Building on strong foundations at Zambezi Sawmills School
Zambezi Sawmills Community School is a thriving school on the edge of Livingstone. With pupil numbers growing, the school desperately needs additional facilities to support more children from this disadvantaged community.
Your generous support means foundations are going down for new classrooms and a toilet block at this busy school.
More space to learn
The new classroom block will house three classrooms and a computer classroom with mains electricity connection.
The school currently has six computers. But with no secure dedicated space for them, the computers cannot be left out and have to be repacked and put away at the end of each session. This cuts into precious learning time.
A dedicated ICT room will help the school leverage support to get additional computers. This will help ensure more children can learn vital IT skills that we all need to thrive in the modern world.
Improving health and hygiene
We build ventilated pit latrines at many of our school projects due to lack of access to running water.
Zambezi Sawmills Community Schools is situated in an urban area, and benefits from connection to water and drainage systems. Over 900 pupils, plus teachers, currently shared just 11 toilets.
The new toilet block will have four female cubicles with flushable squat toilets, which are robust and easy to clean. Three cubicles will have standard size squat plates. The fourth will have an over-sized squat plate with a low tap, to serve as a washing space to support girls to manage their periods.
On the other side will be two male cubicles, plus urinal wall. In the centre there will be a ramp leading to a unisex, disabled toilet with handrails.
Work in progress
Supported by trainees recruited from the local community, construction work started in August 2022 and is progressing well.
Trainees help to mark out the foundation trenches for the classroom block, with 3 x 66m2 classrooms and 1 x 49m2 computer room
Excavations in progress
With foundation blockwork completed, work begins on backfilling and compacting
The team has also been making good progress on construction of the toilet block
The local community have been actively supporting the project. They have contributed 100 tonnes of building sand and 16 hours of labour, including offloading of 4,000 burnt bricks. Local soil composition means we are unable to build with Stabilised Soil Bricks which is our preferred choice.
We look forward to sharing more updates as the project progresses.
Thank you for your continued support in #BuildingBrighterFutures in Zambia.