What is missing from this photo of a classroom in the school? Yes, if you answered a door, a window or flooring. But the actual focus for this post is desks! When we first saw the children having school sitting on the veranda, we bought them chairs. Then, for September, we built two temporary classrooms. By October we had started giving them breakfast - a resounding success. But now, we want to equip the classrooms, starting with desks. Desks are not available to purchase. The raw materials...

With our charity registration still in progress, we’ve been unable to purchase the land that has been offered to us for building a permanent school. Yet, the need continues to grow—currently over 70 children are registered for first and second class, ready to begin in September.   The rainy season is now in full force and not expected to break until October. With monsoon rains, it is impossible for the children to learn on an open veranda. Therefore we have made the decision to close the...

The six months since returning from Guinea-Bissau have been full of surprises. We quickly discovered that sending money abroad to build a school wasn’t as simple as we thought. Instead, we needed to register a charity—a process that turned out to be far more complicated and time-consuming than we ever imagined.   Meanwhile, life in the village hasn’t stood still. The children have kept coming to school— their numbers growing steadily after our visit . The teachers are unqualified, have no...