Building communities from nothing…
Jimmy Cricket says he recently received “a very heartening report ” from a gentleman called Tom Power regarding a charity for underprivileged children.
Tom has arranged events over the past year featuring well-known entertainer Jimmy in order to raise money for CAMEO-Aid which delivers education to poor and deprived children in East Africa.
The events were held in Whitefield, North Manchester and in Haslingden, East Lancashire.
In his role as chairperson of the trustees of the charity, Tom over the month of March has been visiting the education projects CAMEO-Aid has been supporting.
These schemes are at schools in Mbirizi, Uganda and at Mupoi in South Sudan, and Tom – who also provided the photographs on this page – has given some detailed information to Jimmy about each of the projects.
He said: “Mbirizi is a bush school. It is 9km off the road through the bush and is 16km from the nearest school. This distance is too great a burden for children to travel on a daily basis, hence the building of the school in Mbirizi.
“This school is now proving to be well-managed and is achieving the grades which makes them very competitive with national schools.
“One of the side effects of putting the school in Mbirizi is that small shops have now been built to service the school and the community. From nothing, this community now has a school which employs 10 teachers and has created employment for builders and for the shops.
“In Mupoi, South Sudan, the school is newer and currently has 75 students, three teachers, a cook and a helper. This school was won back from the forest and refurbished to its present standard.
“A new toilet and shower block were added and there are plans to add two store rooms and a small room to cope with children who become sick. They then want to add a kitchen and a dining room in the future.
“As the children move up, they will build more classrooms and be refurbishing another building on this site which will be wrested from the forest.”
For more information on the charity, visit the website here.
