Mwachome Primary School is a sandy, hot trek from the nearest community. Sponsored children from our Mombasa site in Kenya walk long distances to arrive at their little school. They start to arrive by dawn, and set to work sweeping the grounds before heading to class. Their school has many challenges, which includes pot-holed classrooms, no drinking water, and a lack of uniforms and shoes. But for head teacher Beatrice, there is a pet project dear to her heart.

"We have some children who have come up with an initiative of having their own library,” she says. Sure enough, a few metres behind the school, students have set up a sheet metal hut with a few benches, where they go to read in their free time. They don’t have shelves yet - or books, for that matter.

“They wish to have storybooks,” Beatrice says, “or any other sources of material that they can have access to, when they are even out of school, during the weekends, and even when they go to high school, when they come for holidays, they can have somewhere they can study.”

Mwachome Primary is one of nine schools looking for Canadian sister schools through this year’s School Connections program. When a Canadian school signs up, they receive a video from their sister school. The video features students and teachers like Beatrice, who share their dreams and their needs, like storybooks. Their brothers and sisters in Canada then set their creative and compassionate minds to fundraising for those needs.

Since 2017, Canadian schools have raised more than $450,000 for their new friends in Africa. From pancake breakfasts to walkathons to movie nights, their hard work is making real and vital impacts for their friends overseas. Students in Kenya and Tanzania are arriving at transformed schools, with fresh desks, equipped classrooms, efficient school kitchens, and thriving school farms. Plus, the students in Canada get to learn about social teaching, Christian solidarity, geography, other cultures, and so much more.

In 2024, there are nine schools, including Mwachome, who are looking for the same support. To check out all the schools and for information about ‘getting connected,’ please visithttps://chalice.ca/school-connections

(And if you know a teacher or principal, consider passing along this article! Thank you!)