Republica de Francia School

Facts

-          Community: Loma Alta

-          Nearest city: Tena

-          Province: Napo

-          Number of students: 17

-          Age range: 5-13

-          Number of teachers: 1

-          Number of people in community: 20 families

-          Average income per person: less than $120 per month

Brief History

Republica de Francia School is a small school based in a local community in the Amazonia region in Ecuador. The school has one classroom and its 17 pupils are taught by one teacher who has to divide his time between the varying grades. There are 20 families in the community and the children have to walk up to 2 hours through the jungle each day to get to school and then when the day is over walk the 2 hours home again.

What we’ve done so far:

September 2008

Through a shoebox appeal in August 2008, a large quantity of school resources were gathered and in September 2008, we organised a trip to the school to distribute these resources. The school is a 3 hour bus ride from Tena into the jungle, followed by a 1 hour walk from the road through the jungle. Children were given resources including:

-          Pens, pencils, crayons and paints.

-          Notebooks and paper

-          Rubbers, pencil sharpeners

-          Toys

-          Sports equipment including balls, rackets, skipping ropes and a baseball bat.

-          Uniforms

April 2009

We visited the school to distribute further resources and to establish how we could help them further. Each of the children drew a picture of some aspect of their life for us which we hope to be able to use in our future fundraising activities.

The school now has a solar panel and electricity. They would like a computer and in order to run the computer the school will need an additional solar panel and battery.

August-September 2009

  • – As a result of all our fundraising we were able to do the following:
  • – Repaired school buildings: bought cement, sand and tools to repair walls inside and out,
  • – Provided refreshments to the community who spent the day transporting tones of sand up the jungle path to the school
  • – Provided paint and paint brushes to paint whole school
  • – Provided a Laptop and printer, as well as a battery converter to enable the solar panel to power these.
  • – For each child: pair of Wellies, a rucksacks, pair of flipflops, two school shirts
  • – Sports bibs and a football
  • – Paints
  • – Exercise books
  • – For each child all the stationary they need for the school year including pens, pencils, colouring pencils, ruler, rubber, pencil sharpener
  • – New table and chair for each child (existing ones were for children aged 3-4, the new ones we replaced them with are for the appropriate ages)
  • – New storage wardrobe
  • – Second hand clothes to the families