Zambia’s first president, Kenneth Kaunda. He was so impressed with the school, he commented that every school in Zambia should become a Full-Circle Learning School. Beauty had already trained teachers in nearby Lwimbe.In 2011, FCL representative David Efetebore was sent to provide advanced training for the new teachers, to help them achieve the high goals before them. In 2012, the school is setting up an economic development project to increase its own sustainability, with the help of Full-Circle Learning.
Students receive Respect quilt from global partner in Los Angeles, who carried the theme into science unit on DNA and respect for all life and a number of service projects
Children on the street before the project began
children enrolled four years later, preparing to perform on a local television station.
Teachers collaborate in Zambia.
Boys relaxing after their Advocacy project in the community.