Earlier this month, our friends at Travelzoo travelled to Malawi to lay the foundations of a brighter future for all our children - with the construction of a brand new computer room at Rose's House.
Education is a vital part of the support we provide our children at Open Arms, since we know how important this is for them to secure a better future with good career prospects. Indeed for some time, the children at our 3 senior Foster Homes have also benefited from IT lessons, conducted by a young IT graduate who we employ on a part-time basis.
However, until now teaching conditions have proved challenging - with often up to 8 children squeezing into a makeshift classroom in one of the home's bedrooms and sharing a selection of donated laptops and desktops in an effort to master Microsoft Office, improve their Maths or English skills via one of the educational games, or navigate their way round the internet. With inadequate space, very few resources, and internet connectivity limited to just one computer at a time, the quality of learning was not ideal.
It has long been our goal that these lessons should take place in a bespoke classroom setting... a space where the children not only have the right facilities on hand, such as desks, a whiteboard and projector, printers and better internet access, but where they can also learn in a comfortable environment.
Thanks to Travelzoo, who earlier this month rolled up their sleeves and spent a week shovelling soil... filling wheelbarrows... mixing cement... climbing ladders... and laying bricks... this dream is now becoming a reality. Not only that, but Sanjay their computer specialist brought software to help the children design their own computer games and even helped one of the boys create his own webpage!
With computer skills high on the agenda in so many of today's professions, this new facility will improve the prospects of all our children, both today and in years to come, so that they can go on to be independent and support themselves.
What a big difference this will make to so many lives - thank you to all at Travelzoo for making this possible.
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