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Alans Africa: St Mary the Virgin Broughton & North Newington

23 January 2025

Since Christmas 2009 my village church have been supporting my projects in Sierra Leone and each year before Christmas, I put together a photo display in the church to show what has been achieved in the past twelve months. I’ve just received a donation of £600 from the 2024 Christmas offertories which will help fund the ongoing work at the staff hostel at Westminster Community Secondary School. Since 2009 I have received a total of £6,978 from the church. Sincere thanks to all those who contributed to the Christmas offertories.

Westminster Community Secondary School

On 20th December the builders started their Christmas break and I recently sent a tranche of money so they could resume work and on Thursday16th, after the delivery of all the materials, which arrived on site late morning, they began to form the roof.

The progress is amazing – this photo was taken on Friday afternoon

I received this photo yesterday afternoon with some of the galvanised zinc sheeting in place.

There are four builders working on the roof. In the foreground is the school caretaker/odd job man, Jusuf, aged 20. He helps the builders when he has spare time but doesn’t get paid, but is keen to get the hostel completed as he will occupy one of the bedrooms, rather than sleeping on a foam mattress on the floor in the storeroom of the classroom block. He has just started attending secondary school again, as he wants to complete his education. He never took his final exams as he couldn’t afford to pay the exam fees or buy the uniform and equipment. He is in a class of 15 and 16 year olds.

This is the main contractor, proudly showing that the hostel roof is now completed.
Not a particularly interesting picture BUT considering they didn’t start work till midday on Thursday this is a major achievement in just 4 days.
They currently have adequate funds to enable them to start concreting the floors and once that is completed, they will start to render the building and build the concrete bed bases.

Tomorrow I am going to transfer another tranche of money so that they have adequate funds to undertake all the above work, but that will then present me with a bit of a cash flow problem, as they are currently building faster than I am fundraising. Since July 1st, the start of the Rotary year, I have generated just over £21,000, and although I have a number of people on monthly standing orders, which generates about £325, that is the only known guaranteed income. I have a number of talks planned over the coming few months, which will result in funds coming in but the amount they will generate is again a total unknown. I am exploring other ways of improving my cash flow and I am hoping that I will not have to resort to buying a balaclava!! If you want to book me for a presentation please contact me as per the details in my header.

Tags: Alans Africa