A long-awaited dream came true at the beginning of 2019. Our academic school in collaboration with the government of Angola officially started on the 14th of February 2019. We received favor from the government in that they allowed us to register our school despite not having the required minimum number of classrooms. We named the school El Shammah (“YHWH is here”).
Humble beginnings and future plans
This was and is a big financial challenge. We give thanks for the many volunteer visitors from outside the country who donated cement, steel framing members, corrugated iron sheets, and their time and labor. Without these helpers, we could not have completed the first few school buildings. We need to add at least one schoolroom each year just to keep up with the advancing students, but our near-term goal is to complete three more classrooms. This would qualify us to register as an Independent School in collaboration with the government. We have already completed the foundation for these three classrooms, but the cost of the building materials has almost doubled during the past year alone. Before September of 2023, we need to complete one partially-built classroom and the toilet facilities to enable us to accommodate Pre School up to Grade 5 students.
School finances
Tuition at El Shammah costs less than the local government schools, yet it provides a higher quality education. The OM mission heavily subsidizes the price of tuition, yet many families struggle to pay the $10 per child per year. If not for this school, many of its 270+ students could not afford education at all. There are always more children wanting to enroll than there is capacity at the school. The bottlenecks to expansion are money to buy materials and pay skilled local workers to build schoolrooms, and time and money to hire/train/pay qualified teachers.
The school will have 13 Angolan staff members for the upcoming 2023/24 school year: 7 teachers and 6 volunteer monitors. The government covers the salary for 3 of the teachers, and the mission pays the other 4. Some international funding had previously been earmarked to help with this cost, but it has recently lapsed. The school gives a small monetary blessing to the monitors when possible, and the OM mission eats about $3 in operating expense per student per month (things like food, drink, teaching supplies, printing, etc). If you would like to help El Shammah bring quality education to rural Angola, all of the proceeds from my family’s Welcome to Angola Ko-fi.com page go directly to paying the expenses of the school.
Poverty and malnutrition are very common in the neighborhoods around the school. Our students often get only a single meal each day at home. Since 2021, the school has provided a cup of hot soya milk for each student in the morning to improve their ability to stay focussed. Even so, there is a noticeable drop in their energy level halfway through the day. Starting this year (2023) we hope to provide a piece of bread with peanut butter as a midday snack for each student so they can better study and retain knowledge.
While we are still waiting for the government of Angola to provide more teachers, the three OM Angola long-term staff members who administer and teach at the school are assisted by local volunteers, each of which also attend our morning discipleship groups. These volunteers have made themselves available to aid us in the classrooms, and they are a tremendous blessing. Due to the availability and commitment of these missionaries and volunteers, we are able to give quality training to the children and better individual attention, too. Praise the Lord for each one of them. Trust YHWH with us for speedy allocation of teachers from the government side and for the right teachers with a calling to be a teacher. We also would like to give a better monthly blessing to each of the volunteers.
Bushman literacy class
Our school in Menongue also started a small literacy class in 2020 with one of the Bushmen tribes in our province, Cuando Cubango. In the year 2021, the Soba (the man in charge of the tribe) asked us to let two of their children stay with us and have the opportunity to study at El Shammah school, so that they could equip their own people with what they learned. We accepted the challenge, and from of March 2021 they started schooling with us, while having a teacher who was able to communicate to them in one of the local dialects Luchachi, which they have some understanding of. We started by helping them to know how to count in Luchachi, Portuguese, and then in their own language. After four months they were able to identify the shape, place, and quantity of 1 through 20, as well as 1 through 10 in English.
During their first vacation home, some of the teachers and monitors of our school accompanied the two of them to their village to be alongside them as they taught their own people what they had learned.
It was beautiful to see the way their own people welcomed them in this position of teaching, and to see their courage while imparting their knowledge.
Construction progress at the school
Welcome to Angola 