November 2016

Matjana has been providing high-quality early childhood learning opportunities for the five year olds of Ndabeni area Kaphunga, for ten years. Now we’re getting ready to enrol four year old learners!

Our goal was to have a new classroom full of four year olds at the start of the 2017 school year. We didn’t quite make that, but we’re committed to opening the second classroom as soon as possible. But we’ll be needing the help of our international supporters.

Can you help make our grand plan a reality, by making a donation or organising a fundraising event?

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We started building the classroom with a committed community and E30,000 (AU$3000/US$2155/€1915). However the total budget for the classroom was E170,000 (AU$16,000/ US$12,500/ €11,000). To reach our goal we still need to raise another E70,000. It’s an ambitious plan!

And we’re counting on your help. We wouldn’t have been able to make this decision if we had not developed a fantastic group of supporters.

Please consider how you can to contribute to fundraising to help us build a new classroom and provide the four year old kids in our community an opportunity to go to school. If you’re planning a fundraiser, please let Michelle (mbrear@matjanapreschool.org) and Londi (londi@matjanapreschool.org) know so we can share the news. If you’ve got something to contribute right now, please put it in to one of our bank accounts and email to let us know.

When thinking about how you can help, please remember:

Every dollar makes a difference! We obviously need some bigger donations, but if you only have a little bit, remember that even small amounts make a real difference (e.g. ten or fifteen bucks in your currency, is food for a week for all our kids).

Every cent we receive in donations goes to the school. We’ll use it to construct the classroom and play equipment, buy food for our kids and pay our teachers (young women from the community). All the people who do our fundraising and admin work contribute their time and skills voluntarily.

We are owned and run by the community, and all the infrastructure we develop becomes an asset owned by the community.

As a community we actively support Matjana Preschool and continuously donate our time and energy to developing and operating our school. It’s a resource we really value and want to continuously improve.

For the last two years we have had to turn away 15 four year olds (and a few three year olds!) because we didn’t have space for them. It’s horrible having to send them home and we want to make sure it doesn’t happen in 2017!

Matjana Preschool ‘parents’ (especially the mums and grandmas who do most of the work) have committed to doing lots of hard work at the preschool in the coming months. They’ve already started collecting stones from the forest to build a foundation for the classroom. In a few weeks’ time they will be working with the builder, to mix cement, carry blocks and do whatever else needs to be done to build the classroom as quickly as possible. They’ve already proven their commitment and dedication by coming out in numbers to help build our first classroom.

The very active group of women are feeling inspired and want to get started quickly. They’ve decided to come in groups of five per day to help the builder, so that they will all have enough time to plant their maize fields as well. Planting season is about to begin in our subsistence farming community. After a severe drought last year and food shortages throughout Swaziland it’s best to start now, even though they’re busy, because they don’t want to miss an opportunity to develop their preschool.

A large donation from The Blue Mountains Tour Bus in September, gave us the confidence to embark on this project. The E30,000 rand (AU$3000) they contributed will cover about one quarter of the cost of building and furnishing a new classroom and office for our teachers. We’re confident that our other supporters will help top-up this money, so that we can cover our operating expenses and buy all the materials we’ll need for the classroom.

And because we have such a fantastic group of supporters, we’ve also put together a wish list of other, smaller infrastructure developments we’d like to work on. We’re thinking that just maybe, we’ll even be able to raise more than we need for the classroom and build a new set of swings and a few other things!

We’re calling on all our supporters, new and old, to think about how they might be able to contribute to this project, by making a donation or organising a fundraising event on our behalf. Please let us know if you make a donation or are planning a fundraiser, so we can spread the word in the community, and keep the women doing the hard physical work inspired!